The graduate student workers union at New York University (NYU) last Friday voted to support the BDS movement boycotting Israel, and asked that NYU cuts its ties with Tel Aviv University (TAU) for its “discrimination” – even though the university has many Arab students. NYU’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) is a labor union representing around…
2 thoughts on “NYU graduate student union votes to join BDS”
Comments are closed.
The American Jewish Committee issued the following statement:
AJC condemned the New York University Graduate Student Organizing Committee’s endorsement of a resolution to boycott Israel. The resolution, adopted by the group on the eve of Passover, calls on the university and the student group’s parent union, the United Auto Workers International, to divest from Israeli companies. It also calls on NYU to end its education program at Tel Aviv University.
“With this grotesquely misguided action, NYU’s graduate student union has now joined the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, which, let’s be clear, does not seek peace, but instead specifically targets Israel and questions its very right to exist,” said Michael Schmidt, Director of AJC’s New York Region. “The NYU graduate student union exists, we wished to believe, to improve the working conditions for the university’s graduate students, and not to engage in unrelated, anti-Israel political propaganda.”
In January, the UAW International struck down a similar boycott resolution against Israel that the University of California Student Workers Union, UAW Local 2865, had passed in December 2014.
“We look forward to the UAW International taking action to correct this mistake by the NYU graduate student union,” said Schmidt. “Moreover, as a NYU spokesman has emphasized, the BDS resolution contravenes the university’s longstanding policy opposing boycotts of Israeli academics and institutions.”
American Jewish Congress issued the following statement:
In response to the pro-BDS resolutions recently passed by the City University of New York (CUNY) Doctoral Students’ Council and the graduate student union at New York University (NYU), American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) President Jack Rosen issued the following statement:
“We at the American Jewish Congress are disheartened by the decision of two university bodies — both with large populations of Jewish students and deep-seated roots in the Jewish culture of New York City — to mistakenly enter the wrong side of history.
“For CUNY — where numerous instances of anti-Semitism have taken place in recent months — this move is especially troubling, as is the admitted coordination between the CUNY branch of Students for Justice in Palestine and the Doctoral Students’ Council.
“For both schools to hold votes on their respective BDS resolutions on Friday night — the Sabbath — seems like an intentional deterrent to Jewish students who would have liked to have been included in the decision-making process. Discriminating against Jews and the Jewish State with pro-BDS resolutions is bad enough, but to intentionally bar Jewish students from having a stake in their university’s own policy towards Israel is both cruel and an obvious affront directed towards supporters of Israel who could have provided the deciding votes, especially at NYU, where the BDS resolution passed by only 3 votes.
“We fully expect both educational institutions’ administrations to reject the tenets of these resolutions, and hope that the United Auto Workers International union (UAW) — the parent union of the NYU graduate student union — will strike down their subsidiary’s BDS resolution, as they did with UAW Local 2865 — the University of California academic union — in January.”