BDS sparks campus discussion

Once again, the Students’ Society of Mcgill University (SSMU) General Assembly (GA) was a major site of political action and reaction on campus this year. While the Fall 2015 GA had no motions and struggled to meet quorum, the Winter 2016 GA passed a motion from the Mcgill BDS Action Network that called on SSMU to support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns and to lobby Mcgill to divest from a number of companies that operate in the occupied Palestinian territories. While the motion failed to pass online ratification, it succeeded in fuelling important discussions in the Mcgill community and beyond.

A group of Jewish students at Mcgill argued that the conflation of Judaism and Zionism is harmful, and that engaging with and supporting BDS is a crucial step in ending Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians (“Making space for Jewish resistance,” February 15, page 9). Hundreds of students, alumni, and faculty from Mcgill and beyond, including Noam Chomsky (“Rectify the misrepresentation of BDS,” March 14, Letters, page 11), signed letters condemning Principal Suzanne Fortier’s response to the online ratification results, in which she stated that the BDS movement was “contrary to the principles of academic freedom, equity, inclusiveness and the exchange of views and ideas in responsible, open discourse.”