Members of Northwestern University Graduate Workers voted 82-13 to adopt a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel at the union’s Oct. 9 general members meeting.
Almost two decades old, BDS is a Palestinian-led movement that calls for the boycott of companies and institutions with financial ties to Israel. The organization’s boycott practices first drew inspiration from those used in the South African anti-apartheid fight and the U.S. civil rights movement.
NUGW’s resolution includes a bevy of action items. One stipulates that the union’s funds shall not be spent on goods or services from any of the companies identified by the BDS National Committee for a targeted boycott.
Another states that the union shall not co-sponsor events that are held in conjunction with or that collaborate in any manner with Israeli universities. A third declares that NUGW will not cooperate on NU’s partnerships with Israeli universities.
“As graduate workers, we’re uniquely positioned, because we’re workers and students in a university,” said Mounica Sreesai, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in anthropology and a union area chief steward. “This is a step in the direction that joins the student’s government and the People’s Resolution to call the University to disclose and divest.”
The People’s Resolution was first circulated in April by NU’s chapters of Educators for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, demanding the University protect the civil liberties of pro-Palestine speech and cut ties with Israeli institutions.
A few days later, the Associated Student Government Senate passed legislation to add its signature to the resolution.
University spokesperson Hilary Hurd Anyaso told The Daily the University remains “committed to our connection to Israel” and has “made no commitments to divest.”
The resolution states that NUGW “will support the rights of all students and scholars to engage in research about Palestine and Israel, and voice their support of Palestine and of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.”
Not all members of the union’s leadership were on board with the resolution.
“I don’t think it’s the kind of movement that organizations that claim to be representing people equally in labor issues should be adopting,” said Kellogg Chief Steward Daniel Cohen, second-year Ph.D. candidate in managerial economics and strategy. “I think it makes a lot of Jewish and Israeli Ph.D. students uncomfortable to reach out to the union … because before political motives, the union’s main purpose is to serve as a labor resource for the campus.”
Medill junior and former Daily staffer Madeleine Stern, president of Wildcats for Israel, also told The Daily that the organization opposes the move.
“We reject BDS because its goal is to demonize, and ultimately, to dismantle Israel as the only Jewish and democratic country in the world,” Stern said.
In the NUGW resolution, the union also demanded that NU supports efforts to disclose and divest from companies “invested in war” and ends its partnerships with Israeli Universities.
NU’s Israel Innovation Project was one of the programs mentioned in the provision. Established in 2020 within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the program has facilitated academic partnerships with Israeli universities and organized research trips to the country.
“I feel like the (resolution) is another welcome step that we want our union to practice and normalize such discussions and conversations, and that our working conditions are closely and tightly related to people across the world as well,” Sreesai said.
NUGW’s salvo joins a growing chorus of unions calling for an end to collaboration between the U.S. entities and the Israeli government.
In July, a joint letter signed by some of the largest U.S. unions, including United Auto Workers, United Electrical Workers and National Education Association, published an open letter to President Biden demanding that he cut off military aid to Israel.
The resolution comes after NUGW passed a referendum on a member-drafted Solidarity Statement with Palestine in December.
“While I don’t anticipate that the University will respond to and adopt these demands, I imagine that like they’ll have to respond in some way, shape or form, that will bring back this discussion around Northwestern’s involvement with these companies,” said Molly Schiffer, a third-year P.h.D. student in political science and a local union steward.
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