Given the response to the UCLA student government’s rejection of an anti-Israel BDS resolution, little wonder that another institution wants to avoid drawing attention to its upcoming Israel-bashing conference.

The Daily Caller Education Editor Eric Owens files this report:

This weekend, New York University’s program in American Studies will host an Israel-bashing conference. The two-day, one-sided propaganda fair is fully supported by the American Studies Association (ASA) and its president-elect Lisa Duggan, a professor in NYU’s department of social and cultural analysis.

Just don’t tell anybody!

According to the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish group that stands athwart anti-Semitism, Duggan wrote a now-deleted Facebook screed begging potential attendees to keep their mouths shut: “PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer. We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention.”

The evidence of Duggan’s bizarro-world publicity efforts was unearthed by JNS.org. Duggan also described the conference as “kick ass” on Facebook. The Facebook posting no longer exists.

The radically anti-Israel confab — called “Circuits of Influence: U.S., Israel, and Palestine” — will feature 21 anti-Israel activists spewing invective about Israel from groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Speakers and attendees will address the “convergence between international justice movements and emerging scholarly directions within the increasingly transnational field of American Studies.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a spokeswoman for the AMCHA Initiative, told The Daily Caller that she expects much talk of “a boycott intended to hasten” the demise of Israel.

“All of the conference participants are anti-Israel pro-boycott activists and the schedule is a compilation of workshops on how to boycott Israel, given by representatives of virulently anti-Zionist organizations,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “No wonder Professor Duggan wants to hide this event from public scrutiny.”

Philip Lentz, NYU’s director of public affairs, curtly refused to address the charges of anti-Semitism or the zany semi-secrecy surrounding the event when TheDC contacted him.

Sadly, for Duggan, the cat is already clearly out of the bag!