UC San Diego, Stanford and UC Riverside Battle BDS Resolutions, with Varying Results

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Three California universities’ student governments addressed resolutions that sought to divest funds from companies doing business with Israel this week. One initiative passed, another failed and the third was postponed for the second time after more than 12 hours of discussions.

On Wednesday night, the Associated Students at the University of California (UC), Riverside became the second campus in the UC system to pass a resolution calling on the UC Regents to divest from companies involved in the building of Israeli Defense Force weapons and planes, including General Electric, Caterpillar, and Northrop Grumman. —following UC Irvine, which passed a similar bill in November.

Pro-divestment activists at UCR took to social media to celebrate the bill’s 11-5 passage under the hashtag #UCRDivest.

At Stanford University, however, a majority vote of the 15 students on the student government at the Palo Alto campus voted down a divestment bill March 5. That bill had been sponsored by the Students for Palestinian Equal Rights at Stanford.

UC San Diego’s divestment saga continued for another week, ending in impasse March 7 after the special room reserved for the high-turnout meeting had only been reserved with security until 2:00 a.m. Council members on UCSD’s Associated Students (AS) were unable to agree on a motion to vote on the resolution in the final seconds of the meeting, which officially adjourned at 2:07 a.m.

The March 6-7 ASUCSD meeting was the second consecutive meeting in which the main topic of discussion was the divestment resolution. Last week, Council heard public input speeches for four-and-a-half hours, followed by another eight hours of conversations this week. Because no vote was taken, the divestment meetings will continue during a third meeting on the subject next Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Last year, a similar resolution was voted down by a vote of 13-20-0 and focused only on GE and Northrop Grumman. In 2011 and 2010, SJP brought a divestment bill to AS Council, though no formal vote was taken. In 2010, the bill was tabled without a vote and in 2011, Council tried unsuccessfully to foster a joint resolution from SJP and Tritons for Israel (TFI).

Seating at the ASUCSD council meeting—held in a different location than the council’s regular meetings—was restricted to 140 community members including students, Hillel and StandWithUs professionals and interested community members.

The first 75 minutes of last night’s meeting was allotted to public input, followed by an hour-long TFI presentation and a presentation from SJP—both of which were followed by a question-and-answer sessions with councilmembers and the groups’ representatives.

“Passing the BDS agenda delegitimizes Israel and advocates for a one-state solution,” TFI President Ben Hass said. “UCSD will be seen as a supporter of BDS with the passage of this bill.”

Council took five-and-a-half hours to finish public input and special presentations and to begin debating the merits of the resolution.

TFI board member Nicole Patolai said during the TFI presentation that the resolution’s contention that South Africa has officially labeled Israel an apartheid state was a false accusation and chipped away at the resolution’s credibility.

“To say that the South African government has labeled Israel as an apartheid state is demonstratively a lie,” she said, adding that the official labeling actually referred to a single representative of a South African government subcommittee.

TFI’s presentation included a brief history of Israel, and focused primarily on addressing some of the language of the resolution that hinted at delegitimizing Israel.

“It is important to note that Israel does not just exist because of the Holocaust,” Patolai said. “The modern state of Israel has deep roots in Jewish history and our right to live in the state of Israel is not a new or debatable concept.”

AS Council discussions about the bill, entitled “Resolution in Support of UC San Diego Corporate Accountability through Divestment from Corporations Profiting from the Illegal Occupation, Siege, and Blockade of Palestine” were spread over two weeks—the first being a public input session which lasted four-and-a-half hours and the second containing a limited input session, followed by presentations for Tritons for Israel and SJP.

SJP’s presentation framed the divestment discussion within the lens of the Palestinian narrative of seeking equal civil rights and the right of return.

“These are real life people that are affected by the way we use our investments,” SJP board member Meryem Kamil said.

New to the resolution this year was a provision that called for ASUCSD to “support the indigenous Palestinian people in their struggle against a colonial occupier.” Last year’s bill took a tone that suggested that divesting from the companies promoted the UC System’s neutrality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A friendly amendment to this clause proposed by Associate Vice President of College Affairs Leonard Bobbitt changed the wording from support of Palestinians to reflect a neutral stance for ASUCSD on the conflict and to remove the section regarding solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The proposal to remove the BDS statement was rejected, though AS Council did vote to reword the line about supporting Palestinians to a more neutral stance.

“We are not the BDS movement,” Bobbitt said. “If we choose to divest, we’re doing so as AS Council, not as the BDS movement.”

“Regardless of where you stand on the issue, there’s no denying that this is part of the BDS,” Patolai said. “This is an extreme movement and we don’t feel comfortable with our university advocating for a radical movement.”

A separate amendment to remove a section stating that another reason to divest was that “UC San Diego is built upon indigenous Kumeyaay land just as Israel is built upon indigenous Palestinian land” passed 14-12-7.

In a change from last year’s deliberations, only UCSD students were allowed to speak at both public input sessions. Students registered to speak through the university’s online student portal Tritonlink to prevent non-students from making speeches. The change was intended to sidestep comments from community members whose opinions do not necessarily reflect those of students.

The change in speaker protocol had benefits for both sides. Last year, a from the local Jewish community spoke during public input and claimed that Palestinians “did not exist,” which served as a rallying cry for SJP while several faculty members advocating for both sides were accused of abusing their powers to influence AS Council’s votes.

UC San Diego, Stanford and UC Riverside Battle BDS Resolutions, with Varying Results

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