Challenging Vassar’s attack on BDS

THE VASSAR Student Association (VSA) passed a resolution on March 6 to honor the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to hold Israel accountable for its long record of denying equal rights to Palestinians in their own land. The resolution, which passed by a vote of 15 to 7, is distinctive for fully endorsing the academic, cultural and consumer components of the BDS movement.

A related BDS bylaw amendment, which would have prevented student government funds from being used to purchase products listed on the resolution because of their ties to human rights abuses, required a two-thirds margin but failed by a vote of 12 in favor to 10 opposed. In order to ensure that the bylaw was defeated, the Vassar Board of Trustees told VSA that if the bylaw amendment was approved, the administration would take control of VSA's $900,000 activities budget.

In a statement, Vassar SJP condemned the administration's violation of the principle of campus democracy. "Such an act would have altered the structure of the VSA fundamentally and starkly diminished student powers of government," reads the Vassar SJP statement. "The threats from the Board of Trustees and senior level administrators are a coercive tactic and represent a clear betrayal of the principle of shared governance between students and administrators central to the VSA and the functioning of the College more broadly."

At every step of its campaign, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Vassar maintained a focus on engaging the question of Palestinian rights without reducing the issues to the concerns of the institution where they organize. In particular, this meant grappling with the challenge of how to fight against the occupation of Palestine at colleges and universities that claim to protect human rights and free speech but remain hostile to actions waged against violent settler-colonial regimes.

Alexia Garcia and Andrew Joung, two members of Vassar's SJP, attribute the close vote on the bylaw amendment to how awareness on campus about BDS has significantly increased due to the high-profile campaign spearheaded by SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace on February 1. At the heart of the campaign, and central to winning people away from a watered-down position on the occupation, was their unwillingness to capitulate on the language of the resolution. "Many schools have compromised on how they frame their resolutions," observed Garcia.

Some mentors had advised Garcia and Joung that since no other school had attempted to pass a resolution that fully endorsed the BDS movement, Vassar's BDS statement should either strike references to the academic boycott, add a phrase about "Jewish self-determination," or both. But, according to Joung, "We refused to incorporate language that normalizes the issue of settler-colonialism and still won."

SINCE FEBRUARY, the conversation on campus has changed. According to Joung:

Until a month ago, no one knew what BDS was. Now it's debated in every corner of campus. This has been an opportunity to rethink how the Israel/Palestine conflict is discussed. Given that this conflict used to be centered on whether or not Palestinians even existed--people called it the "Arab-Israeli conflict"--being in a place where students are now considering BDS is a sign of a massive change in the conversation. Passing these resolutions, building a national organization that amplifies Palestinian voices, and broadening an activist network that shapes national conversations on Palestine is key to changing how people relate to this issue and how this conflict will evolve.

SJP's resolution also garnered statements of support from groups such as Vassar Prison Initiative and Young Democratic Socialists, illustrating the kinds of alliances that can be forged.

Demanding that Palestinians remain central to the conversation was also critical to SJP's strategy. According to Garcia:

Instead of conversations focusing on a one- or two-state solution, we have used this moment to further disrupt the normative settler narrative and get to the heart of where this violence is actually coming from. One of the main arguments we have been trying to decenter is the ludicrous notion that BDS has pushed Israeli society further to the right and Palestinian society further to left, thus alienating the Israeli left. However, BDS was a call from the Palestinian people. The reason why Palestinians have moved further left is because of genuine oppression by a colonial-settler regime that rains down systematic violence and enforces their economic dependency. Zionists who consider themselves liberal support an end to the occupation, but withhold the right of return or reparations from an essentially stateless people.

Merely ending the occupation, Garcia and Joung stressed, does not solve the economic imbalances or the racism. "Claiming you know what is best for Palestinian society while maintaining a Zionist position is paternalistic and ignores that Palestinian liberation must be from the bottom up and must originate with Palestinian self-determination," said Joung. "To deny that 85 to 90 percent of support for BDS is from Palestine and instead focus on the one or two Israeli NGOs that we might be losing at the expense of almost all of Palestinian civil society, is an absurd strategy for anti-colonialist resistance."

THOSE INTENT on minimizing the profound impact of BDS on raising awareness about the injustices suffered by Palestinians have tried to portray the VSA vote as a defeat. But this is a transparent attempt to hide how much ground has been won by those in solidarity with Palestine.

Historically, pushback, threats and intimidation from outside organizations and alumnae have convinced the Vassar administration to adopt a hard line on BDS activism. In 2014, for example, Vassar President Catharine Hill resoundingly rejected the academic boycott called by the American Studies Association. Although Vassar's administration has since reiterated its support of academic freedom and freedom of speech, the administration's threat to defund VSA if it didn't vote "the right way" is telling.

What does freedom of speech and shared governance really mean if students are encouraged to hold political opinions, but stripped of their financial autonomy if they act on these beliefs?

Vassar's administration has effectively allowed for a culture of fear and intimidation yet has refused to protect the well-established right to organize boycott campaigns as a "protected speech activity."

Vassar's alumni have behaved even worse, issuing threats and sending hate mail to several students and faculty. Some alumni took the care to tailor their virulently racist and homophobic comments to students' particular race, ethnic and gender identities. These alumni warned that if the amendment passed, they would see to it that these students "never got a job again."

The Vassar administration has done little to support pro-Palestine activists who have received such threats--in stark contrast to the immediate response afforded students encountering anti-Semitism. The problem, Garcia and Joung say, is that "student support is not determined by need, but by alumni preferences. BDS activists simply find themselves at the bottom of that list." In addition to administrators and alumni, groups outside academia like Canary Mission have are targeting Vassar students and faculty.

VISITING LECTURERS have also been on the receiving end of the campaign of hate against BDS at Vassar. In early February, for example, Rutgers Associate Professor Jasbir Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages, a book taught in several classes at Vassar and other universities around the country, gave a talk at Vassar titled "Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters" sponsored by seven different departments and programs.

While the faculty organizers and sponsors received hate mail and threats from this same group of alumni, the Zionist media coverage grossly misquoted and misrepresented Puar's talk. Puar was threatened with death, rape and the loss of her career and job.

Faculty of color and anti-Zionist Jewish faculty at Rutgers as well as her union took a bold stance, squeezing a statement of defense out of the president of the university and her department. Nevertheless, she remains under attack.

At Vassar, faculty of color, anti-Zionist Jewish faculty and faculty activists have been instrumental in supporting the students at Vassar. Twenty-four hours before the VSA vote, faculty published a letter expressing their "full support for VSA students to vote in accord with their conscience and to administer student funds," and condemning "any form of intimidation tactics from all individuals or parties who have threatened students supporting BDS or any other form of conscientious objection."

"Our support was crucial for the students in connecting the teaching of democracy, responsibility, and principled action to this vote," said one Vassar faculty member. A year ago, another faculty member noted, many faculty would not have signed a letter that that mentioned BDS. And 150 pro-Palestine Vassar alumni have also issued a public statement expressing their solidarity with BDS at Vassar.

There is no struggle without risks. But the fight for BDS and the full liberation of Palestine must continue, for we cannot fully engage in the antiracist struggles in our own institutions unless we can commit to fighting the inhumanity and oppression that defines daily life under state violence and mass incarceration in Palestine.