Saturday, March 23, 2019

Academic BDS: Going from failure to failure

The Jewish Virtual Library has a helpful analysis of the history of campus divestment initiatives.  The sky is not falling, and in spite of the usual BDS puffery, there is no indication that "BDS is on a roll".



 65 % of all resolutions have been defeated.  And 97% percent of American campuses have had no divestment votes and have little or no BDS activity.

In the years 2005-2019

*A total of 127 BDS measures have been considered – 83 were defeated (65%).
*Those votes were limited to a total of 68 schools, less than 3% of America’s four-year colleges. (The California Community College Association is counted as one college and the UC Student Association, which has no power and represents no individual schools is excluded as were four graduate student programs).
*A total of 38 schools have approved a BDS resolution in the last 14 years, which represents about 1% of universities.*
*A total of 54 schools have rejected BDS (there is some overlap as some of these have adopted BDS in other years) .
*A total of 28 schools had two or more votes; 9 schools had three or more (Ohio State, Berkeley, Davis, Riverside, UCSB, UCSD, UCSC, Michigan, Dearborn), and 5 schools had four (Michigan, Michigan Dearborn, UC Riverside, UCSD, Ohio State)
*Only 5 schools (Michigan Dearborn, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and UC Davis) have passed BDS more than once.
*Of the 68 schools that voted on BDS, 11 were ranked in the top 20 and 11 of 15 (73%) resolutions were defeated.
*A total of 22 schools in the top 50 entertained BDS initiatives and 30 of 46 were defeated (65%). In 2019, Brown became the first Ivy League school to pass a divestment resolution.


Of the schools that voted for divestment, there is no evidence that the resolution was any more than a symbolic act. 

1 comment:

Shlomo Ben Hungstien said...

actually, BDS is not at all "on a roll" like those morons like to claim on social media. the BS from BDS is more like a stalled car on the side of the road where as commerce between The San Francisco Bay Area and Israel is quite literally on a roll every day . . .
http://proisraelctu.blogspot.com/2019/01/womens-march-san-francisco-today.html