Overview:  Samer Alatout has demonized Israel on Twitter, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.

He is also affiliated with the anti-Israel organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Alatout is an associate professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UWM).

Demonizing Israel on Twitter
On July 26, 2014, Alatout tweeted: “#ICC4Israel take #Israel to international court #ICC."

On July 17, 2014, Alatout tweeted: “It's shameful. Liberal for women, GLBT issues, immigration, taxing and poverty, but silent on Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine."

On July 3, 2014, Alatout tweeted a response to a news article about oil, writing “waiting for your progressive attention to turn to Palestine and get it right this time. Israel apartheid is abhorrent."

Supporting BDS
On August 11, 2014, Alatout signed the “Open Letter on Gaza and BDS from the Middle East Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies."

The letter described “indiscriminate and disproportionate violence that has been waged… by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against the civilian population of Gaza" which it characterized as “the largest ‘open air prison’ in the world."

The letter went on to endorse the BDS movement and to conclude that “the violence has taken an unprecedented and savage turn, having reached genocidal proportions."

Alatout also signed his name to a list of endorsers of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

On April 17, 2014, Alatout was a featured speaker at an event hosted by the UWM chapter of SJP titled “Academic Freedom and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)."

In January of 2014, Alatout signed a petition in support of an American Studies Association (ASA) resolution singling out Israel for academic boycott.

The petition accused Israel of “settler-colonialism, occupation, and apartheid" and likened BDS to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

On January 28, 2014, Alatout signed a petition titled “BOYCOTT ISRAELI CINEMA AND TV STUDIES CONFERENCE AT TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY."

The petition called for the “boycott Israeli institutions in protest of the US-supported Israeli occupation of Palestine, settlement expansion, the Israeli Wall, and other violations of international law" and provided a link to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

On December 26, 2013, Alatout signed the “Campaign to Boycott the Oral History Conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

Signatories of the campaign charged that “while all Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy."

The petition went on to “call on the international community to honor the 2004 Call of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) to boycott academic and cultural institutions involved in Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid."

Defending Steven Salaita
Alatout signed a petition, published on August 21, 2014, titled: “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic.] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita."

In 2014, The University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing."

A month later, Salaita tweeted "Zionists: transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East."

After being denied the position at U of I, Salaita took a teaching position at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon, where he was employed from 2015 through 2017. The position at AUB was not tenured and so, following the close of the 2017 academic year, Salaita again sought employment.

Unable to find a teaching position “on four continents," Salaita again took to social media, stating on Facebook I “no longer consider myself among the professoriate." Salaita went on to say that “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not… I will die unapologetic."

In February 2019, Salaita stated that he became a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C area.