Boycott the Dan David Prize - Statements & Resources

Scholars and Activists Cannot Stay Silent: Honor PACBI and Reject the Dan David Prize!

By: Boycott Dan David Prize Campaign (BDDPC)

For the full list of most-recent signatories, or to add your name to this statement, please click here.

We are scholars, activists, and concerned community members in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Many of us are committed to deepening our knowledge and understanding of the past, especially as it intersects with colonialism, empire, violence, race, gender, and sexuality. We call on our intellectual and political communities to take a principled stand: boycott the Dan David Prize. This includes personally declining the award if offered it, and holding our communities accountable to the demands of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

Headquartered at Tel Aviv University, the Dan David Prize (DDP) is one of many Israel-based awards that attempt to legitimize the Israeli state and its policies. Since 2021, the Prize has been repackaged as the “largest history prize in the world,” awarding $300,000 USD annually to nine early- and mid-career scholars in the historical disciplines. Each year, the DDP also donates $300,000 to Tel Aviv University to fund the Dan David Society of Fellows to attract international postdoctoral scholars. Located on occupied land that was once a Palestinian village destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948, Tel Aviv University functions as the academic wing of Zionism and is fully complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, as Maya Wind documents in Towers of Ivory and Steel.

The DDP remains institutionally tied to a university embedded within the structures of Israeli settler colonialism, and its prestige continues to serve a broader project of international normalization. It has been almost three years since the escalation of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. As a part of its genocide, the Israeli government has conducted what the United Nations describes as scholasticide, which includes destroying critical infrastructures such as universities and schools and killing civilians, including academics and students. The occupied West Bank experiences ongoing siege, with settlers attacking Palestinians and taking their land.

Against this backdrop, the Dan David Foundation has attempted to distance itself from the Israeli government and the Zionist project. For instance, while it has never acknowledged the genocide, the Foundation has supported selected humanitarian and “peace-building” projects, and issued a “Statement on the need to end the war in Gaza”, these efforts rebrand the Foundation as a liberal Zionist critic of the Israeli government, which normalizes Israel as a “liberal” society that permits internal criticism and provides humanitarian aid to Palestinians, obfuscating the Zionist settler colonial project that dispossesses the very same Palestinians the Foundation claims to be “peace-building” with. BDS has cautioned against these liberal Zionist invocations of “peace” and “dialogue,” which promote a false symmetry between the colonized and the colonizer.

The rebranding of the DDP must be understood within this broader process of normalization. The DDP renders Israeli settler colonialism normal and rehabilitates complicit institutions such as Tel Aviv University. That no Palestinian scholar has ever received the Prize, and no work on Palestinian history has ever been recognized by it, is not an oversight. It is indicative of a politics of erasure concealed beneath claims of academic neutrality—or worse, excellence.

For this reason, PACBI has explicitly called on scholars to refuse the Dan David Prize in 2022 and 2023, pointing out that the DDF and Tel Aviv University are “deeply complicit in Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.” Through the Prize, as historian Esmat Elhalaby states, “scholars of history are enlisted in a PR project hosted by Tel Aviv University and Israel… to legitimize Israel’s presence on the global stage.” Historian Ussama Makdisi points out that the Prize is used to perform “liberal academic washing of Israel’s reputation” as a “bastion of liberal values,” rather than the perpetrator of the longest-running military occupation in modern history. After Catherine Hall's principled refusal of the Prize in 2016, the Prize was reorganized into smaller awards to prey on early and mid-career scholars, motivated by a desire to prevent or diffuse any potential rejections.

The Foundation announced nine historians for the 2026 Dan David Prize, including five whose work explores themes such as colonialism, empire, violence, race, gender, and sexuality: Howard Chiang (University of California, Santa Barbara), Verena Meier (University of Heidelberg / Technical University of Berlin), R. Isabela Morales, Max Bergholz (Concordia University), and Andrew Lipman (Barnard College). It is always a violation of PACBI to accept this Prize, but even more so when one claims to espouse social justice in their work.

Our struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism are intimately tied to the fight for Palestinian self-determination and the right of return. We ask scholars and activists, especially those whose works concern themes such as colonialism, empire, violence, race, gender, and sexuality, to sign this open letter, regardless of discipline or location. We cannot allow our knowledge to be used in service of Zionist apartheid, occupation, and genocide.

We urge scholars to commit to declining the DDP now and in the future. This call follows longstanding anti-colonial, anti-racist, queer, and feminist traditions that recognize the entanglement of knowledge production with systems of power and that affirm the responsibility of scholars to act in the face of injustice. We furthermore call on all academics and activists to honor PACBI principles and demands. Academic boycott is a collective commitment, and as such we must hold each other accountable in upholding these non-negotiable ethical standards. This entails not only a total rejection of academic prizes and institutions complicit in Israeli settler occupation, but also continuing education on the aims and principles of PACBI. The goal must be the organization of sufficient pressure such that the acceptance of awards like the DDP becomes unthinkable.

In solidarity with Palestinian liberation:

Individual Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Malek Abisaab, Associate Professor of History at McGill University
Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Professor and University Distinguished Scholar at Montclair State University
Ji-Hyun Ahn, Associate Professor at Yonsei University
Neel Ahuja, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland
Charlotte Karem Albrecht, Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Zahra Ali, Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University-Newark
Anjali Arondekar, Professor of the Humanities, Literature and History at University of California, Santa Cruz
Nadine Attewell, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies and Global Asia at Simon Fraser University
Geoffrey Aung, Universitätsassistent at University of Vienna
Soha Baek, M.A. Candidate of Interdisciplinary Program in Gender Studies at Seoul National University
Crystal Mun-hye Baik, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside
Pallavi Banerjee, Professor of Sociology at University of Calgary
Tani Barlow, Professor Emerita of History at Rice University
Ian Barnard, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Chapman University
Pakeezeh Baruah, PhD student at National University of Singapore
Lucien Baskin, PhD student at The City University of New York Graduate Center
Jean Beaman, Professor of Sociology at The City University of New York Graduate Center
Mark Beauchamp, Professor of History at Dawson College Montreal
Claire Begbie, PhD Student at Concordia University
Sayan Bhattacharya, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland
Long Bui, Professor of Global and International Studies at University of California, Irvine
Lucy Burns, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles
Fred Burrill, Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at University of New Brunswick
Eojin Byun, Independent Researcher
JP Catungal, Associate Professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at University of British Columbia
Shivam Chadha, Organizer at Science for the People Canada
Harlan Chambers, Postdoc at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
Sylvia Chan-Malik, Associate Professor of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers-New Brunswick
Yo-Ling Chen, Independent scholar and activist (Taiwan)
Jih-Fei Cheng, Associate Professor at Scripps College
Michelle Cho, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at University of Toronto
Carolyn Choi, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Princeton University
Charmaine Chua, Acting Associate Professor of Geography at University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Connery, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at University of California, Santa Cruz
Daniel Conway, Reader in Politics and International Relations at University of Westminster
Ashon Crawley, Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia
Elyse Crystall, Teaching Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hil
Susmit Das
Chantal David, Professor at Concordia University
Mary Ellen Davis, Part-time Instructor in the School of Cinema at Concordia University
Iyko Day, Elizabeth C. Small Professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Department of Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College
Andrew Delatolla, Associate Professor at University of Leeds
Roxanne Douglas, University of Warwick
Michael Duckett, Professor of History at Dawson College
Aniruddha Dutta, Associate Professor of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa
Zophia Edwards, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University
Barry Eidlin, Associate Professor of Sociology at McGill University
Gerhard Erasmus, Academic and Course Director at Inspired CPD
Cindy Ewing, Assistant Professor of History at University of Toronto
Stacy Fahrenthold, Professor of History at University of California Davis
Roderick A. Ferguson, William Robertson Coe Professor of WGSS and American Studies at Yale University
R. Benedito Ferrão, Associate Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at William & Mary
Cynthia Franklin, Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i
Kerim Friedman, Professor at National Dong Hua University (Taiwan)
Christopher T. Fan, Associate Professor of English at University of California, Irvine
Kerensa Fu, Student at University of Toronto
Dr. Mengzhu Fu, Independent Scholar
Richard Fung, Professor Emeritus at OCAD University
Dr. Clive Gabay, Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London
Cynthia Yuan Gao, Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College
Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara
Terri Ginsberg, Assistant Teaching Professor of Cinema Studies at Rutgers University
Ozlem Goner, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at City University of New York
Kevin A. Gould, Associate Professor at Concordia University
Bradley Graupner, PhD Candidate at University of Texas at Austin
Jesse Greener, Full Professor at Universtié Laval
Jiyun Gu, PhD Student at UT Austin
Sarah Gualtieri, Professor of American Studies, History and Middle East Studies at University of Southern California
Anna Guevarra, Professor and Founding Director of Global Asian Studies at University of Illinois Chicago
Cathy Gulkin, Documentary Filmmaker
Susila Gurusami, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Chicago
Guangtian Ha, Associate Professor of Religion at Haverford College
Inhye Ha, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at Incheon National University
Tahrir Hamdi, Director and Professor of Anti-Colonial and Resistance Literature at Arab Open University - Jordan
Ricarda Hammer, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley
Woori Han, Lecturer at University of Exeter
Thayer Hastings, Postdoctoral Scholar at American University
Clare Hemmings, Professor of Feminist Theory at the London School of Economics
Annie Hikido, Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts-Amherst
I-Yi Hsieh, Assistant Professor, Institute of Visual Studies at Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Jo Hsu, Associate Professor at University of Texas at Austin
Ren-yo Hwang, Associate Professor at Mount Holyoke College
Andrew Ivaska, Professor of History at Concordia University
Usha Iyer, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University
Saba J, MD
Rana Jaleel, Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and Asian American Studies at University of California, Davis
Thiti Jamkajornkeiat, Assistant Professor of Pacific and Asian Studies at University of Victoria
Seong-Jo Jeong, PhD student at Chung-Ang University
Kim Jongbin, The Catholic University of Korea
Hye-Eun Jun, Research Fellow, Humanities Research Institute at Incheon National University
Minwoo Jung, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women's & Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago
Moon-Ho Jung, Professor of History at University of Washington
Youngoh Jung, Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Euiyoung Kang, PhD Candidate at Sogang University
Khyutae Kang, Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Seoul (South Korea)
Kim Kangri, Independent Curator and Critic and PhD graduate of Ewha Womans University
Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History at New York University
Yarden Azoulay Katz, Assistant Professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Ali Kazimi, Professor at York University
Dr. Séagh Kehoe, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at University of Westminster
Abeera Khan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at SOAS University of London
Mahruq Khan, Teaching Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies & Asian American Studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Eunjung Kim, Associate Professor at Syracuse University
Eunkyung Kim, Assistant Professor at Hansung University
Hyun Mee Kim, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Yonsei University
Jinsook Kim, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Emory University
Jodi Kim, Professor of English at Dartmouth College
Nadia Kim, George Sumey Jr. Professor in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences
Kim Sun Nam, Sungkonghoe University of Korea
Tiffany Lethabo King, Associate Professor at University of Virginia
Gary Kinsman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Laurentian University
Dana Kornberg, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara
Rushaan Kumar, Associate Professor in the Feminist & Gender Studies Department at Colorado College
Rahim Kurwa, Associate Professor at University of Illinois Chicago
Jungmin Kwon, Professor at Portland State University
Zoltán Lakatos, Assistant Professor at Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Ben Lander, Professor of History at Dawson College
Lau Kek Huat, Film Director
Lala Lau, Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine
Laurie Lee, Assistant Professor of Music at University of Pennsylvania
So-Rim Lee, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Pennsylvania
Sumin Lee, Yonsei University
Younghee Lee, Phd Student, Department of Women’s Studies at Ewha Womans University
Joanna Lee-Brown, PhD Candidate at Columbia University
Zachary Levenson, Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida International University
Heidi R. Lewis, Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College
Amy Lien, Artist
George Lipsitz, Research Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Barbara
Petrus Liu, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University
David Lloyd, Professor at University of California, Riverside
Dana Luciano, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University
Jamie Magnusson, Associate Professor of Adult Education and Community Development at University of Toronto
Nashra Mahmood, Independent researcher and alumni of University of California, Los Angeles
Anushay Malik, Senior Lecturer at Simon Fraser University
Simeon Man, Associate Professor of History at University of California, San Diego
Sara Marzagora, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at King's College London
Azar Masoumi, Associate Professor at Carleton University
Hazem Almassry, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Victoria
Jodi Melamed, Professor at Marquette University
Naveen Minai, Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University
Elise A. Mitchell, Assistant Professor of History at Swarthmore College
Susan Morrissey, Professor of History at University of California, Irvine
Ghada Mourad, Lecturer at University of California, Irvine
Mazin al-Nahawi, Palestinian Activist
Nguyen Tan Hoang, Associate Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego
Vinh Nguyen, Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University
Heidi Nicholls, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University
Eunsil Oh, Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ruin Sung Mean Pae, Director, Institute for Trans/Gender/Queer Studies
David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University
Park JaeSeung, Researcher at Chung-Ang University and Seoul Foundation of Women & Family
Vrushali Patil, Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Matthew Penney, Associate Professor at Concordia University
Eliot Perrin, PhD student at Concordia University
Silvia Posocco, Professor of Social Anthropology at Birkbeck, University of London
Christopher Powell, Associate Professor of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University
Nicola Pratt, Professor at University of Warwick
Ela Przybyło, Associate Professor at Illinois State University
Jasbir Puar, Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia
Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology at Boston University
Smitha Radhakrishnan, Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College
Norma Rantisi, Professor of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University
Elena Razlogova, Associate Professor of History at Concordia University, Montreal
Chandan Reddy, Associate Professor at University of Washington
Victoria Reyes, Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Southeast Asian Studies at University of California, Riverside
Rahul Rao, Reader in International Political Thought at University of St Andrews
Aneil Rallin, Independent scholar and writer
Malini Ranganathan, Associate Professor, American University
Alessandra Renzi, Associate Professor at Concordia University
Victoria Reyes, Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Southeast Asian Studies at University of California, Riverside
Samuel Rohe, Nanotechnology Researcher and Community Organizer
Gerald Rowe, Adjunct Professor at l'Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Laval Quebec
Kerri Sakamoto, Writer
Razan AlSalah, Senior Lecturer at Concordia University
Evren Savcı, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University
Joy C. Schaefer, Affiliate Professor at Grand Valley State University
Kerry Scott, Assistant Professor at York University
Alan Sears, Professor Emeritus, Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University
Sertaç Sehlikoglu, Professor at University College London
Timothy Seidel, Professor at Eastern Mennonite University
Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara
Nitasha Sharma, Professor of Asian American Studies at Northwestern University
Stephen Sheehi, Sultan Qaboos Professor of Middle East Studies at The College of William & Mary
Derek Sheridan, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica
Sanghyuk Shin, Professor at University of California, Irvine
Raka Shome, Professor and Harron Family Endowed Chair at Villanova University
Tina Shull, Associate Professor of History at UNC Charlotte
Teri Silvio, Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica
Irhe Sohn, Assistant Professor of Korean at Smith College
Gabriel Antonio Solis, Postdoctoral Fellow at Chinese University of Hong Kong
Jon Douglas Solomon, Professor at Université Paris Nanterre & Université Lyon 3
Jesook Song, Professor at University of Toronto
Min Song, Ph.D Student at Yonsei University
Alexandra Stephens, University of Toronto
Alexander Stoffel, Assistant Professor at Queen Mary University of London
Chris Stone, Associate Professor of Arabic at Hunter College (CUNY)
Terra E. Talamh, PhD Candidate at Ohio University
Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz, Associate Professor at Brock University
Stanley Thangaraj, Professor at Stonehill College
Sharika Thiranagama, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University
Nhung Tuyet Tran, Associate Professor of History at University of Toronto
Nishant Upadhyay, Associate Professor at University of Colorado Boulder
Pouya Valizadeh, Professor of Engineering at Concordia University
Yvon Wang, Associate Professor of History at University of Toronto
Brandon Webb, Part-time Professor at Concordia University
BT Werner, Professor at University of California, San Diego
Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at UC Santa Barbara
Danielle Wong, Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia
Wu Jing-ru, Researcher and Migrant Labor Activist at Taiwan International Workers Association (TIWA)
b.h. Yael, Professor of Integrated Media in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University
Junho Yang, Graduate Student at Seoul National University, South Korea
Xine Yao, Associate Professor at University College London
Audrey Yap, Professor of Philosophy at University of Victoria
Hajar Yazdiha, Associate Professor at University of Southern California
Chenchen Zhang, Associate Professor in International Relations at Durham University
Jan Hengfeng Zhao, University of Leeds
Anya Zilberstein, Associate Professor of History at Concordia University

Collective/Organizational Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Academics and Staff for Palestine-Concordia
British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)
Chinese Feminism in Toronto
CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
Decolonizing Korean Studies Collective
Feminists for Jina - Toronto
Feral Feminisms
Iran Solidarity هم یاری
New Bloom Magazine
Queers in Korea for Palestine
Scholars Strike For Liberation (SSL)
Tadamon Coast Salish
VaChina

An Open Letter to the Society of Sinophone Studies regarding Howard Chiang's Acceptance of the Dan David Prize

By: Palestine Solidarity Action Network (PSAN) and Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine (TWAFP)

For a full list of most-recent signatories, or to add your name to this open letter, please click here.

As Sinophone Studies scholars and students; Sinophone activists, collectives, and community members; and our allies: we write to the leadership of the Society of Sinophone Studies (SSS) to urge a clear, principled response to the flagrant violation of the Academic Boycott for Palestine by founding member Howard Chiang, who has accepted the 2026 Dan David Prize (DDP).

The DDP, despite what it claims, does not offer neutral recognition of scholarly excellence. Headquartered at Tel Aviv University, an institution with well-documented ties to Israel’s military, the Prize is part of the liberal Zionist normalization of settler colonial occupation. While Palestinian universities are destroyed, and scholars and students killed or displaced, Israeli academic institutions directly support Zionist settler colonialism through means such as land occupation, weapons development, strategic planning, and ideological legitimation. In this context, the DDP assumes the crucial political function of laundering Zionism with academic respectability.

In its June 15, 2021 “Solidarity with Palestine” statement, SSS condemned Israeli settler colonialism, recognized the structural conditions of apartheid identified by human rights organizations, and committed itself “to the international Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement, including the Academic Boycott.” The statement further located Sinophone studies within a broader intellectual formation shaped by “postcolonial, settler colonial, ethnic, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and area studies,” emphasizing that “Sinitic-language communities worldwide are crucially and variously tied to the occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for freedom.”

In the years following SSS’s statement, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has explicitly and repeatedly called on scholars to refuse the DDP as part of a wider effort to challenge the normalization of Israeli institutions in global academia. Therefore, SSS Advisor Howard Chiang’s acceptance of the DDP raises grave concerns. As a prominent figure in the field, his actions cannot be understood solely as an individual decision detached from the collective commitments made by SSS, which were issued during his tenure as Founding Chair (2019-2022). Chiang’s choice endangers the integrity of SSS, as well as the credibility of Sinophone studies as a whole.

Chiang’s acceptance of the DDP is especially egregious considering his leading role in establishing the subfield of Queer Sinophone Studies and how he has built his academic career on the production of “queer Asian Pacific history”—specifically, queer and trans Sinophone history. His decision results not only in the “liberal academic washing of Israel’s reputation,” to borrow the words of historian Ussama Makdisi, but also the pinkwashing of Israeli society, which “cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image” of itself to the world. As one of the DDP’s queer recipients and as a scholar of queer history, Chiang’s decision has been especially harmful to queer and trans Sinophone scholars, students, and communities who refuse recruitment into liberal Zionist institutions and projects.

Lastly, we understand that Chiang has used the DDP award money to establish the “Howard Chiang Research Fund” at the University of California, Santa Barbara for funding “new knowledge on Asian Pacific History” and is potentially using the remaining DDP money to support Sinophone studies research at other institutions. We do not see this move as building critical support infrastructures for the field. Instead, Chiang’s use of the DDP award money in this way further deepens the damage done to Sinophone communities and Sinophone studies as a whole by laying bare the contradictions between SSS’s stated commitments to Academic Boycott, Sinophone studies’ purported postcolonial politics as a field, and the use of funds from a liberal Zionist institution to fund Sinophone Studies research.

We therefore demand that SSS:

Honor its own commitments to Palestinian solidarity by removing Howard Chiang from his current leadership position as SSS Advisor in light of his blatant violation of BDS demands to reject the DDP, and provide a public account of how SSS has handled Howard Chiang’s violation of SSS commitments.
Develop and publish accountability guidelines for SSS membership and leadership in alignment with SSS’s Palestine Solidarity Statement with actionable consequences for guideline violations, as well as transparency protocols regarding the handling of any violations of BDS Academic Boycott commitments within SSS’s membership and institutional relationships. SSS’s Introductory Guide explicitly states that “Continuing membership may be subject to requirements.”
Educate SSS members about the Palestinian struggle for freedom against Zionist settler colonialism and the importance of BDS Academic Boycott, such as through developing teaching resources and organizing public events around these issues.

Unless statements of solidarity are translated into concrete actions, they are worse than meaningless. Our demands are made in the interest of maintaining the intellectual and ethical integrity of Sinophone studies as a field that has defined itself through critical engagement with power, history, and global inequality. The question at hand is not only about the DDP and its recipients, but about whether the commitments articulated by SSS can be sustained when they require concrete institutional and professional accountability.

In solidarity with Palestinian liberation:

Individual Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Aren Aizura, Associate Professor in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at University of Minnesota
Anjali Arondekar, Professor of the Humanities, Literature and History at University of California, Santa Cruz
Tani Barlow, Professor Emerita of History at Rice University
Jason Butters, PhD Candidate at Columbia University
Harlan Chambers, Postdoctoral Scholar at National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)
Yo-Ling Chen, Independent scholar and activist
Christopher Fan, Associate Professor at University of California, Irvine
R. Benedito Ferrão, Associate Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at William & Mary
Eli Friedman, Professor at Cornell University
Kerim Friedman, Professor at National Dong Hua University (Taiwan)
Richard Fung, Professor Emeritus at OCAD University
Brian Hioe, Co-founding editor at New Bloom 破土
Jo Hsu, Associate Professor at University of Texas at Austin
Ren-yo Hwang, Associate Professor, at Mount Holyoke College
Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History at New York University
Benjamin Kindler, Assistant Professor at Lingnan University
Rushaan Kumar, Associate Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies Department at Colorado College
Fabio Lanza, Professor of History at The University of Arizona
Lala Lau, Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine
Joanna Lee-Brown, PhD student at Columbia University
Heidi R. Lewis, Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College
Ami Lien, Artist
Petrus Liu, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University
David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside
Naveen Minai, Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University
Nguyen Tan Hoang, Associate Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego
Jon Douglas Solomon 蘇哲安, Professor at Université Paris Nanterre & Université Lyon 3
Darwin Tsen, Associate Teaching Professor at Syracuse University
Rebecca Qin, PhD student at University of British Columbia
Teri Silvio, Research Fellow at Academia Sinica
Gabriel Antonio Solis, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Wu Jing-ru, Researcher and Migrant Labor Activist at Taiwan International Workers Association (TIWA)
Wei Si Nic Yiu, Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Riverside

Collective/Organizational Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Chinese Feminism in Toronto
New Bloom Magazine
VaChina

Past Statements

Over the years, multiple groups have mobilized public statements and open letters calling for the boycott of the DDP. We have linked them in one place on this webpage. If there is a statement relating to boycotting the DDP that we missed and that you would like us to add to this webpage, please email us at boycottdandavidprize@gmail.com.

Palestine Solidarity Action Network and the Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine published a Chinese-English bilingual statement entitled “呼籲華語圈和酷兒研究學者：敦促姜學豪及其他獲獎者拒受丹・大衛獎 Call on Sinophone and Queer Studies scholars: Urge Howard Chiang and other awardees to reject Dan David Prize” on June 26, 2026.

Scholars against the Dan David Prize in Australia published an open letter entitled “Associate Professor Matthew Champion – Please reject the Dan David Prize” on June 24, 2026 in Overland.

A group of Asian American Studies scholars published a statement entitled “The Dan David Prize Amid a Genocide?” on October 4, 2025. This statement was originally published on the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal blog, but this original version was taken down. A copy of this statement is currently preserved on Social Text.

Leading scholars in the field of Black studies published an open letter entitled “The Leaders of the African American Intellectual History Society Cannot Remain Silent About Palestine” in the Fall 2024, No. 5 issue of Hammer & Hope.

PACBI published an open letter to all 2023 DDP recipients entitled “Palestinians Urge Dan David Prize Recipients To Help Dismantle Israeli Apartheid by Rejecting Complicit Award” on March 15, 2023 on BDS’s website.

PACBI published an open letter to all 2022 DDP recipients entitled “Palestinians Urge Recipients To Reject Dan David Prize Over Its Complicity in Israeli Apartheid” on August 3, 2022 on BDS’s website.

Over 330 academics signed an “Open letter: Professor Alison Bashford – Please reconsider the Dan David Prize,” which was published on the University of Sydney Staff for Palestine’s website on March 15, 2021.

A coalition of organizations composed of “scholars, writers and activists of South Asian origin and those working on South Asia and on anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-imperial politics at large” mostly based in the United States published a statement entitled “Groups: Amitav Ghosh, don’t accept Dan David prize” on May 7, 2010 in The Electronic Intifada.

50 public intellectuals from India published “An Open Letter to Amitav Ghosh” on May 1, 2010 in NewsClick.

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel published an open letter entitled “Gaza students to Margaret Atwood: Reject Tel Aviv U. Prize” on April 6, 2010 in The Electronic Intifada.

Resources

Over the years, multiple people have written critical analyses of the DDP, which serve as critical resources for political education on the necessity of boycotting the DDP and the broader strategy of anti-normalization within the BDS movement. We have linked a collection of these resources in one place on this webpage. If there are related resources or publications that you would like us to add to this webpage, please email us at boycottdandavidprize@gmail.com.

Historian Ussama Makdisi published “Beyond the Palestine Exception” in Volume 8, Issue 1 of Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory on April 1, 2025; Makdisi’s article offers a critique of the Dan David Prize on pages 19-20.

Historian Esmat Elhalaby published “No Palestinians Involved: An Open Letter to my Colleagues” on March 1, 2023.