The University of California (UC) graduate student worker
union on Wednesday voted in favor of a resolution
supporting an academic boycott of Israel.

The text proposes supporting the boycott until Israel "has
complied with international law and respected the rights of
Palestinians," according to the Huffington Post .
The union will call on both the University of California
system and the United Auto Workers international union to
divest from companies that the pro-BDS caucus deems
"complicit in Israeli occupation of Palestine and its apartheid
policies."

The initiative also invites graduate students to take a
personal vow declining participation in research or
conferences sponsored by Israeli schools that BDS backers
consider similarly accountable, the Huffington Post added.
The approval of the resolution was criticized by Informed
Grads, a group organized and led by UC students, which
stated that the vote stifles academic freedom and will have a
dangerous impact on Jewish and Israeli students in the UC
system.

The union, Informed Grads said, “is stifling academic
freedom by supporting a movement that promotes an
academic boycott of Israel. This position stands in
contradiction to not only the incredibly strong collaboration
between the University of California and Israel in research,
technology and other areas but also to the very policies of
its own international union, United Auto Workers.”

“Informed Grads, a group of union members that opposes
the resolution, is extremely concerned with the outcome of
this vote,” the group added, pointing “to the asymmetrical
process, the anti-peace agenda of the BDS movement and
the implications this vote has on not only UAW 2865 itself,
but also on Jewish and Israeli students on UC campuses.”
“UAW 2865, which is supposed to represent graduate
student workers for fair wages, benefits and treatment, now
stands in direct opposition to the International UAW, which,
along with most other major unions, strongly opposes the
BDS movement,” said the group.

“This is incredibly damaging to our union. This resolution
may end up with our union recommending boycotting fellow
UAW members who work for companies that are targets of
the BDS movement. Our Union should not be focusing on
issuing biased, one-sided resolutions about a complex
international political conflict, but rather on the issues that
directly affect us as graduate student workers. This vote
may also cost us greatly in terms of solidarity from other
unions,” said Jonathan Kummerfeld, UC Berkeley Computer
Science Graduate Student and Informed Grads member.
Informed Grads said it is also “tremendously concerned of
the impact this may have on students from Israel, Jewish
students, and any students who wish to study in Israel or
participate in one of the numerous collaborative research
initiatives with Israeli academic institutions. Further,
tensions around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hostility
toward pro-Israel views on campus are experienced by
many Jewish students. Informed Grads is concerned that
this will not only exacerbate the situation but lead to many
Jewish and Israeli students feeling unwelcome and unsafe
on UC campuses.”

Over the past few years, several student unions have voted
in favor of BDS. In August, Britain’s National Union of
Students voted to boycott Israel , passing a motion calling on
student unions around the country to impose sanctions on
Israel and support campaigns to boycott Israeli products on
their university campuses.

Several weeks later, the Ontario branch of the Canadian
Federation of Students, representing more than 300,000
university students in the province, unanimously passed a
motion to boycott Israel.

The student union at Ryerson University in Toronto voted to
join the BDS movement against Israel in April, capping a
chain of anti-Israel decisions among Canadian institutions
of higher education.

Toronto's York University student union has voted to join
the BDS movement as well. It was preceded by Windsor
University in Ontario in early March. In mid-March, students
at the University of Ottawa launched a campaign to
have Sabra hummus banned from campus because of its
alleged connection with “Israel apartheid."

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