From Women in Black to Middle East Children’s Alliance, many activist groups thank UC Santa Cruz for hosting Angela Davis at its annual MLK Jr convocation in January to speak on Ferguson to Palestine. The speech has been denounced by pro-Israel group Amcha initiative.
Last October the Jewish Defense League disrupted a University of Toronto event in favor of divestment from Israel. The school’s administration has failed to take appropriate action to safeguard campus speech from intimidation, a group of 23 faculty complain in a letter to VP Angela Hildyard
A statement from Corrie family in response to the Israeli Supreme Court’s dismissal of appeal in wrongful death of Rachel Corrie.
Within the past four days, over 29 Stanford professors have signed on to a faculty letter calling on Stanford University to “stop investing in companies that profit from the occupation of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.” Tonight the Stanford Undergraduate Senate will be voting on a resolution calling for divestment from companies violating human rights in occupied Palestine.
The UC Student Association is the official voice of the student body of the University of California, and represents hundreds of thousands of undergraduate and graduate students across the UC system. Over the weekend it became the first multi-campus student association to vote in favor of divestment from companies engaged in the systematic violation of Palestinian rights in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. This landmark vote is undoubtedly the largest victory thus far in the campus divestment movement in the United States.
More than 80 cartoonists and other workers in the comics industry from over 20 countries signed an open letter to the head of the prestigious International Festival of Comics at Angoulême demanding it sever ties with Sodastream, an Israeli manufacturing company complicit in the occupation of Palestinian land. The authors of the letter include 10 prize winners at Angoulême itself, two winners of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” many Eisner and Ignatz awardees, and a Palestinian cartoonist previously imprisoned for his work by the Israeli military.
California Scholars for Academic Freedom writes the University of Pennsylvania after Chris Hedges is disinvited from speaking for likening ISIS to Israel.
Yesterday we posted a holiday greeting from the Israeli military. It was rather understated and we thought we could help them spruce it up a bit.
UAW 2865, a labor union representing over 13,000 teaching assistants, tutors, and other student-workers at the University of California, has become the first major U.S. labor union to hold a membership vote responding to the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli occupation and in solidarity with Palestinian self-determination. The vote passed, with 65% (almost 2/3) of voting members in support. The measure calls on: 1) the University of California to divest from companies involved in Israeli occupation and apartheid; 2) the UAW International to divest from these same entities; 3) the US government to end military aid to Israel. 4) 53 % of voting members also pledged not to “take part in any research, conferences, events, exchange programs, or other activities that are sponsored by Israeli universities complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the settler-colonial policies of the state of Israel” until such time as these universities take steps to end complicity with dispossession, occupation, and apartheid.