AEN Executive Director & FAAM Steering Committee Chair
“The unhelpful way in which Islamophobia is today wielded as a blunt cudgel to stifle critical analyses of Palestinian politics hinders the potential for peace by undermining the capacity for scholars and practitioners to effectively focus attention on the urgent need for Palestinian societal and governmental reforms.”
Miriam Elman, “Islamaphobia.” Israel Studies , Vol. 24, No. 2, Word Crimes; Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Summer 2019), pp. 144-156.
Miriam Elman is a right-wing political scientist currently serving as Executive Director of the Academic Engagement Network since 2019 and Steering Committee Chair for Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement (FAAM) since 2024. She is the highest paid employee of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) with an annual base salary of $290,082.1 Elman is also a Senior Research Fellow at the pro-Israel Think Tank Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a Council of Scholars Member at Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), Secretary at the Jewish Federation of Central New York, and Secretary at the Consortium for Qualitative Research Methods.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Elman lived in Israel for over a decade, serving voluntarily in the IDF Air Force between 1983 to 1985 before receiving her BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She later received her MA and PhD from Columbia University before becoming Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, then Associate Professor by courtesy appointment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (where her husband Colin Elman remains tenured professor), and Research Director for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) from 2009-2022. She was on the former editorial board member of the journals International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis and Political Research Quarterly, and served on the ISGAP Steering Committee and as Director of SPME before joining AEN. She was listed as listed as one of the Algemeiner’s “Top 100 people positively influencing Jewish Life, 2018.”
Elman has published extensively against BDS and for Israel normalization in academia, using language that disguises racist and biased hasbara talking points in academic, liberal prose. For example, she has argued that:
- Palestinians reject peace while illegal west bank settlers are not “peace spoilers” but rather carrying out “Jewish restorative justice.”2
- Accusations of Islamophobia are falsely weaponized against Zionists.3
- Jewish organizations that support Palestinian liberation are anti-semites who glorify terror and endanger [Zionist] Jews.4
- Campus activists must accept that Zionism is a central component of Jewish identity (no matter how it oppresses, marginalizes, erases, and kills its Palestinian victims).5
- BDS and the academic boycott of Israel discriminate against zionists and are a threat to academic freedom.6
Sources
- Israel on Campus Coalition 990 Tax Forms, ProPublica. ↩︎
- Miriam Elman, “How my students would rip a Haaretz op-ed to shreds.” The Times of Israel, July 9, 2014. ↩︎
- Miriam Elman, “Islamaphobia.” Israel Studies , Vol. 24, No. 2, Word Crimes; Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Summer 2019), pp. 144-156. ↩︎
- Miriam Elman, “Antisemitism on the Left: The Case of Jewish Voice for Peace,” in Alvin H. Rosenfeld (ed.), Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Environment. Indiana University Press: 2021, pp. 113-134.) ↩︎
- Miriam F. Elman and Raeefa Shams. “‘We Are Cousins. Our
Father Is Abraham…’: Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism with the Abraham Accords,” Religions 2022, vol. 13, no.10, pp. 1-21. ↩︎ - Miriam F. Elman, “The Anti-Israel Movement on the US Campus,” in Ronnie Fraser and Lola Fraser (eds.,) Challenging the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. London: Routledge, 2023, pp. 106-122. ↩︎