The University of Northern Iowa has created a six-week virtual program titled &ldquo;<a href="https://insideuni.uni.edu/quest-social-justice#:~:text=The%20nuances%20of%20technology%20and%20systemic%20racism%20is,justice%20and%20activate%20systemic%20change%20in%20our%20communities">Cultivating Justice: A Quest Toward Racial Equity</a>&rdquo; that &ldquo;prompts individuals and small groups to reflect on a collection of local materials curated to promote racial justice and activate systemic change in our communities.&rdquo;The project&rsquo;s web page notes that &ldquo;systemic racism...can also occur in everyday technology - even automatic soap dispensers.&rdquo;&nbsp;The project&rsquo;s <a href="https://quest.uni.edu/listen" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first week</a> included stories of discrimination faced by members of the campus community. For instance, a podcast from one alumnus described &ldquo;the dissonance of existing in the space between his Ghanaian ancestral roots and his Americanized speech.&rdquo; The materials also contain a link to a resource on &quot;whitesplaining and how to avoid it.&quot;The second <a href="https://quest.uni.edu/define">week</a>&nbsp;featured&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5H_PitWlTc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a video</a>&nbsp;by a sophomore student who defines terms like &quot;white trash&quot; and &quot;Good White People.&quot;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17197">[RELATED: Iowa bill targets colleges that teach New York Times&#39; &#39;racist&#39; and &#39;historically inaccurate&#39; 1619 Project]</a>&quot;When I say &#39;Good White People,&#39; typically what I mean is a white liberal...when I mention liberal, I&#39;m typically referring to someone who sees themselves as wanting to end racism in the United States and somebody who is not really responsible for the lingering racism within our society today,&quot; he says. Though he notes that Good White People exist on both sides of the aisle, he says, &quot;They are typically people who are progressive individuals or [who] see themselves as progressive individuals and want to see the country moving in a more positive direction in reference to race and equality.&quot;The third <a href="https://quest.uni.edu/">week</a>&nbsp;pointed students toward resources that explain &ldquo;systems of oppression&rdquo; within policing, healthcare, and education. The fourth&nbsp;<a href="https://quest.uni.edu/locate">week</a>&nbsp;of the program encouraged participants to &ldquo;locate &amp; organize&rdquo; their efforts in tandem with nearby justice movements.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17170">[RELATED: Ibram Kendi brings his &#39;antiracist book festival&#39; back to BU]</a>Among the dozen outlets for activism included <a href="https://scholarworks.uni.edu/nisgnews/">Uprising Magazine</a>, a student-led publication which features &ldquo;dedicated efforts towards enacting social justice through sharing stories and engaging in causes on campus.&quot;Likewise, the fifth <a href="https://quest.uni.edu/advocate">week</a>&nbsp;&mdash; in which participants were taught how to behave in accordance with antiracism &mdash; pointed students toward ways to involve themselves in activism work. One project, the &ldquo;anti-racism daily newsletter,&rdquo; was paired with a call for donations to the author&#39;s website.&nbsp;The sixth and final <a href="https://quest.uni.edu/rest">week</a>&nbsp;of the program granted students the chance to &ldquo;rest and heal&rdquo; &mdash; a call that has become increasingly common on American college campuses. &quot;We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue,&quot; the weekly slate of resources declares.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17071">[RELATED: UNC event repeats notion of fighting racism through &#39;self-care&#39;]</a>University of Northern Iowa spokesman Steven Schmadeke told Campus Reform that the initiative was &ldquo;a voluntary community project organized by a UNI professor&rdquo; that was &ldquo;not a class or course.&rdquo;&nbsp;Schmadeke added that &ldquo;the costs of this project were minimal,&rdquo; since it &ldquo;highlighted a number of existing works, videos, podcasts and other writings on the topic of racial equity.&rdquo;&nbsp;According to the project&rsquo;s web page, it is sponsored by the UNI Office of the Provost. &nbsp;Schmadeke noted that the essays, podcasts, graphics, and other content for the project &rdquo;were collected via an open call.&rdquo;<strong style="outline: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration: none; color: var(--red); font-weight: 600; font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

The program has endorsed the work of Ibram X. Kendi and solicited donations for antiracism projects.

Take a look at University of Northern Iowa’s new online program based in Critical Race Theory

Two students for the University of Northwestern - St. Paul have launched a petition calling on the school to turn away from Critical Race Theory and other progressive ideologies, arguing that such theories run counter to the school&#39;s Christian foundation.Students at Northwestern St. Paul University Hayley Tschetter and Joshua Feland created a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/social-justice-an-open-letter-to-the-university-of-northwestern-st-paul?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_28343965_en-US%3A3&recruiter=1043843559&recruited_by_id=79a96500-5338-11ea-8ac3-1b4e77bcfa6f&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">change.org petition</a> warning the community about &quot;destructive&quot; concepts that are becoming commonplace in higher-education.&quot;Intentional or not, exchanging the biblical worldview and faithful Christian teaching for those worldviews rooted in anti-biblical ideologies such as Marxism, Postmodernism, Social Justice Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality leads down a destructive one-way road from which you cannot return.&quot;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17399" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Author of debunked 1619 Project to join UNC as &#39;Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism&#39;]</a>&quot;As students, it is our sincere and sober conviction that our beloved University is at a turning point,&quot; the petition begins. &quot;In light of recent events and controversies, both on and off our campus, we believe we are at a turning point that is perhaps more significant than any other in its history. &#39;<p style='box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.5em 0px 0px; color: rgb(54, 49, 53); font-family: "Change Calibre", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;'>As students, it is our sincere and sober conviction that our beloved University is at a turning point. In light of recent events and controversies, both on and off our campus, we believe we are at a turning point that is perhaps more significant than any other in its history.<p style='box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.5em 0px 0px; color: rgb(54, 49, 53); font-family: "Change Calibre", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;'>The petition states that it is the Church&#39;s responsibility to &quot;correct falsehood.&quot;<p style='box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.5em 0px 0px; color: rgb(54, 49, 53); font-family: "Change Calibre", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;'>&ldquo;We look around at our nation and our world and see that these are dire times. Now, as [it] has always been, it is the Church&rsquo;s responsibility to defend the truth and correct falsehood (2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Pet. 3:15; Jude 3). As individual members of Jesus&rsquo; worldwide body, his bride, each of us live unified under one banner: preaching one Word, proclaiming one Gospel, serving one God (Eph. 4:1&ndash;6). We earnestly desire this blood-bought unity, and we will seek to preserve it, but we cannot do so at the cost of truth.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17309" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: New &lsquo;Civics Alliance&rsquo; aims to &lsquo;unite Americans in the effort to preserve civics education&rsquo;]</a>The petition lists examples and links of examples of the school&#39;s implementing of CRT, including mandatory implicit and racial bias training for staff, student leaders and others, affirmative action hiring practices, and changes to the core curriculum to include greater cultural competency.&ldquo;I have been gravely burdened by the trajectory I have seen my school going down,&#39;&#39; Hayley Tschetter said in an interview with&nbsp;Campus Reform. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a path similar to many Christian schools have taken before and it never ends well. My heart is hurting for those who are suffering and in pain, but I also believe that CRT deepens the racial divide rather than healing it. It was written out of a deep love for my school and for the students and faculty there, desiring them to remain firmly fixed upon the Gospel rather than turning to other ideologies. The letter took well over four months to write and formulate, so we tried to be as thorough as we could possibly be.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17315" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Investigation finds no evidence of FSU founding president&rsquo;s supposed racism. &#39;Anti-racists&#39; still want him canceled]</a>The President of University of Northwestern St. Paul President Cureton has responded to the petition in an email that was sent to the student body.&nbsp;The <a href="https://www.change.org/p/social-justice-an-open-letter-to-the-university-of-northwestern-st-paul/u/28885171" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">email</a> stated that he doesn&#39;t agree with the petition, but recognizes their right to express their view.&ldquo;So, while I do not agree with the characterizations and theories in the recent petition about the diversity and inclusion efforts at Northwestern, I also recognize each community member&rsquo;s right to freedom of speech and to expressions of beliefs and convictions.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17241" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Chico State president will lead university in &#39;antiracist&#39; journey after reading book by Critical Race Theorist]</a>&ldquo;I appreciate Dr. Cureton&#39;s statement regarding the freedom we have to express our views, however his dismissal of the ideas we presented was deeply discouraging,&rdquo; said Tschetter. &ldquo;We were hoping for more substance and a stronger stance taken against CRT within a response to our letter. Honestly the whole campus&#39; biggest question now is what does Dr. Cureton really think, because he was so non-committal in his response.&rdquo;The petition has so far garnered over 2,300 signatures&ldquo;I am more than a little surprised with how many signatures we&#39;ve received just in this short amount of time,&rdquo; said Josh Feland in an interview with Campus Reform. &ldquo;It&#39;s truly amazing how God has worked to spread this message completely organically.&quot;&quot;No huge news sites or commentators with large followings have picked up the story; it&#39;s all been spread by word of mouth,&#39; Feland added.The University of Northwestern St. Paul has not responded for comment.

The university president responded by saying he does "not agree" with the petition's allegations.

Students at Christian university call on school to turn away from 'falsehood' that is Critical Race Theory

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are some of the least effective members of Congress, according to a new <a href="https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives#/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">study</a> by researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.&nbsp;The researchers, who <a href="https://thelawmakers.org/methodology" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">generated</a> their data using computers and basing their scores on 15 criteria, say the proof is in the math.&nbsp;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17361" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: OPINION: Say it loudly&mdash;&#39;I am not a racist.&#39;]</a>Their equations factored how many of a congressman&rsquo;s bills pass committee, make it to the other house, and eventually become law. They established a benchmark score of 1.5 and above as &ldquo;Exceptional&rdquo; and scores of .50 and below as &ldquo;Below Expectations.&rdquo;Among the lowest scoring House Democrats were Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (0.209) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (0.058).<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16947" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Teaching assistant docks point on conservative student&#39;s Black Panther essay: &lsquo;White people cannot experience racism&rsquo;]</a>They also identified several senators who were ineffective, with Sen. &nbsp;Bernie Sanders of Vermont scoring 0.136.&nbsp;The average score was 1.0.&nbsp;The highest scoring senators were Gary Peters (D-Mi.), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and <a href="https://www.wicker.senate.gov/public/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Roger Wicker (R-Ms.)</a>, who scored 5.015, 3.589, and 3.558.&nbsp;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17276" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: SUNY Geneseo announces new dorm &#39;for Students of Color&#39;]</a>Congressmen who practice bipartisanship are the most effect legislators, the study also said.&ldquo;Collectively, these results imply that engaging in bipartisan behaviors contributes to a virtuous cycle: those who cosponsor across party lines attract cross-party cosponsors to their own bills, which translates into greater legislative success for their agendas.&rdquo;And it found that regardless of political affiliations &ldquo;those who acquired degrees from elite educational institutions tend to be more liberal than others in their respective parties.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17147" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: LIBERAL ELITES? Profs more likely to have grown up &#39;socioeconomically privileged,&#39; study finds&#39;]</a>Rep. Rashida Talib &nbsp;had the highest score of the &quot;squad&quot; at 1.411, beating both <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Representatives Ilhan Omar (0.328) and&nbsp; Ayanna Pressley (0.670).&nbsp;Speaking to Campus Reform Vanderbilt University Professor Alan Wiseman, who helped to organize the study, said <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pact-Clinton-Gingrich-Rivalry-Generation/dp/0195322789" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bipartisanship</a> is still a path to becoming a successful lawmaker in Congress. &nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17324" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: VIDEO: Students CONDEMN BLM after they learn where their money is REALLY going]</a>Wiseman said that there is a &ldquo;very strong relationship between bipartisanship and lawmaking effectiveness for our top 10 Democratic House and Senate members holds.&rdquo;&nbsp;&ldquo;Even in these politically challenging times,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Bipartisanship appears to pay off for those who seek to advance their legislative initiatives.&rdquo;Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ajmunguia23" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration: none; color: var(--red); font-weight: 600;" target="_blank">@ajmunguia23</a>

Report finds that bipartisan legislators are the most effective in both the house and senate.

University research finds AOC, Bernie Sanders highly ineffective

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) created a toolkit for helping citizens track legislation promoting civics education in their K-12 and postsecondary schools.The <a href="https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/tracking-american-civics-legislation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Civics Bill Tracker</a> is a project of the association&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/nas-announces-the-civics-alliance" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Civics Alliance</a>, a group of scholars and activists &ldquo;dedicated to defending and restoring true civics education across the United States.&rdquo; As of April 9, the National Association of Scholars is tracking four federal bills and 142 state bills as they move through the legislatures.&nbsp;Members of the public can access a <a href="https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/civics-proposed-bills-april-12-2021.xlsx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chart of the Bills spreadsheet</a> including each bill&rsquo;s goals, sponsors, and current status, as well as analysis from National Association of Scholars experts.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17195" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Marco Rubio targets Confucius Institutes with new bill]</a>For instance, NAS is tracking <a href="https://legiscan.com/NH/text/HB319/2021">House Bill 319</a> in New Hampshire, which would require university and community college students in the state&rsquo;s higher education system &ldquo;to pass the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services civics naturalization test.&rdquo; The bill is sponsored by six Republicans and one Democrat.&nbsp;<a href="https://legiscan.com/NJ/text/S2012/2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Senate Bill 2012</a> in New Jersey, which is sponsored by a lone Democrat, &ldquo;appropriates total of $160,000 from General Fund to Rutgers University-Camden and Rutgers University-Newark to establish Civic Leadership Summer Program.&rdquo;&nbsp;Campus Reform has reported on the advance of similar bills in Republican-dominated legislatures. Many exist to counter the historically dubious claims of the 1619 Project and the ideas of critical race theory and intersectionality.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17197" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Iowa bill targets colleges that teach New York Times&#39; &#39;racist&#39; and &#39;historically inaccurate&#39; 1619 Project]</a>National Association of Scholars Director of Research David Randall told Campus Reform that &ldquo;civics education is under serious threat from Action Civics, which would replace traditional civics education with thinly disguised community organization &mdash; progressive propaganda and vocational training in radical action.&rdquo;&ldquo;The information will allow citizens to get in touch with their own state representatives and convey informed opinion on the legislation under consideration,&rdquo; he added.Campus Reform reached out to the National Association of Scholars for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Civics education is under threat from "progressive propaganda and vocational training in radical action," said National Association of Scholars Director of Research David Randall.

Does your state have a bill to improve civics education?

Multiple universities are extending the deadline for dropping courses to the last day of classes.In a <a href="https://statements.cornell.edu/2021/20210413-students-supporting-student-mental-health.cfm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">letter</a> to the student body, Cornell University announced that students may &ldquo;drop a course without&nbsp;a W through the last day of instruction&rdquo; on May 14. This policy applies to full-semester and half-semester classes.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17185" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Theology prof: &#39;Dear God, please help me to hate White people&#39;]</a>University officials attributed the change in policy to the recent death of a student and the &ldquo;intersecting stressors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including xenophobia, health disparities, national reckonings related to racial injustice, political upheaval, and economic downturn.&rdquo; &nbsp;&ldquo;We recognize the impact of these acute and cumulative stressors on one&rsquo;s body, mind, and emotions and that each of you are navigating them through your own ways of coping,&rdquo; wrote Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Lisa Nishii on April 13, &ldquo;While it is both normal and understandable to have difficulty managing academics when concentration, memory, and sleep are compromised, we also know that some of you rely on your academic pursuits to provide a sense of structure and predictability in these uncertain times.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17079" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: ASU dean writes book alleging that grading students&rsquo; writing is &#39;white supremacy&#39;]</a>The new grading policy was instituted to benefit students who feel &ldquo;overwhelmed, utterly exhausted, and need more space to process their emotions and grieve.&rdquo;Weeks earlier, the University of Illinois <a href="https://publish.illinois.edu/englishadvising/2021/02/11/spring-2021-academic-policy-changes-new-drop-deadline-and-covid-grades/#sthash.MXGWZXpm.dpbs" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">unveiled</a> a similar policy.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16874" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: UVA, fourth best public college in US, lowers academic standards for two more years]</a>On Feb. 11, the school announced that the drop deadline would be extended to the last day of the class in question. If students drop a course by this deadline, it is &quot;erased from your official transcript.&quot;The University of Virginia, for example, <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16874" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">extended</a> its test-optional admissions policy for two more years.Campus Reform reached out to Cornell University and the University of Illinois for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

These announcements come as leading universities across the United States trend toward relaxing their academic standards in response to COVID-19.

Ivy League university moves to allow students to drop classes on LAST DAY

A Johns Hopkins University medical professor said that closed schools are an &ldquo;American disgrace.&rdquo;Dr. <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/faculty/directory/profile/1565/martin-a-makary" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Marty Makary</a> &mdash; a professor at Johns Hopkins University&rsquo;s prestigious School of Medicine and a Fox News contributor &mdash; said during an interview with &ldquo;Coffee With Closers&rdquo; ripped public health officials&rsquo; response to the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WgEiYVbTuRw" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>During the interview, Makary explained his thinking on herd immunity and his correct prediction that the United States would see a slowing of COVID-19 infections by April of 2021.&ldquo;What we&rsquo;re seeing is a divergence in the data right now. You&rsquo;re going to see two pandemics &mdash; one among at-risk people and the other is among young people who are healthy,&rdquo; he said. <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17037"></a><a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17037" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Race-based COVID vaccine distribution is needed, profs say, because US is racist]</a>Makary also challenged Dr. Fauci&rsquo;s representation of herd immunity.&ldquo;When people say we need to vaccinate 70-85% of the population in order to reach herd immunity &mdash; which is a quote you&rsquo;ll hear again and again, especially coming from Dr. Fauci &mdash; that&rsquo;s not true,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;Because half the country has natural immunity from prior infection. And some doctors &mdash; especially the old school doctors &mdash; have dismissed that.&rdquo;Makary was particularly critical of medical officials&rsquo; decisions to close schools and slammed groupthink in the medical community. <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16952"></a><a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16952" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Students sue UT-Austin over COVID-era tuition]</a>&ldquo;Why do adults get their bowling alleys and restaurants, but kids are shut out of their livelihoods?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an American disgrace. And I think what we&rsquo;ve lost a little bit in the medical profession is to speak your mind. Too many people are worried about what folks are gonna think of you.&rdquo;Noting that self-harm claims among children have risen several hundred percent since the beginning of the pandemic, Makary said that &ldquo;from a medical standpoint, from a public health standpoint, kids need to be in school.&rdquo;Campus Reform recently reported that the editorial team of a student newspaper at Johns Hopkins retracted an article featuring a university study claiming that COVID-19 did not significantly increase the death rate in 2020. <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16463"></a><a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16463" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Johns Hopkins newspaper removes study examining COVID death rate]</a>One editor said that the article was being used to spread &ldquo;dangerous inaccuracies&rdquo; online.Campus Reform reached out to Makary for comment; this article will be updated accordingly. Follow&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ben Zeisloft</a> on twitter.

He denounced officials’ decisions to close down schools and pointed out groupthink in the medical community.

Johns Hopkins doctor: Closed schools are an ‘American disgrace’

A Louisiana state lawmaker introduced a bill to ban schools from teaching the &ldquo;divisive concepts&rdquo; of critical race theory at state-funded schools.&nbsp;State Rep. Ray Garofalo (R-LA) filed the <a href="http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1211990" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">legislation</a>, which addresses &ldquo;certain concepts related to race and sex in elementary and secondary schools and postsecondary education institutions,&quot; on April 2.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17195" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Marco Rubio targets Confucius Institutes with new bill]</a>The bill bans a litany of &ldquo;divisive concepts,&rdquo; including the notions that &ldquo;one race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex,&rdquo; that &ldquo;an individual should be discriminated against, favored, or receive differential treatment solely or partly because of the individual&#39;s race or sex,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;an individual, by virtue of the individual&#39;s race or sex, bears responsibility or is to be held accountable for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.&rdquo;Furthermore, teachers are disallowed from teaching that meritocracy or capitalism inherently originate with any particular race or sex. Educators are not to state that &ldquo;the concepts of capitalism, free markets, or working for a private party in exchange for wages are racist and sexist or oppress a given race or sex.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17197" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Iowa bill targets colleges that teach New York Times&#39; &#39;racist&#39; and &#39;historically inaccurate&#39; 1619 Project]</a>The legislation would also stop teachers from alleging that &ldquo;either the United States of America or the state of Louisiana is fundamentally, institutionally, or systemically racist or sexist.&rdquo;&nbsp;Rep. Garofalo&rsquo;s bill would apply to public postsecondary institutions and nonpublic postsecondary institutions that receive state funds. Lawmakers across the country are making similar proposals following the growing popularity of critical race theory and so-called &ldquo;diversity, equity, and inclusion&rdquo; trainings.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16254" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: University of Oregon promises to ignore Trump&#39;s critical race theory executive order]</a>Most recently, Iowa legislators proposed a bill that would defund any school forwarding the tenets of Nikole Hannah-Jones&rsquo; 1619 Project.Many such pieces of legislation stem from President Trump&rsquo;s &ldquo;Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,&rdquo; which barred federal agencies from instituting or funding diversity trainings that taught false narratives about race, sex, or the United States.&nbsp;Campus Reform reached out to Rep. Garofalo for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Other states are enacting similar proposals in the mold of President Trump’s 2020 executive order.

Louisiana introduces bill to ban teaching of Critical Race Theory topics like 'institutional racism'

In an essay <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/op-ed-give-californias-college-students-vaccine-priority-without-it-fall-campus-life-is-in-danger/ar-BB1dN7FQ">published</a> in the Los Angeles Times, two UCLA deans argued that <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">California&rsquo;s college students should have priority in getting the Covid-19 vaccine.Law school dean Jennifer Mnookin and music school dean Eileen Strempel argued that California&rsquo;s college students should have priority in getting the Covid-19 vaccine.&ldquo;Faculty, staff and students need to be given access to the vaccine sooner rather than later so that a full university life can resume in the fall,&rdquo; they wrote, recommending that &ldquo;students must also be part of the vaccine equation by summer.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17305" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: UK universities could end up paying students back for services not provided during COVID]</a>Mnookin and Strempel do not think students necessarily need to be in line in front of the elderly, front-line workers, and those with an elevated health risk, but that the negative impacts of Covid-19 on college campuses provide enough reason to vaccinate them as soon as possible.The video conference teaching model does not, they said, allow for the usual &ldquo;high-density spaces where students and faculty interact inside and outside classrooms, laboratories, dorms and practice rooms.&rdquo; And the current &ldquo;low-density&rdquo; campus model &ldquo;cannot be the hub of intellectual intensity, the powerful collective place of invention and inquiry, nor fully inhabit its proven role as an engine of educational and economic activity.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17375" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: New &#39;G&#39; grading policy will allow Pitt professors to pass students who don&#39;t complete coursework by end of semester]</a>Online teaching has also been harder on minority communities than others, they said, arguing that the &quot;digital divide&quot; has become apparent throughout Covid-19, and will be more so if online learning continues.&nbsp;And they hope returning students to campus will reverse &quot;the estimated COVID-19 related economic losses through the end of 2020 (excluding the health system) topped $400 million.&quot;Neither Strempel or Mnookin responded when asked for further clarification on the op-ed.Follow the author of this article:&nbsp;<a href="https://campusreform.org/profile?pid=6097034" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Addison Pummill</a>

The professors argued that the Zoom classroom does not allow for much interaction.

UCLA deans call for vaccine priority for California college students

Skidmore College in New York will <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/22/skidmore-college-says-progressive-zionists-for-peace-can-form-trial-club/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">allow</a>&nbsp;a student group called the &quot;Progressive Zionists for Peace&quot; to undergo a trial period as a student group on campus, reversing its previous <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/15/skidmore-college-students-denied-trial-period-for-progressive-zionists-for-peace-club/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">decision</a> not to recognize the pro-Israel group as an official club until it gained &quot;more diverse perspectives.&quot;&nbsp;As first reported by <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/15/skidmore-college-students-denied-trial-period-for-progressive-zionists-for-peace-club/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Algemeiner</a>&nbsp;on March 15, the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Club Affairs Committee of the Student Government Association (SGA) at Skidmore College denied the group&rsquo;s application for trial status in March because of concerns &ldquo;that a dialogue focused club with one perspective being conveyed could be troublesome.&quot;The students could reapply to become a club, according to student government senator Sarah Baker, after they made efforts to gain &ldquo;more diverse perspectives&rdquo; or &quot;reframe the mission to be more advocate focused with a specific stance.&quot;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16616" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Banning Israeli hummus and more anti-Semitic acts in 2020]</a>Progressive Zionists for Peace founder Nessa Goldhirsch Brown told <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/15/skidmore-college-students-denied-trial-period-for-progressive-zionists-for-peace-club/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Algemeiner</a> that she hoped to recruit &ldquo;pro-Israel, pro-peace students to organize to act together on behalf of a two-state solution and a more peaceful, secure, and democratic future for both Israelis and Palestinians.&quot;They were motivated, she said, by the Student Government Association&#39;s previously granting trial status to the Students for Justice in Palestine in New York.&nbsp;Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in New York City is a student group that <a href="https://nycsjp.wordpress.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">describes itself as</a> &ldquo;a diverse group of students and community members in New York City organized on democratic principles to fulfill our role as solidarity organizers against U.S. imperialism and Zionist settler-colonialism.&quot;The subject has also been brought up in the state legislature, with <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/S3712?utm_content=in_senate_comm&utm_campaign=bill_alerts&utm_source=ny_state_senate&utm_medium=email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Senate Bill S3712</a> in New York being aimed at stopping universities from funding students groups that promote &ldquo;hate speech.&quot; This included groups like Boycotting, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).&nbsp;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17308" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Virginia Tech soccer player who refused to kneel during anthem sues coach for alleged &#39;abuse and retaliation&#39;]</a>The college&#39;s reasoning for denying Progressive Zionists for Peace trial status &ldquo;was very hypocritical, confusing, and clear of a political bias against Israel. Zionism is an issue close to our hearts and we are enraged and disappointed that our school is clearly lenient towards some social/political issues but not others&rdquo;, Brown <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/15/skidmore-college-students-denied-trial-period-for-progressive-zionists-for-peace-club/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said</a>.&nbsp;Jewish groups and free speech advocates also decried the decision. Stopantisemitism.org, a watchdog for anti-semitism, tweeted &ldquo;Skidmore College: Social Justice for Palestine has our full support. Also Skidmore College: Progressive Zionists for Peace. DENIED. Why is this discrimination being allowed at your school @skidmorecollege&rdquo;<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Skidmore College: &#39;Social Justice for Palestine&#39; has our full support. Also Skidmore College: Progressive Zionists for Peace&#39; DENIED. Why is this discrimination being allowed at your school <a href="https://twitter.com/SkidmoreCollege?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SkidmoreCollege</a>?! <a href="https://t.co/lczL6Swmlx">pic.twitter.com/lczL6Swmlx</a>&mdash; StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) <a href="https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1371613758099972099?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2021</a></blockquote> The college was also denounced in a scathing <a href="https://www.thefire.org/fire-letter-to-skidmore-college-march-17-2021/">letter</a> by Sabrina Conza, a program analyst for the <a href="https://www.thefire.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)</a>.&ldquo;This viewpoint-based rejection is a form of censorship that violates Skidmore&rsquo;s commitment to its students freedom of association and expression,&rdquo; she wrote, noting that the university&rsquo;s student handbook guarantees &ldquo;freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, the press, and religion, and the right to petition, limited only by protection of property, safety, and mutual respect.&quot;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17252" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: UMKC promotes &lsquo;Angry White Men and How They Ruined the World&rsquo;]</a>Sara Miga, the director of external relations and strategic communications for Skidmore College told Campus Reform&nbsp;that the decision was &quot;never an issue of religion or ideology,&quot; but said that the Progressive Zionists were granted a trial period after a &quot;follow-up discussion&quot; occurred.&ldquo;On Friday, March 19, the Club Affairs Committee and the students seeking to establish Progressive Zionists for Peace engaged in a follow-up discussion to clarify technical matters of definition and scope, and the Club Affairs Committee voted to move the club into a trial period. This was never an issue of religion or ideology. &nbsp;Skidmore does not and will not tolerate anti-Semitism or religious discrimination of any kind. Skidmore seeks to create a welcoming, safe and inclusive environment for all, and there is no place for discrimination at Skidmore. Skidmore College is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive community in which members develop their abilities to live in a complex and interconnected world. In line with this mission, thoughtful, spirited and sometimes challenging discussions are encouraged. We support our students in their efforts to work out student governance and organization.&rdquo;In a statement to&nbsp;Campus Reform, Rena Nasar First, executive director of campus affairs for <a href="https://www.standwithus.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">StandWithUs</a>, an international non-partisan Israel education organization, said while its they&#39;re happy the decision was reversed, it&#39;s &quot;unacceptable&quot; that the club was denied recognition in the first place.&quot;It is good that this decision was reversed, but unacceptable that it happened in the first place. The Skidmore administration should take action to ensure that something like this never happens again,&quot; First said. Follow this author:&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/SamPaco2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@SamPaco2</a>

The student government eventually allowed the group to enter a trial period as a student group after a "follow-up" discussion occured.

In reversal of initial decision, college gives Zionist student group recognition on campus

Republican Representative Mo Brooks (R-Al.) introduced legislation Thursday that would require colleges and universities to report and disclose any gifts from foreign countries and entities.The <a href="https://brooks.house.gov/sites/brooks.house.gov/files/Zero%20Foreign%20Influence%20in%20Education%20Act%20of%202021.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Zero Foreign Influence in Education Act</a> amends Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which states that higher education institutions are only required to report gifts from foreign sources amounting to $250,000 or more in a calendar year.The new<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3136?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr+3136%22%5D%7D&s=1&r=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">&nbsp;legislation</a> would &ldquo;require American universities to report any and all monetary contracts or gifts from foreign countries and entities,&rdquo; &ldquo;require universities to publicly disclose the names of all foreign donors,&rdquo; as well as &nbsp;&ldquo;require universities to list gift reasons, any gift conditions, and the department, college, or project the money is intended for,&rdquo; according to a press release.Cosponsors of the bill include Congressman Barry Moore (R-Al.), Congressman Daniel Webster (R-Fl.), Congressman Lance Gooden (R-Tex.), Congressman Brian Babin (R-Tex.), Congressman Trent Kelly (R-Miss.), Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.).In an interview with Campus Reform, Brooks said that it &ldquo;probably&rdquo; will not gain bipartisan support because the &ldquo;socialist Democrats by and large have a great affinity for the communist Chinese party.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16857" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Multiple universities under the microscope for allegedly failing to disclose foreign ties]</a>In the <a href="https://brooks.house.gov/media-center/news-releases/congressman-mo-brooks-introduces-bill-exposing-foreign-influence-college" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">news release</a>, Brooks claims that Section 117 had &ldquo;historically gone unenforced until the Trump Administration started forcing schools to report.&rdquo; Because universities &ldquo;ignored&rdquo; Section 117, &nbsp;&ldquo;billions in foreign funds&rdquo; have been funneled to American universities in secret.&nbsp;When asked how this legislation would be enforced should it pass, Brooks told Campus Reform, &ldquo;Hopefully the universities of their own accord will obey the law out of fear that the penalties could have a significant, adverse effect on their universities. Ultimately, if universities are not obeying the law, then it comes down to the President of the United States or the Justice Department.&rdquo;&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t have this law, you can&rsquo;t expect the president to be able to do anything of substanceThe news release highlights a 2020 U.S. Department of Education <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/institutional-compliance-section-117.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> which found that at least $6.5 billion in foreign money failed to be disclosed by universities and colleges.&nbsp;&ldquo;Universities already have to keep track of where their dollars come from and what gets spent where. Shedding light on which foreign countries influence American education via large cash donations is a basic transparency requirement not only for students and faculty but for general oversight and national security,&rdquo; the news release states.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16739" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: GOP lawmakers demand UPenn Biden Center release foreign donation records]</a>The release also points out that there is a potential loophole in the current legislation that America&rsquo;s adversaries take advantage of.&ldquo;Foreign enterprises more adversarial to the United States know about the $250,000 threshold currently required in statute so they space out their checks or keep them under the $250,000 bar so the schools do not have to report.,&rdquo; the news release claims.Brooks also brought up Confucius Institutes in America as the &ldquo;most glaring and egregious instance of a foreign power infiltrating American universities.&rdquo;&nbsp;For years, Campus Reform has <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14847" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reported</a> on the prevalence of Chinese Communist Party funded Confucius Institutes on U.S. college campuses. These institutes are marketed as Chinese language and culture centers; however, U.S. intelligence officials have warned that these centers are basically &quot;propaganda&quot; arms of the communist country.&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not concerned much about whatever influence there is from other Republics, but I am greatly concerned about wrongful influence via the Communist Chinese Party,&rdquo; Brooks told Campus Reform.&nbsp;&ldquo;Because in their worldview, there is no place for America&rsquo;s Bill of Rights and there is no place for the citizenry electing the political leadership,&rdquo; he continued.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17195" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Marco Rubio targets Confucius Institutes with new bill]</a>&ldquo;Recent reports of academic espionage and foreign influence in American higher education highlight the need for robust transparency requirements for foreign gifts to universities,&rdquo; Brooks said.&ldquo;The American people deserve to know when foreign countries, many of whom are America&rsquo;s geopolitical foes, are attempting to buy access to research universities or covertly trying to mold young American minds by surreptitiously influencing curriculum or extracurricular activities,&rdquo; he continued.&ldquo;If universities, which are heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer, are going to take foreign money, they should have to show all of it,&rdquo; Brooks stated.&ldquo;Sunshine is the best disinfectant,&rdquo; he concluded.When asked what the next step is in ridding higher education institutions of foreign influence, Brooks said it is &ldquo;to cut off federal funding to any university that persists in engaging in joint ventures or partnerships or the like with undesirable foreign interests.&rdquo;&nbsp;Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/redwave1776" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@redwave1776</a>

Brooks said that the next step in ridding higher education institutions of foreign influence is to "cut off federal funding to any university that persists in engaging in joint ventures or partnerships or the like with undesirable foreign interests.”

Republicans introduce legislation to require colleges to report all foreign gifts

The College of William &amp; Mary and the University of Southern will close their Confucius Institutes, Campus Reform&nbsp;recently learned.The College of William &amp; Mary wrote that its Confucius Institute, which was launched in 2011, will <a href="https://www.wm.edu/sites/confuciusinstitute/index.php">close</a> on June 30 &ldquo;at the completion of the current agreement with the university.&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17199">[RELATED: Tennessee governor moves to end Confucius Institutes]</a>&ldquo;William &amp; Mary will continue to explore and strengthen its independent collaborations with Beijing Normal University (BNU) and other universities in China in order to maintain robust language, cultural and research opportunities for our students, faculty and the wider Williamsburg community,&rdquo; the school said.&nbsp;The school&rsquo;s Confucius Institute &ldquo;is a collaborative program in partnership with Beijing Normal University (BNU) and the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), a public institution affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17016" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Senate passes bill to combat Chinese Communist Party propaganda on campus]</a>William &amp; Mary Director of News and Media Suzanne Clavet told&nbsp;Campus Reform that they will maintain their relationship with BNU &ldquo;in order to maintain robust language, cultural and research opportunities for our students, faculty and the wider Williamsburg community.&rdquo;According to the William &amp; Mary Confucius Institute <a href="https://www.wm.edu/sites/confuciusinstitute/wm-agreement-with-hanban_signed-2016_english-version.pdf">agreement</a>, the center has a mandate to &ldquo;increase mutual understanding among people in China and in the United States.&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://campusreform.org/?id=16758" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Calls to close CCP-funded Confucius Institutes grow louder. Here&#39;s what&#39;s fueling them.]</a>The University of Southern Maine likewise shuttered its Confucius Institute, stating that it &ldquo;reached too few students to be sustainable,&rdquo; as the <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2021/04/13/usm-cutting-ties-with-chinese-government-funded-program/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Press Herald</a> reported.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17189">[RELATED: Students at Tufts successfully organize to get their school&rsquo;s Confucius Institute scrapped]</a>Leading American officials consistently warn that despite these seemingly benign intentions, the Confucius Institute program functionally exists to propagate and justify the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.Most recently, Sen. Marco Rubio proposed passing the Foreign Influence Transparency Act, which would officially recognize that Confucius Institutes are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and would require &ldquo;institutions that have entered into an agreement with a Confucius Institute to disclose the full agreement on its website and to the Department of Education or risk losing their Student and Exchange Visitor Program.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16882">[RELATED: House Republicans urge Biden to reconsider rule on CCP&#39;s Confucius Institutes]</a>Likewise, House Republicans asked the Biden administration to reinstitute Trump-era regulations that would compel universities to reveal their ties to the Confucius Institute.Under pressure from top lawmakers, other schools, like Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, shuttered their own Confucius Institutes in recent weeks.Campus Reform reached out to the College of William &amp; Mary and the University of Southern Maine for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.&nbsp;Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://@BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

The College of William & Mary and the University of Southern Maine became the latest schools to shut down their Confucius Institutes.

William & Mary, U of Southern Maine become latest schools to close down Confucius Institutes

Oklahoma State University-Tulsa will join other campuses across the United States in creating &ldquo;racial healing circles.&rdquo;According to the university&#39;s <a href="https://tulsa.okstate.edu/trht" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">website</a>, the new &ldquo;Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation&rdquo; is part of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation&rsquo;s nationwide initiative to &ldquo;address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17333" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Prof tells Senate Judiciary Committee that election security laws &#39;target Black voters&#39; like &#39;Jim Crow&#39;]</a>According to the Kellogg Foundation&rsquo;s <a href="https://healourcommunities.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">website</a>, each of the fourteen TRHT initiatives across the United States received between $1.5 and $4 million in funds that last between two and five years. In 2017, the organization committed $24 million to fulfill the projects.OSU-Tulsa Communications Coordinator Aaron Campbell told Campus Reform that the center&rsquo;s activities &ldquo;will be donor and grant funded.&rdquo; The center &ldquo;has applied for a Kellogg Foundation grant and is awaiting an award decision,&rdquo; while OSU-Tulsa &ldquo;is paying a small stipend to the acting director of the center, who is a faculty member.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16816" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: University of Kentucky promotes segregated &#39;racial healing circles&#39;]</a>Among the TRHT center&#39;s first initiatives will be &ldquo;racial healing circles&rdquo; &mdash; which involve &ldquo;conversations between participants to discuss experiences with race and conscious and unconscious biases.&rdquo;Racial healing circles &mdash; which are run by &ldquo;trained racial healing circle practitioners&rdquo; &mdash; provide &ldquo;opportunities to reflect and acknowledge the participants&#39; unquestioned assumptions and biases in a way that is non-threatening and encouraging.&rdquo;&nbsp;Participants become able to &ldquo;confront the historic and contemporary causes and effects of systemic racism while being empowered to promote equity and social justice.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16612" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Prof leading &#39;racial healing&#39; commission says &#39;racial reconciliation&#39; is &#39;not applicable&#39;]</a>Campus Reform has reported on several instances of colleges establishing &ldquo;racial healing circles&rdquo; and &ldquo;Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation&rdquo; groups.For instance, a University of Kentucky professor hosted a free six-week virtual series of racial healing circles to &ldquo;allow Black community members to discuss racial identity development, racial socialization and cognitive, emotional and somatic responses to racism.&rdquo;Participants were able to join sessions such as &ldquo;Surrendering Superwoman Syndrome,&rdquo; &ldquo;Healing While Black,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Family Matters&rdquo; &mdash; geared toward Black women, men, and families, respectively.<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17259" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: While spending millions on luxury homes, BLM co-founder told college students that capitalism is &#39;more tragic&#39; than COVID-19]</a>Likewise, a group of professors is attempting to launch an official &ldquo;United States Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation&rdquo; movement alongside a similar push from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).Campus Reform reached out to Oklahoma State University-Tulsa for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Other universities across the United States have been establishing similar initiatives.

OSU-Tulsa becomes the latest campus to run ‘racial healing circles’

Responding to the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/derek-chauvin-trial-verdict" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">conviction</a> of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, American University announced that it will now offer &ldquo;Black Affinity Housing.&rdquo;&ldquo;The murder of George Floyd and the many other acts of violence against Black people and communities of color are horrible reminders that racism still exists in many forms&rdquo; the university <a href="https://www.american.edu/president/announcements/april-20-2021.cfm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said</a> on Tuesday. It stressed the importance of creating &ldquo;the space to process these events and care for ourselves and one another.&rdquo;In accordance with this goal, it is &ldquo;working to open Black Affinity Housing in the fall and advance a sense of belonging for the community.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17241" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Chico State president will lead university in &#39;antiracist&#39; journey after reading book by Critical Race Theorist]</a>American University says on its 2021-2022 room selection <a href="https://www.american.edu/ocl/housing/room-selection.cfm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">website</a> for returning students says that &ldquo;the Black Affinity Housing located in Roper Hall provides an intentional residential community dedicated to celebrating, exploring, and affirming black student experiences at AU and beyond.&rdquo;&ldquo;The live-in experience encourages dialogue and community building that is mindful of the diverse social, cultural, and academic needs of Black and multicultural students,&rdquo; the university continues. &ldquo;Black Affinity Housing will enrich all of campus life by promoting solidarity among students of all backgrounds and identities.&rdquo;Campus Reform recently covered an op-ed written by American University freshman Kayla Kelly, who argued that welcoming White students back to campus after COVID-induced shutdowns &ldquo;could evoke similar effects of settler colonialism and negatively impact&rdquo; the Black community of Washington, D.C.<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=16917" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Student newspaper publishes op-ed criticizing return of &#39;invasive species&#39; White peers to &#39;Chocolate City&#39;]</a>&ldquo;Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that replaces the original population with a new invasive species,&rdquo; Kelly wrote, &ldquo;the settler system stakes over the space, resources and culture of the environment it encompasses, displacing the original population.&rdquo;&nbsp;Other prominent universities across the United States have also experimented with segregated housing and events.&nbsp;The Executive Director of Residential Life at the University of Nevada-Reno, for example, said on April 1 that racially segregated dorms &ldquo;are a national best practice in university residential life and housing communities.&quot;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17167" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: &#39;A national best practice&#39;: University employee doubles down on defense of racially segregated housing]</a>Campus Reform reached out to American University for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Other universities across the nation have instituted similar segregated housing plans.

American University announces 'Black Affinity Housing'

The University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business sent an email to students on April 7 announcing the creation of &ldquo;identity spaces.&rdquo; According to an email obtained by Campus Reform, &ldquo;The Program Office [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] DEI Team across all platforms are facilitating open identity spaces for students to meet, network, and socialize with other students across all programs that share the same identity.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17045" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a> <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17045" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17045" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Berkeley &#39;Black Graduation&#39; under fire for bringing back &#39;Democrats&#39; segregationist history&#39;]</a> There are 11 different &ldquo;communit[ies]&rdquo; for students to join, with those being first-generation students, women, veterans, Black/African-American, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Native American, religious minorities, international students, Asian Americans, and disability. The &ldquo;identity spaces&rdquo; will be held until the end of the spring semester, according to the email. <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a> <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17001" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17001" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: UC-Berkeley unveils plan for racial quota]</a> Communications Director for the California College Republicans Dylan Martin told Campus Reform, universities should &ldquo;not be pushing anything that encourages segregation of students into racial, sexual, and religious groups.&rdquo; &ldquo;Instead of forming &#39;identity space&#39; cliques, our universities should focus on bonding us around things everyone has the potential to take interest in, not fixed racial, sexual, and religious backgrounds. Our students should &#39;meet, network, and socialize&#39; with people from all walks of life. They should bond on ideas, on sports, on campus events, on music, on art &mdash; not on things like the color of their skin. If students choose to pursue creating identity groups on their own accord, then they have the freedom to do so. However, our universities should not be pushing anything that encourages segregation of students into racial, sexual, and religious groups,&rdquo; he said. Martin went on to say how this decision was not surprising following UC Berkeley&rsquo;s decision to host a separate &ldquo;Black Graduation ceremony for students.&rdquo; Campus Reform&nbsp;reached out to UC-Berkeley, but did not receive a response. Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ashleyecarnahan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@ashleyecarnahan</a>

Students are to use these spaces to “meet, network, and socialize.”

Berkeley Haas School of Business creates 11 different 'Identity Spaces' for networking

Over 226 students and 43 organizations at Harvard University signed a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtNoEeGoHUFPhUJJxhw0EXKJTpC0n9fi_bXrx3YbVYU/edit" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">petition</a> calling on the university administration to condemn Israel&rsquo;s &ldquo;excessive use of force against Palestinian civilians.&rdquo; The petition, created by the Palestine Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, and more organizations, states that Israel is committing &ldquo;ethnic clensing.&rdquo; &ldquo;We, as the Palestine Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Harvard Palestine Health Initiative at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Divinity School Students for Palestinian Rights, and the Middle East and North Africa Student Organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Design write to firstly acknowledge and express our outrage at the latest wave of Israeli state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians,&rdquo; the petition reads. &ldquo;The current escalation of violence against Palestinians in Palestine and in Israel follows years of systematic oppression and ethnic cleansing committed by the State of Israel.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15905" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: CSUN professor runs &#39;Boycott Israel Resource Page&#39; on university website]</a> The petition goes on to state that the violence is &ldquo;right-wing&rdquo; and &ldquo;Israeli state-sanctioned,&rdquo; also claiming that Israel &ldquo;has erected a web of discriminatory laws that pervade every aspect of Palestinian life.&rdquo; Additionally, the petition calls on the Harvard University administration to divest from all companies who are &ldquo;involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise.&rdquo; &ldquo;We call on our university to end its complicity with Israeli apartheid policies and occupation by removing its investments in companies that are involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise until equal rights are guaranteed for all citizens in Israel and Palestine,&rdquo; the petition states. The student groups state that Israel has enacted &ldquo;the most intense aerial bombardments of Gaza since 2014&rdquo; this week, but fail to mention the rockets being fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, with targets including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and more, according to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-diverts-flights-rocket-barrage-palestinians-death-67-1.9796891" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Haaretz</a>. Making multiple demands, the students who signed the petition want Harvard to make a &ldquo;public statement rebuking Israel&rsquo;s excessive use of force against Palestinian civilians.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16441" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: San Francisco State University passes BDS resolution against Israel]</a> The Executive Director for Campus Affairs for SandWithUs, a pro-Israel education organization, Rena Nasar First told Campus Reform that they are &quot;appalled&quot; by the efforts of Harvard students to spread &quot;misinformation and hate against Israel.&quot; &ldquo;We are appalled by the efforts of Harvard University student groups to spread misinformation and hate against Israel. Israel has the right to defend itself from the constant barrage of rockets targeting Israeli civilians by Hamas, a terrorist organization,&quot; First said. &quot;Such misinformation and hate will only serve to harm innocent Israelis, Jews and Palestinians. We call on Harvard&rsquo;s administration to condemn this misinformation and hate and, the terrorism inflicted against innocent Israelis by Hamas. It is imperative that Harvard&rsquo;s administration brings communities together in pursuit of accurate education and peace building to ensure a campus environment free from hate.&rdquo; The petition also calls on students to call the U.S. State Department and Deoartment of Defnse to &ldquo; Demand the end of Israel&rsquo;s forced displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem,&rdquo; write to their congressperson and ask them to support H.R. 2590, the <a href="https://mccollum.house.gov/media/press-releases/mccollum-introduces-historic-legislation-defending-human-rights-palestinian" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act</a>, and speak out on social media. &ldquo;Educate yourself and your community about human rights abuses in Palestine. Write, tweet, and share on social media platforms, but above all, reach out to your representatives at the federal and local levels,&rdquo; the petition states. As of May 13, the petition has gained 226 signatures from students at Harvard, and 43 signatures from student organizations. Campus Reform reached out to Harvard University for comment. Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/asabes10" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@asabes10</a><a href="https://twitter.com/asabes10" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration: none; color: var(--red); font-weight: 600;" target="_blank"></a><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><a href="https://twitter.com/asabes10" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration: none; color: var(--red); font-weight: 600;" target="_blank"></a>

Harvard University students and student organizations signed a petition demanding the university divest from all companies who do business with Israel.

Harvard students demand university to 'condemn' Israel’s 'excessive use of force'

A senior fellow at Yale University&rsquo;s China center wrote an article explaining why Confucius Institutes should not be removed from American university campuses.&nbsp;<a href="https://law.yale.edu/jamie-p-horsley" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jamie Horsley</a> &mdash; senior fellow at Yale Law School&rsquo;s Paul Tsai China Center and a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution &mdash; wrote in a Lawfare&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-time-for-a-new-policy-on-confucius-institutes/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">article</a> reposted by Brookings that &ldquo;the U.S. government should increase funding for Mandarin language and China studies courses, but also stop forcing cash-strapped universities to choose between federal funding and properly managed CI programs.&rdquo;As Campus Reform&nbsp;has frequently <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=15448" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reported</a>, &nbsp;Confucius Institutes have drawn suspicion from American lawmakers as a &ldquo;foreign mission&rdquo; closely tied with the Chinese Communist Party.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=15448" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: US designates Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes as &#39;foreign missions&#39;]</a>Horsley discussed &ldquo;a decline of American student interest in China studies and learning Mandarin Chinese&rdquo; &mdash; a trend which, combined with &ldquo;inflammatory rhetoric&rdquo; about Confucius Institute programs &mdash; exacerbates &ldquo;a national foreign language deficit at a time when training Mandarin speakers familiar with an ever more consequential China should be a national priority.&rdquo;She also recommended that the Biden administration &ldquo;lift, or provide necessary waivers of, federal funding restrictions on universities that demonstrate appropriate academic freedom and institutional safeguards around their CIs, which are no longer directly funded by the Chinese government.&rdquo;&ldquo;It should also consider authorizing the Confucius Institute U.S. Center (CIUS) to serve as a visa sponsor to assist Chinese teachers and staff of CIs obtain the proper visas, as well as enable CIUS to serve as a clearinghouse for information on such PRC personnel for relevant U.S. government agencies,&rdquo; she added.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17168" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: A Stanford researcher was recently indicted for China ties. As new China center opens, has Stanford learned its lesson?]</a>Later in the article, Horsley admitted that Confucius Institutes generated &ldquo;legitimate concerns about academic freedom and independence due to their direct support from, and admitted role as a &ldquo;soft power&rdquo; instrument for, China&rsquo;s party-state.&rdquo; Though she also acknowledges that &ldquo;The CI project is intended to promote a favorable understanding of China,&rdquo; she notes that the program does not &ldquo;enjoy a monopoly over information available on campuses.&rdquo;The <a href="https://law.yale.edu/china-center/about-us" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Paul Tsai China Center</a> &ldquo;works collaboratively with a broad range of top experts in the Chinese government, universities, and civil society on concrete projects designed to have a positive practical impact.&rdquo;In 2016, Taiwanese-born <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/joseph-tsai/?sh=2848bf137b32" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Joseph Tsai</a> &mdash; son of Paul Tsai and co-founder of Chinese e-commerce business Alibaba &mdash; funded the center with a $30 million investment. The center was subsequently named after his father.Campus Reform reached out to Horsley for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.&nbsp;Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ben Zeisloft</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;

The China center is funded by a co-founder of Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.

Senior fellow at Yale’s China center explains why Confucius Institutes should stay

JACOBSON: If we defund police on college campuses, 'we will certainly see an increase in violent crime' in academic institutions  

Stanford University&rsquo;s student newspaper sent a controversial tweet about two Black students. Now, it is suspending its Twitter account and requiring the entire masthead to take anti-bias training.As editor in chief of The Stanford Daily&nbsp;Erin Woo explained in a <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2021/04/05/letter-from-the-editor-regarding-saturdays-tweet/?fbclid=IwAR1b3Y47rLbXVJUotQps8DHeoLrjPsN_HtHQpWuO7jmaw5rnVvY4zGyZVB0">letter</a>, t<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">he paper&#39;s humor section,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/theoccasionally?lang=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Stanford Occasionally</a>, sent a tweet linking the student government elections to the movie &ldquo;Godzilla vs. Kong,&quot; which was at the time a popular recent release.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17168">[RELATED: A Stanford researcher was recently indicted for China ties. As new China center opens, has Stanford learned its lesson?]</a>Woo said the tweet was riffing off an alleged conflict between &ldquo;two candidates, both of whom are Black, as a conflict between Kong and Godzilla&rdquo; &mdash; a move that was deemed racist due to &ldquo;the anti-Black history of the King Kong figure as a hyper-sexualized caricature of Black men.&rdquo;&ldquo;I am so sorry for the harm it has caused the Black community and the students referenced in the tweet,&rdquo; she wrote. &ldquo;I also apologize that it took students from the Black community to raise concerns before The Daily took action on the tweet, and that our initial response to the community member who flagged the tweet was hasty and insensitive.&rdquo;<a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=17308" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: Virginia Tech soccer player who refused to kneel during anthem sues coach for alleged &#39;abuse and retaliation&#39;]</a>Woo took &ldquo;full responsibility&rdquo; for the incident, making it clear that the tweet &ldquo;was not written by humor writers or editors.&rdquo; Nevertheless, the &ldquo;entire editorial team&rdquo; will undergo &ldquo;anti-bias training&rdquo; to &ldquo;address the ignorance that was at the root of the tweet&rsquo;s creation.&rdquo;In addition to &ldquo;working to draft clearer humor and social media policies,&rdquo; The Stanford Daily&nbsp;&ldquo;suspended the Twitter account the tweet was posted on.&rdquo; The students &ldquo;will not bring this account back at least until new policies are in place and all staffers have undergone training.&rdquo;Campus Reform asked Woo to clarify why the entire editorial team will undergo anti-bias training if they were not responsible for the incident. Woo declined to provide comment beyond her statement.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17213">[RELATED: Narrative shattered: &#39;KKK,&#39; &#39;White power&#39; graffiti on campus written by Black student]</a>The Stanford University College Republicans noticed irony in the situation.&ldquo;Last summer, @StanfordDaily told us that they would not publish an op-ed critical of Black Lives Matter because somehow criticizing BLM is &lsquo;anti-blackness,&rsquo;&rdquo; they remarked on social media. &ldquo;Last week, The Stanford Daily published a satirical tweet comparing a black student government official to a gorilla.&rdquo;&nbsp;<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Last summer, <a href="https://twitter.com/StanfordDaily?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StanfordDaily</a> told us that they would not publish an op-ed critical of Black Lives Matter because somehow criticizing BLM is &quot;anti-blackness.&quot; Last week, The Stanford Daily published a satirical tweet comparing a black student government official to a gorilla. <a href="https://t.co/w8VEPZiq9t">pic.twitter.com/w8VEPZiq9t</a>&mdash; Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) <a href="https://twitter.com/Stanford_GOP/status/1381365320196222976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2021</a></blockquote> &nbsp;&nbsp;Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Though editors were not responsible for the tweet, the entire editorial team will undergo “anti-bias training.”

Stanford newspaper tweeted movie reference deemed racist; will now subject ENTIRE STAFF to 'anti-bias training'

The University of California-Santa Barbara is using federal taxpayer dollars to create a &ldquo;feminist studies&rdquo; degree program.An April 13 <a href="https://t.e2ma.net/message/ccwytm/kubd4ib">letter</a> from the Office of the Chancellor explains steps that UC Santa Barbara will take &ldquo;to make sure that anti-Blackness, which is at the core of all such tragedies as George Floyd&#39;s death, does not have a place on our campus and in our community.&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17244">[RELATED: &#39;Anti-racist journey&#39; prompts UNR lecturer to apologize for teaching &#39;Jingle Bells,&rsquo; &lsquo;Baa Baa Black Sheep&#39;]</a>Among these steps is the use of a $3 million Department of Education Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) grant to create a new &ldquo;4+1&rdquo; program. The program grants students a bachelor&rsquo;s degree in ethnic studies or feminist studies, and later, a master&#39;s degree and teaching credential in the <a href="https://education.ucsb.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gevirtz Graduate School of Education</a>.UC Santa Barbara will spend money on a new degree program despite being previously <a href="https://chancellor.ucsb.edu/memos/2020-07-17-covid-19-update-addressing-budget-impacts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">concerned</a> that the COVID-19-recession and reductions in state funding could cause the university to lose between $160 million and $210 million by June 30, 2021 &mdash; a projection that led to salary freezes and a voluntary pay cut of 10 percent for top administrators like Chancellor Henry T. Yang.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17204">[RELATED: Georgetown shells out $1M for racial equity]</a>According to the Department of Education <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/idues/hsidivision.html">website</a>, the Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Division &ldquo;provides grant funding to institutions of higher education to assist with strengthening institutional programs, facilities, and services to expand the educational opportunities for Hispanic Americans and other underrepresented populations.&rdquo;Campus Reform asked the Department of Education whether an HSI grant can be properly used on a feminist studies program. This article will be updated accordingly.Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

Months ago, the school implemented pay cuts and salary freezes to stay solvent through COVID-19.

UC Santa Barbara unveils new ‘feminist studies’ degree program

The Pennsylvania State University&rsquo;s faculty senate passed &ldquo;inclusive language&rdquo; reform legislation. As Penn State News <a href="https://news.psu.edu/story/657788/2021/05/05/academics/senate-passes-diversity-and-equity-resolutions-final-meeting-year" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">detailed</a>, the Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs passed a <a href="https://senate.psu.edu/senators/agendas-records/april-27-2021-agenda/appendix-c/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">resolution</a> for the &ldquo;Removal of Gendered &amp; Binary Terms from Course and Program Descriptions.&rdquo; &ldquo;The University, as with most all academic institutions world-wide, has grown out of a typically male-centered world,&rdquo; reads the resolution&rsquo;s introduction. &ldquo;As such, many terms in our lexicon carry a strong, male-centric, binary character to them.&rdquo; The resolution asserts that &ldquo;terms such as &lsquo;freshmen&rsquo; are decidedly male-specific, while terms such as &lsquo;upperclassmen&rsquo; can be interpreted as both sexist and classist.&rdquo; Terms such as &ldquo;junior&rdquo; and &ldquo;senior&rdquo; are supposedly &ldquo;parallel to western male father-son naming conventions, and much of our written documentation uses he/she pronouns.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17310" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: University of Montana student government unanimously passes bill to require &lsquo;anti-bias&rsquo; training among leadership] </a> The resolution recommends that the university make &ldquo;editorial updates to our course and program descriptions, which appear in the course catalog and bulletin, to remove gendered terms.&rdquo; &quot;We suggest that the University consider changes to all written materials, including recruiting materials, admissions materials, scholarship information, housing materials, other outward-facing documents, internal documents, and websites,&quot; the resolution states. For instance, individuals at the university should &ldquo;move away from the use of gendered pronouns when referring to students, faculty, staff, and guests in course descriptions and degree program descriptions.&rdquo; Such changes would take the form of replacing &ldquo;he/him/his&rdquo; and &ldquo;she/her/hers&rdquo; with &ldquo;they/them/theirs&rdquo; or &ldquo;non-gendered terms such as student, faculty member, staff member.&rdquo; The resolution also suggests departing &ldquo;from the use of academic grouping titles that stem from a primarily male-centric academic history in course descriptions and degree program descriptions.&rdquo; For instance, &ldquo;freshman/sophomore/junior/senior&rdquo; would be replaced with &ldquo;first-year,&rdquo; &ldquo;second-year,&rdquo; &ldquo;third-year,&rdquo; and &ldquo;fourth-year.&rdquo; <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17310" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: RIT student gov loses its mind over request to discuss BLM somewhere else]</a> However, the resolution clarified that &ldquo;concerns have been raised that numbering years beyond the fourth (4th) would perhaps negatively reflect on students who, for various reasons, are taking longer to complete their (typically) four-year programs, and are also referred to as &lsquo;super-seniors.&rsquo;&rdquo; In these cases, the resolution suggests the term &quot;advanced-standing&quot; be used. &ldquo;The committee recognizes that there may be places where these terms, especially gender terms, may need to remain intact, for example in the case of courses or degrees that delve into gender studies,&rdquo; the legislation further stipulated. &ldquo;In such cases, efforts shall be made to clearly delineate between the &lsquo;academic&rsquo; study of these gendered terms, and the newly established nomenclature as it would apply to faculty, staff, students, and guests.&rdquo; Students and faculty at universities across the United States have implemented similar changes in the interest of inclusivity. The University of Virginia student government, for instance, offered a referendum to scrap all gendered pronouns from its constitution in favor of gender-neutral terminology. <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17256" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[RELATED: UVA students scrap gendered pronouns from constitution]</a> 88.75 percent of students at the university approved the change. Campus Reform reached out to Penn State and the faculty senate for comment; this article will be updated accordingly. Follow this author on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/BenZeisloft" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: var(--red); text-decoration: none !important; user-select: auto; font-weight: 600; font-family: Lora; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" target="_blank">@BenZeisloft</a>

The resolution urges the university to change all written materials with the "junior/senior" label because it is "parallel to western male father-son naming conventions."

Penn State faculty cancels 'male-centric' 'Junior' and 'Senior' labels

As the crime rate in Chicago skyrockets, students at one Windy City university are demanding fewer police officers.Students from the DePaul Socialists and Students Against Incarceration-SAI DePaul co-hosted the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/592832801348123/593879764576760/?notif_t=admin_plan_mall_activity¬if_id=1591819874169598" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">event</a> &lsquo;DEFUND THE POLICE: DIVEST DEPAUL&rsquo;. The event was held to protest the university&rsquo;s relationship with the Chicago Police Department.&nbsp;One student <a href="https://depauliaonline.com/49272/news/depaul-students-protest-universitys-affiliation-with-chicago-police/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">described</a> the perceived need to divest to the campus newspaper, saying, &quot;it&rsquo;s not necessarily Black lives on face value, but the black struggle is inherently intertwined with other struggles, it&rsquo;s so interconnected we can&rsquo;t just reform it, we must divest.&quot;&nbsp;The groups&#39; demands, mirroring similar calls that have broken out across the country, come as the Chicago Police Department released a <a href="https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2_PDFsam_CompStat-Public-2020-Week-24.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">report</a> showing a drastic violent crime increase from June 8-14, including an 83 percent increase in sexual assaults, a 23 percent increase in aggravated battery, 12 percent increase in motor vehicle theft, and a 118 percent increase in shooting incidents.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15086" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Binghamton cuts police funding to &#39;realize a society where Black Lives Matter&#39;]</a>Earlier this year, <a href="https://depauliaonline.com/45622/news/some-depaul-students-on-high-alert-as-campus-safety-stagnates/" style="text-decoration:none;">The DePaulia</a>&nbsp;student newspaper reported students having heightened anxiety toward crime occurring on and near the campus, despite the general perception that the school is in a safe area.&nbsp;&ldquo;There is scary stuff happening around here and I think it&rsquo;s growing too,&rdquo; said Student Jonathan Nevarez. &ldquo;When I commuted the first year and lived in Lincoln park the second there wasn&rsquo;t really much of anything and then this past year there&rsquo;s been a lot more severe stuff happening.&rdquo; &nbsp;It was also reported that there were on campus increases in the number of robberies, liquor law violations, dating violence, and stalking.&nbsp;In an effort to give students tools to defend themselves under these conditions, Chicago Police Department Sheriff Mike Marterie gave DePaul students advice to not &ldquo;ever wear two earbuds when walking day or night.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15033" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Young Americans react to calls to &#39;defund the police&#39;]</a>&ldquo;Always have your keys in your hand with the key sticking out, it makes a great weapon if you have to defend yourself,&rdquo; added Marterie. &ldquo;Stay off the train especially after dark. When walking, keep your face out of your phone and always look at people walking towards you and look behind you often. Also, look at what people are wearing.&quot;Students are also protesting the relationship that DePaul University has with the Chicago Federal Order of Police, which allows police to receive a 25 percent reduction in tuition at the university and a 75 percent reimbursement from the city of Chicago, along with the possibility of receiving a full reimbursement on courses taken through the university.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15027" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: College &#39;deeply sorry&#39; for letting police use restrooms]</a>The DePaul Socialists and Students Against Incarceration groups also called for the school to participate in the &ldquo;Ban the Box program,&rdquo; a <a href="http://bantheboxcampaign.org/about/#.XvDehZpKipo" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">movement</a> that suggests employers not ask people about past criminal convictions. Other demands include payment for university food service workers who were fired due to the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic, a call for the support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and a demand to have less ICE presence on campus.&nbsp;The DePaul Socialists took to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DPUSocialists/?ref=nf&hc_ref=ARTMYKt9pZYDxCiVKWj05elKRsTDUSAiTbIrL6VFwB114s9Pw8ZPa4lGHcZErQiT0_U" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Facebook</a> to clarify their reasoning for defending the other movements writing, &ldquo;CLARIFICATION FROM BLACK MEMBERS CONCERNING SUPPORT OF BDS: We called this protest first and foremost in support of BLM and defunding the police. Defunding the police is integral to the greater goal to end imperialism. We say this because we are anti-capitalist and we understand that imperialism is a tool of capital that has been used to enslave our ancestors just as it is now used to cut down the lives of Palestinians.&rdquo;&ldquo;Today, Chicago police are trained by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which is leading the occupation and genocide of Palestinians. During Ferguson and every other BLM protest following, Palestinian activists reached out to black protesters and offered solidarity and support...&rdquo; wrote the group.The DePaul Socialists told Campus Reform,&nbsp;&ldquo;Our protest had the following demands for DePaul University specifically: Cut ties with the CPD and FOP. DePaul has a unique relationship with these institutions which is why we took a localized approach to this demonstration.&quot;&nbsp;The group went on to clarify that its movement to &ldquo;support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement against Israeli products&quot; is based in the belief that &quot;police departments across the country, but particularly CPD, have been known to receive training from the Israeli military.&rdquo;The group also says it seeks to compel the school to &ldquo;allocate funds that would be going to these institutions toward making sure Chartwells workers get paid in the face of this pandemic as well as police brutality (the majority of these workers are Black and/or Latinx) and to students experiencing incarceration.&rdquo;&ldquo;Ban the box inquiring about criminal history on applications. We did not make any specific demands about police presence on campus, though, to be clear, we are police and prison abolitionists and believe that justice for Black lives and the world in general will not come until those institutions are eradicated. This is the outcome we seek long-term from defunding police on our campus and in our city. We are not aware of any University response to our action.&rdquo; they added.&nbsp;Follow the author of this article on Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/Jess__Custodio" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">@Jess__Custodio</a>

Calls to defund the police are followed by calls to promote BDS and to eliminate ICE on campus.

As Chicago crime skyrockets, students demand police divestment

Harvard University has seen internal tensions continue to rise over calls since February to divest from the fossil fuel industry, as the school&rsquo;s administration faces down the more radical wing of the faculty and student population.&nbsp;In the latest development, Harvard Medical School faculty and supporters sent a <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/5/6/hms-letter-endowment-decision/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">letter</a> to University President Lawrence S. Bacow on May 10, condemning the school&rsquo;s refusal to withdraw from fossil fuel investments. &nbsp;In February, the Medical School&rsquo;s Faculty Council <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14381" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">voted 23-5</a> to ask Harvard Corporation to remove &ldquo;all direct investments and commingled assets&rdquo; from companies that make the majority of their profits from fossil fuels.The Council joined a Faculty of Arts and Science <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14330" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">179-20 vote</a> in favor of divestment.&nbsp;English department chair Nicholas J. Watson <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/2/5/faculty-vote-support-divestment/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">called Harvard</a> the &ldquo;poster child&rdquo; of the fossil fuel industry.&nbsp;&ldquo;Divesting is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do for the long term,&rdquo; he said at the time.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14469" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[Related: Less than 2 percent of Harvard faculty are conservative, survey finds]</a>&ldquo;We are extremely concerned that the plan . . . to continue investing the endowment in the fossil fuel industry with a plan for a carbon-neutral portfolio by 2050 &mdash; is both inadequate and far too delayed to mitigate the catastrophic environmental and health consequences of climate change,&rdquo; the Medical School Faculty Council wrote <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/5/6/hms-letter-endowment-decision/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">in a letter</a> obtained by the Harvard Crimson.&ldquo;We are already experiencing increasing heat-related illness, trauma and displacement from intense storms and wildfires, and climate-related increases in infectious diseases, lung disease, and cardiovascular disease,&rdquo; the letter continued. &ldquo;These consequences will only worsen without prompt forceful action. In response to this unprecedented crisis, we must act swiftly.&rdquo;&ldquo;Discussions across the University, including those undertaken in recent months by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, have highlighted the role that investment policy might play...&rdquo; Bacow wrote <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2020/message-from-president-bacow-on-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">in April</a>.&ldquo;Harvard&rsquo;s endowment should be a leader in shaping pathways to a sustainable future,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;With this in mind, the [Harvard] Corporation has directed the Harvard Management Company (HMC) to set itself on a path to <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/harvard-endowment-to-go-greenhouse-gas-neutral-by-2050/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">decarbonize the overall endowment portfolio</a>&mdash;a move in step with the final element of the resolution adopted by the Faculty in February... We believe that this approach, which considers the investment portfolio as a whole, rather than simply targeting the suppliers and producers of fossil fuels, is the right one for the University to pursue.&rdquo;&ldquo;We appreciate that advocates for divestment from fossil fuel companies may not be satisfied with this approach, but we believe that divestment paints with too broad a brush,&rdquo; Bacow continued. &ldquo;We cannot risk alienating and demonizing possible partners, some of which have committed to transitioning to carbon neutrality and to funding research on alternative fuels and on strategies to decarbonize the economy. . . Meaningful change cannot begin with a symbolic act that disregards these realities.&rdquo;&ldquo;Despite repeated queries, no evidence has been shared to date to support the contention that Harvard&rsquo;s engagement with the fossil fuel industry has fostered substantive changes in these companies&rsquo; behaviors or intent to continue to profit from exploration, extraction, transport, and sales of fossil fuels,&rdquo; the faculty responded. &ldquo;We also question the claim that divestment will unjustly vilify the individuals working within fossil fuel companies and prevent forward-thinking collaboration.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/fy19_harvard_financial_report.pdf" style="text-decoration:none;"></a><a href="https://www.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/fy19_harvard_financial_report.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Roughly 4 percent</a> of Harvard&rsquo;s $40.9 billion endowment is directly invested in &ldquo;natural resources,&quot; although it&#39;s not clear how much of that is invested in fossil fuels.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=13635" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[Related: Harvard is wealthier than more than HALF of the world&rsquo;s countries]</a>Backing up the faculty organizations, Divest Harvard <a href="https://medium.com/@DivestHarvard/letter-to-harvard-corporation-on-its-2050-net-zero-pledge-a7260fd2e76" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">released a statement</a> calling Harvard&rsquo;s refusal to divest &ldquo;dangerous&rdquo; and &ldquo;irresponsible.&quot;&ldquo;[I]n the midst of a climate emergency, we believe that Harvard&rsquo;s pledge is radically insufficient. It fails to demonstrate the leadership we expect and need to see from our institutions...Harvard&rsquo;s insistence on engagement with the fossil fuel industry is dangerous and irresponsible. These companies are bad-faith partners in an effort towards decarbonization: their business models are predicated on continued extraction and exploitation of the world&rsquo;s most vulnerable communities,&rdquo; wrote the group.&ldquo;They are not substantially transitioning to clean energy systems, have a record of attacking climate researchers (including <a href="https://twitter.com/DivestHarvard/status/1246467921112715265" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Harvard&rsquo;s own</a>), and continue to block meaningful climate policy solutions, yet Harvard&rsquo;s public position effectively endorses their actions,&rdquo; the group added.&nbsp;Harvard did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/Arik_Schneider" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@Arik_Schneider</a>

“Meaningful change cannot begin with a symbolic act that disregards these realities,” university president says.

Harvard faculty blasts admin for 'inadequate' fossil fuel divestment plan

The University of California system has announced its intention to completely divest from fossil fuels.&nbsp;Officials in charge of investments insist that their decision to move toward more &ldquo;sustainable&rdquo; and environmentally conscious investments is simply in the practical interest of beneficiaries, rather than a product of political opinion.&nbsp;In an opinion piece in the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-16/divestment-fossil-fuel-university-of-california-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>, UC chief investment officer and treasurer Jagdeep Singh Bachher and chairman of the UC Board of Regents&rsquo; Investments Committee Richard Sherman reasoned that &ldquo;hanging on to fossil fuel assets is a financial risk.&rdquo;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why we will have made our $13.4-billion endowment &ldquo;fossil-free&rdquo; as of the end of this month, and why our $70-billion pension will soon be that way as well,&rdquo; the officials explained in the September 17 op-ed.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=12145" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Former Obama official lends a hand to anti-fossil fuel students]</a>Sherman and Bachher deny that their decision was &ldquo;born of political pressure,&rdquo; or that it is a result of &ldquo;green movement idealism.&rdquo; Instead, they insist that it is based on a &ldquo;sustainable investing&rdquo; approach.&nbsp;&ldquo;Today, we are on track to beat our own five-year goal of investing at least $1 billion in climate change solutions and, by incorporating environmental, social and governance factors &mdash; ESG factors &mdash; into our investment decision-making, we&rsquo;ve become better stewards of university funds,&rdquo; the officials explained.Sherman and Bachher boast that they drove UC to become the first U.S. public university to sign onto the <a href="https://www.unpri.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">U.N&rsquo;s Principles for Responsible Investing</a>, a commitment by institutional investors to act in the &quot;long-term interests&rdquo; of their beneficiaries by incorporating &ldquo;environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors&rdquo; into investment decisions.&nbsp;The commitment consists of six principles to guide investment decisions including to &ldquo;incorporate ESG issues into investment analysis&rdquo; to &ldquo;seek appropriate disclosure on ESG issues by the entities in which we invest,&rdquo; and to &ldquo;promote acceptance and implementation&rdquo; of the listed principles.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11983" style="text-decoration:none;">[RELATED: UIUC shrugs shoulders at fossil fuel divestment demand]</a>The investors emphasize that they are not driven by political reasonings, but that they are led to the same decision that they might be if that were the case. Regardless of political motivations, they say that they sold $150 million in fossil fuel assets because they &ldquo;posed a long-term risk.&rdquo;&ldquo;While our rationale may not be the moral imperative that many activists embrace, our investment decision-making process leads us to the same result. We&rsquo;re in the business of helping to ensure the financial viability of a great university whose stakeholders frequently come at an issue &mdash; even one as terrifyingly consequential as climate change &mdash; from different perspectives,&rdquo; the pair wrote.Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/celinedryan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@celinedryan</a>

UC chief investment officer and the chairman of the Board of Regents’ Investments Committee penned an op-ed for the LA Times insisting that their decisions were purely financially motivated.

UC system announces divestment from fossil fuels

Members of UC Santa Barbara&rsquo;s Associated Students Senate shot down a resolution asking the school to divest from certain companies conducting business in Israel.The student government rejected the resolution in a 14-10 secret ballot vote around 5 a.m. Thursday morning following a ten-and-a-half-hour meeting Wednesday night, the <a href="http://dailynexus.com/2019-04-11/a-s-senate-votes-against-divestment-through-secret-ballot/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Daily Nexus</a>&nbsp;reported.Prior to the vote, students <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SSIUCSB/videos/431101850987647/UzpfSTc2NTg2MDYxMjoxMDE2MTU5NjU3MzE5MDYxMw/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">shared</a> their views on the issue in a town hall meeting.&nbsp;&ldquo;We take a firm stance against forced complicity in the oppression of Palestinians; more specifically, we oppose the involuntary financial contribution students make through tuition,&rdquo; UCSB&rsquo;s Students for Justice in Palestine <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UCSBSJP/photos/a.157447500964692/2319337801442307/?type=3&theater" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">said</a> on Facebook before the vote.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11987" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Pro-Israel orgs slam Ilhan Omar amid widespread campus bias]</a> <center><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FUCSBSJP%2Fphotos%2Fa.157447500964692%2F2319337801442307%2F%3Ftype%3D3&width=500" width="500" height="679" style="border:none;overflow:hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></center> &ldquo;Belonging to a top tier research institution, it is our duty to combat racism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, imperialism, colonialism, classism, all forms of religious intolerance, and global inequality. We cannot exceptionalize the infringement of human rights in Israel/Palestine,&rdquo; the group said.UCSB is the only undergraduate campus in the University of California system whose student government has note passed a divestment motion concerning Israel, according to the Daily Nexus. This is not the first time that the student government in Santa Barbara has tried to join the ranks of its sister colleges. This is the sixth time in seven years that an Israel divestment resolution has failed.Nonetheless, Rabbi Evan Goodman, executive director of Santa Barbara Hillel, was pleased with the outcome of the vote.&nbsp;&ldquo;We are extraordinarily proud of our students for their resolve and integrity in the months, weeks and days leading up to tonight&rsquo;s vote. They gave everything they had to fight this anti-Israel resolution,&rdquo; he <a href="http://santabarbara.hillel.org/home/aboutus/blog/santa-barbara-blog/2019/04/11/bds-resolution-defeated-at-ucsb" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">said</a> in a post on Santa Barbara Hillel&rsquo;s site. &ldquo;Pro-Israel students fought for the moral and intellectual integrity of UCSB and they succeeded. They rallied an impressive campaign to urge senators to vote against the resolution and reached out to campus allies and our community partners. Santa Barbara Hillel has supported these students every step of the way.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6363" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Report: Despite BDS movement, no university has fully divested from Israel]</a>Prior to the vote, UCSB experienced some anti-Israel activity. In 2018, pro-Palestinian activists shut down an Associated Students meeting after a divestment resolution did not pass, according to <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/05/25/uc-santa-barbara-students-shut-down-senate-meeting-after-bds-vote-fails-to-advance/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">The Algemeiner</a>.&ldquo;We are incredibly proud of the students at UC Santa Barbara who defeated this campaign of hatred and propaganda for the sixth time in seven years,&rdquo; UCSB alum Max Samarov, who serves as executive director of Research &amp; Strategy at pro-Israel group StandWithUs, <a href="https://www.standwithus.com/news-database/students-at-uc-santa-barbara-defeat-a-discriminatory-divestment-resolution?id=2665" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said</a>. &ldquo;Resolutions like this one have only served to harm students and hinder efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.&quot;Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/factswithfiona" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">@factswithfiona</a>

UCSB student gov spikes Israel divestment resolution

Cornell University&rsquo;s Student Assembly rejected an anti-Israel Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) resolution on Thursday by a vote count of 15-14 with one abstention.The vote count included &ldquo;two votes allocated to community members that were awarded against the resolution,&rdquo; reported <a href="https://cornellsun.com/2019/04/11/student-assembly-votes-against-resolution-on-divest-movement/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">The Cornell Daily Sun</a>.<a href="https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/faculty/bio_william_jacobson.cfm" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">William A. Jacobson</a>, a Cornell law professor and founder of conservative news outlet&nbsp;Legal Insurrection, told&nbsp;Campus Reform that&nbsp;&ldquo;the &lsquo;community vote&rsquo; takes place where undergraduate students in attendance in the audience get to vote on a resolution.&rdquo;&ldquo;The outcome of the community vote,&rdquo; Jacobson continued, &ldquo;awards two votes on the Student Assembly for or against the resolution (the community vote cannot be split). So here, the community vote was against the resolution [to divest].&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/%5C?ID=12103" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Students try -- and fail -- to oust college president after he defends Israel study abroad]</a>Student Assembly President Varun Devatha told the Cornell Daily Sun that the vote was conducted by secret ballot. Representatives, including freshman Indigo Pavlov and sophomore Nick Matolka, cited media inquiries from journalists representing a &ldquo;D.C. think tank,&rdquo; as well as threats to their personal well-being when explaining why the vote was done in such a fashion.The Student Assembly did not respond to emailed requests for comment from Campus Reform.The <a href="https://cornell.app.box.com/s/6c3k3eroht5zh63x3lm1e6t4gxf5oofc" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">resolution</a> &ldquo;urg[ed] Cornell to divest from companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine and human rights violation [sic].&rdquo;Jewish leaders on campus hailed the failed BDS resolution as a victory.Cornellians for Israel (CFI) President Jay Sirot told Campus Reform that CFI is &ldquo;happy that this one-sided and myopic BDS resolution failed.&rdquo;&ldquo;The pro-Israel community,&rdquo; Sirot added, &ldquo;is committed to good-faith dialogue on how we can help advance the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians. We challenge our opposition on this resolution to join us in that mission.&rdquo;Pro-Israel organization StandWithUs also issued a <a href="https://www.standwithus.com/news-database/standwithus-congratulates-cornell-students-for-defeating-discriminatory-divestment-resolution" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">statement</a> that &ldquo;applauds Hillel and students at Cornell for their dedication and courage in standing up for their community.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10814" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Barnard prez shoots down anti-Israel divestment referendum]</a>Some were concerned about the close vote count, however.&nbsp;Sirot told Campus Reform that the one-vote margin &ldquo;is a sign that Cornellians for Israel must continue to educate [its] campus on Israel&rsquo;s importance in the world and how BDS fails to better the lives of Palestinians.&rdquo;The president of Cornell Hillel, Jillian Shapiro, disagreed and remarked to Campus Reform that &ldquo;the fact that it came down to the community votes to determine the outcome really allowed the student body&#39;s voice to be heard. It became really evident that the student body did not want this resolution to pass.&rdquo;Jacobson concurred, saying in a <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/04/video-cornell-student-assembly-rejects-bds/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">post</a> on Legal Insurrection that &ldquo;BDS has very little support outside the far-left student and faculty activists on campus,&rdquo; but that &ldquo;they can exert disproportionate influence over institutions like the Student Assembly.&rdquo;He elaborated to Campus Reform that &ldquo;the Student Assembly may be elected, but it doesn&#39;t necessarily reflect the political leanings of the student body on any particular issue.&rdquo;Despite the resolution&rsquo;s failure to pass, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) declared a &ldquo;victory&rdquo; in a Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CornellS4JP/posts/1213616622140201?__tn__=K-R" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">post</a>.&ldquo;When we last brought divestment before the Student Assembly five years ago,&rdquo; Cornell SJP said, &ldquo;the resolution died within minutes of it being introduced because the SA didn&rsquo;t even consider it worthy of debate. Today, we saw a majority of SA members vote for divestment, with the resolution only being defeated by a quirk of parliamentary procedure,&rdquo; referring to the two community votes.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7338" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Students ask UMN to divest from companies it doesn&rsquo;t invest in]</a>&ldquo;Our campaign accomplished everything we could have hoped for and more,&rdquo; the group continued. &ldquo;Throughout this process, we stood unapologetically against oppression. We believe that our university&rsquo;s investments and financial operations have no place in occupation, apartheid, and colonization.&rdquo;Jacobson wrote in his Legal Insurrection post that &ldquo;the SJP strategy also had a putrid racial overtone, with SJP repeatedly emphasizing that all of the non-white student identity groups endorsed the resolution.&rdquo;&ldquo;The resolution,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;thus was presented as students of color backing &lsquo;Palestine&rsquo; against the white Jews supporting Israel. This is the toxic byproduct of how intersectionality theory dominates on campuses, with Jews and Israel being the center of the supposed intersecting systems of oppression.&rdquo;Cornell SJP failed to respond to a request for comment in time for press.Jacobson also told Campus Reform that it is &ldquo;not surprising&rdquo; that SJP declared victory &ldquo;even though they lost the vote because they achieved their purpose, which was putting Israel on trial and building a coalition against Israel.&rdquo;&ldquo;The point of BDS on campuses,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;is not actually the boycott, divestment or sanction itself. BDS is just a tactic to dominate campus life and energy in the cause of demonizing Israel.&quot;Follow the author of this article on twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mstein81" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">@mstein81</a>

ONE VOTE decided Cornell’s Israeli divestment resolution

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has stated that it has no plans to divest from fossil fuels after students approved in early March a resolution in favor of doing so.&nbsp;The <a href="http://studentelections.illinois.edu/docs/SP19-unofficial-results.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">resolution</a>, which asked the question, &ldquo;Do you support removing investments in fossil fuel companies from the University of Illinois&rsquo; endowment and the University of Illinois Foundation by 2020?&rdquo; passed with 4,699 students voting in favor of it and 1,581 students voting against it.UIUC currently invests as much as $300 million in fossil fuel companies, according to the student group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UIUCBeyondCoal/posts/2112960908797517" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">UIUC Beyond Coal</a>. The club claims that the university is &ldquo;financing climate change&rdquo; by investing in these companies.&nbsp;&ldquo;If you agree that a public university financing climate change is unacceptable and that U of I should support renewable energy instead, vote YES for a Fossil Free UIUC on the student ballot!&rdquo; UIUC Beyond Coal said the first morning of the vote.<a href="https://wwwt.campusreform.org/?ID=7027" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: Fossil fuel divestment activists fold after Stanford threatens disciplinary action]</a>Fossil fuels account for approximately 63.5 percent of the United States&rsquo; generation of electricity, according to the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">U.S Energy Information Administration</a>. The administration also <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_transportation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">states</a> that petroleum made up 92 percent of energy used by the U.S. transportation sector in 2017.Drilling for fossil fuels has increased in the U.S. over the years. As of December 2018, the United States exports more oil than it imports for the first time in three-quarters of a century, according to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-06/u-s-becomes-a-net-oil-exporter-for-the-first-time-in-75-years" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>.&ldquo;Divesting from a specific company or specific companies are extremely harmful to an investment portfolio,&rdquo; Madeleine Hubbard, President of Turning Point USA at UIUC, told Campus Reform. &ldquo;Also, many of these companies offer jobs to graduating students. Divesting from these companies shows that we are not interested in them.&rdquo;&nbsp;&ldquo;The main issue with completely getting rid of fossil fuel is that it is often used as a back up [if] clean energy goes down,&rdquo; Hubbard continued. &ldquo;I do not think that there will be any time in the foreseeable future where we can operate 100 percent without fossil fuel.&rdquo;&nbsp;The Turning Point president also analyzed fossil fuel divestment as it related to UIUC students.&ldquo;This divestment also completely ignores that there is a coal plant on campus,&rdquo; she told Campus Reform. &ldquo;If we were to not use that coal plant, our tuition would be so much more expensive. I highly doubt that students will be willing to pay hundreds of dollars more to come here.&rdquo;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/%5C?ID=11098" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">[RELATED: STUDY: Fossil fuels contribute to &lsquo;petro-masculinity&rsquo;]</a>&ldquo;The Board of Trustees and the University of Illinois system do not have a plan to &lsquo;divest&rsquo; from coal at this time,&rdquo; University of Illinois spokesman Tom Hardy told Campus Reform.UIUC Beyond Coal did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realblairnelson" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">@realblairnelson</a>

Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign approved a resolution calling on the school to divest from fossil fuels.

UIUC shrugs shoulders at fossil fuel divestment demand

Barnard College says it will not divest from companies that do business in Israel despite a student referendum in favor of the idea.The referendum, which passed last Wednesday with 64 percent support, called for&nbsp;Barnard&rsquo;s Student Government Association (SGA) to write a letter to the administration demanding that&nbsp;the college divest from eight companies which &ldquo;profit from or engage in the State of Israel&rsquo;s treatment of Palestinians,&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/18/barnard-sga-referendum-on-divestment-from-israeli-companies-passes-with-64-support/" style="text-decoration:none;">according to&nbsp;The Columbia Spectator</a>.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10599" style="text-decoration:none;">[RELATED: BDS referendum moves forward at UMN]</a>While the referendum does not oblige the SGA to forward the proposal, Barnard President Sian Beilock took preemptive action Monday, saying in an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/23/beilock-says-barnard-will-not-take-action-on-israel-divestment-referendum-causing-uproar-from-students/" style="text-decoration:none;">email</a> to the school community that the college will not be divesting its endowment regardless of whether the SGA officially makes the request.&ldquo;You are of course free to continue your discussions on this issue, but it would be misleading to not provide you with clarity on the College&rsquo;s thinking prior to the SGA discussions on this topic that I understand will take place this week,&rdquo; Beilock wrote, explaining that any changes to the school&rsquo;s endowment must &ldquo;relate directly to Barnard&rsquo;s mission&rdquo; and have the support of &ldquo;a clear consensus across the Barnard community.&rdquo;Beilock asserted that the divestment referendum did not meet either standard, saying it &ldquo;would risk chilling campus discourse&rdquo; and pointing out that the students who voted in favor of the referendum constitute just 30 percent of the student body.<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8886" style="text-decoration:none;">[RELATED: Barnard College to divest from &lsquo;climate deniers&rsquo;]</a>A Jewish student group at Columbia, Aryeh, released a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/aryehcolumbia/" style="text-decoration:none;">statement</a> praising President Beilock&rsquo;s email, saying it is &ldquo;encouraged by the President&rsquo;s acknowledgement that choosing a side on this issue contradicts Barnard&rsquo;s commitment to free discourse.&rdquo;&ldquo;Enabling the BDS movement would only further damage campus discourse,&rdquo; the statement continued. &ldquo;Proponents of BDS at Barnard have consistently opposed free discourse by pushing for academic boycotts, promoting a policy of &lsquo;anti-normalization,&rsquo; excluding critical voices from activist spaces, slandering their peers as &lsquo;racists,&rsquo; and advancing a reductive view of the conflict that demonizes the Jewish state.&rdquo;Other student groups criticized the referendum as being one-sided, alleging that pro-Israel groups were not aware of the SGA meeting at which the referendum was approved until the evening before.The president of Columbia/Barnard Hillel Talia Rubin, for instance,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/05/sga-vote-on-referendum-criticized-by-pro-israel-students-as-one-sided/" style="text-decoration:none;">told the&nbsp;Spectator</a>&nbsp;that opponents of the measure &ldquo;had basically a day&rsquo;s notice to think about what [the presentation] would mean, to make sure that people would feel safe going into that, and to make sure that people would have sufficient counter to [the presentation] even though there wasn&rsquo;t an opportunity given to present.&rdquo;Albert Mishaan, president of Aryeh, sent Aryeh&rsquo;s post-referendum statement to&nbsp;Campus Reform. It said that the &ldquo;referendum is a defeat for all students that pursue peace between Israelis and Palestinians, seek intellectually honest discourse about Israel and the conflict, reject anti-Semitism both in intent and effect, and value an inclusive community at Barnard.&rdquo;&ldquo;From the very beginning, this process was dishonest and opaque,&rdquo; it continued. &ldquo;The decision to initiate a referendum was made behind closed doors without hearing formally from any pro-Israel students&mdash;and in contradiction to repeated assurances that no decision or vote would be made during that session.&rdquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9056" style="text-decoration:none;">[RELATED: Tufts students pass BDS resolution on eve of Passover]</a>The SGA Executive Board&nbsp;<a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2018/04/23/democracy-and-divestment-an-argument-for-referendums/" style="text-decoration:none;">wrote an op-ed</a> defending its decision to release the referendum, asserting that its &ldquo;primary responsibility as SGA is to represent the student body, and we are better able to do so now that we know the votes of the 1,153 Barnard students who participated in the referendum. We believe in the power of referendums, and think that they are the best tool for student governments to transparently represent the interests of their constituents.&rdquo;&ldquo;Though the referendum has passed, SGA is not required to write a letter to administrators, as the referendum suggests,&rdquo; the op-ed continued. &ldquo;Instead, members of the Representative Council will make their own decision on whether or not the letter should be written and sent, though they will take the result of the student vote into consideration.&rdquo;Beilock made clear in her email, however, that the referendum is a non-starter, regardless of what SGA decides.&ldquo;It is imperative that all of us at Barnard work hard to foster a community in which difficult topics can be discussed in an environment free from fear and hate,&rdquo; she concluded. &ldquo;I urge you to consider how SGA can best foster civil discourse moving forward across a range of complex issues so as to allow for the highest quality education and scholarship on our campus.&rdquo;Follow the author of this article on Twitter:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mstein81?lang=en" style="text-decoration:none;">@mstein81</a>

Barnard prez shoots down anti-Israel divestment referendum

A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) guidebook was recently leaked, exposing the group&rsquo;s plans to increase divestment activity on campus.
The &ldquo;Divestment Handbook,&rdquo; released by <a href="http://sjpleaks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SJP-Divestment-Handbook.pdf">SJP Leaks</a>, offers students tactics for starting a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is considered to be anti-Semitic <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/bds-the-global-campaign-to-delegitimize-israel">by the Anti-Defamation League</a>.
According to the handbook, one of BDS&rsquo;s three main goals is securing a &ldquo;right of return&rdquo; for Palestinian refugees, a group now <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees">numbering</a> 5 million from an original 750,000, since refugees pass their status on to their descendants.
<a href="../?ID=9375">[RELATED: Kent State SJP applauds eviction of Jews from Pride Parade]</a>
Additionally, the guidebook advocates granting Arab-Palestinian residents of Israel &ldquo;full equality,&rdquo; and &ldquo;ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands&rdquo; as other goals of the movement, offering students 52 pages of material on how to achieve those ends. &nbsp;&nbsp;
However, the guide first warns students about the importance of intersectionality, asking them to consider if there are &ldquo;more white students than students of color&rdquo; in their SJP organizations.
&ldquo;Race is always present in grassroots organizing,&rdquo; the guide cautions. &ldquo;Are there more white students than students of color in your organization? Are the opinions of pro-divestment Jewish students valued over those of Palestinians? Are you tokenizing the struggles of Black, Native, or Latino students, instead of carefully engaging with them?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Women and non-binary folks do the busy and behind-the-scenes work while men become the face of the campaign,&rdquo; the handbook continues, stressing the importance of creating an &ldquo;intersectional student movement.&rdquo;
<a href="../?ID=10163">[RELATED: Pro-Palestine students shout down openly gay Israeli vet]</a>
Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist Organization of America&rsquo;s (ZOA) Center for Law and Justice, told Campus Reform that &ldquo;the handbook is a very clever, thoughtful, and detailed roadmap for organizing and carrying out an anti-Israel divestment campaign on campus,&rdquo; calling it a &ldquo;shrewd and potentially appealing way of manipulating students.&rdquo;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s shrewd because it doesn&rsquo;t yell and scream about how horrible Israel is. Instead, the handbook very subtly sends the message that Israel is an oppressive occupier of Palestinian Arab land, and a human rights abusing country that deliberately kills innocent Palestinian Arab civilians,&rdquo; she elaborated, noting that &ldquo;however subtly delivered, the message is outrageous and couldn&rsquo;t be further from the truth.
Similarly, Max Samarov, executive director of research and campus strategy at StandWithUs, an Israel education organization, <a href="https://forward.com/scribe/393199/students-for-justice-in-palestine-relies-on-a-network-of-hate/">blasted</a> the handbook for &ldquo;reveal[ing] that SJP relies heavily on outside political groups&rdquo; despite its <a href="https://www.nationalsjp.org/about-nsjp.html">self-advertisement</a> as an &ldquo;independent grassroots organization.&rdquo;
<a href="../?ID=9718">[RELATED: Anti-Israel group urges Antifa violence against Zionists]</a>
&ldquo;Students for Justice in Palestine is a hate group whose aim, through the use of anti-Semitic campaigns such as BDS, is to demonize the state of Israel, its people, and its supporters on campus, who are mainly American Jewish students,&rdquo; added Aviva Slomich, international campus director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
Tuchman, commenting on the guide&rsquo;s claim of &ldquo;establishing solidarity with fellow student organizations,&rdquo; told Campus Reform that while SJP says it is committed to &ldquo;social justice,&rdquo; its actions reflect &ldquo;exactly the opposite.&rdquo;
&ldquo;It tries to paint the divestment movement as a movement of socially conscious people,&rdquo; she noted, but &ldquo;the message is that if you don&rsquo;t join or support the divestment movement, then you&rsquo;re being complicit in violence and oppression.&rdquo;
Tuchman concluded by calling the guidebook dangerous because &ldquo;students without sufficient knowledge could be taken in by it.&rdquo;
Slomich agreed, saying the handbook &ldquo;only further emphasizes how far they will go to manipulate liberal-minded college students into thinking SJP's cause is just and actually deserves their support.&rdquo;
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/mstein81">@mstein81</a>

‘Divestment handbook' reveals anti-Israel group's strategies

Boston University students are encouraging alumni to withhold any further donations to their alma mater until administrators agree to sell all the school&rsquo;s holdings in the fossil fuel industry.
A student group calling itself &ldquo;Divest BU&rdquo; launched a petition Thursday pleading with alumni to sign their names to a pledge to withhold donations, declaring in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DivestBU/">a Facebook post</a> that &ldquo;since student voices are not enough to sway this administration, we have no choice but to call upon another important body of BU&mdash;alumni.&rdquo;
<a href="../?ID=7712">[RELATED: NYU rejects fossil-fuel divestment as meaningless political statement] </a>
&ldquo;Divest BU asks alumni to withhold donation to Boston University until it divests from companies continuing to explore fossil fuel reserves,&rdquo; the post continues, predicting that &ldquo;hits to the university&rsquo;s rankings, reputation, and financial reserves&rdquo; will &ldquo;force the administration to pay attention to student voices.&rdquo;
According to Divest BU, the administration had repeatedly &ldquo;refused to listen&rdquo; after members of the divestment group lobbied the school&rsquo;s president, met with the Dean of Students, and asked Chairman Kenneth Feld to &ldquo;reconsider&rdquo; his opposition to fossil fuel divestment.
&ldquo;As of the last Board of Trustees meeting, BU remains invested in pernicious oil and gas companies that actively fight against climate justice and an equitable future,&rdquo; the group&rsquo;s plea declares, stating that its goal is to &ldquo;reach 2000 signatures by August 3,&rdquo; just in time for the Board&rsquo;s next meeting.
<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7338">[RELATED: Students ask UMN to divest from companies it doesn&rsquo;t invest in]</a>
The <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdm0mHUld2YEJvbyUaMQJUkXj0_wFcV6loz2Y9FQ2NCVYaxEQ/viewform?c=0&amp;w=1">alumni pledge</a> itself decries &ldquo;Boston University&rsquo;s continual investment&rdquo; in fossil fuels as one that &ldquo;legitimizes the fossil fuel industry, the deconstruction that it has perpetuated, and the injustice it has fostered towards poor communities.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Considering the leadership role of the university, I find it contradictory that BU invests its endowment&mdash;and therefore my donation&mdash;in the fossil fuel industry,&rdquo; the alumni pledge states. &ldquo;The extraction and consumption of fossil fuels harms the environment, public health, and exacerbates the already negative consequences of climate change.&rdquo;
Divest BU&rsquo;s head of campus engagement, Ivan Badanjak, <a href="http://dailyfreepress.com/2017/05/20/divest-bu-asks-alumni-to-withhold-donations-to-university/">explained to The Daily Free Press</a> that a target goal of 2,000 signatures &ldquo;is a large enough number to afford legitimacy to [his] petition,&rdquo; adding that he set an August deadline in order to organize his next moves &ldquo;and send the petition over to the school administration before a presumed Board of Trustees meeting.&rdquo;
<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8886">[RELATED: Barnard College to divest from &lsquo;climate deniers&rsquo;]</a>
&ldquo;Each year, a substantial amount of BU&rsquo;s operating budget is derived from alumni donations,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;We are hoping such an initiative would be symbolic enough to the school administration to signal that we want change.&rdquo;
Campus Reform reached out to the university for comment on the alumni pledge, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AGockowski">@AGockowski</a>

Alumni pledge to hold donations hostage to divestment

A member of the American University Board of Trustees is being accused of &ldquo;intimidating&rdquo; students by sending derisive replies to a form letter demanding divestment from fossil fuels.
&ldquo;IMPORTANT: AU Board of Trustees member Alan Meltzer is sending aggressive replies to students who have sent our email demanding divestment,&rdquo; blares an announcement from Fossil Free AU, a student group pressuring the university to sell of all its investments in fossil fuel industries.
&ldquo;Fossil Free AU refuses to be deterred by this sort of blatant and embarrassing attempt at intimidating students,&rdquo; the message declares. &ldquo;We will not let any AU board member abuse their power in order to silence demands for justice.&rdquo;
The &ldquo;aggressive replies&rdquo; to which the group refers were sent in response to a form letter that Fossil Free AU is encouraging students to send in anticipation of an upcoming Board of Trustees meeting at which a new chair is to be selected for the Finance and Investment Committee.
The Committee&rsquo;s previous chairman, Gary Cohn, was &ldquo;the biggest roadblock to divestment at AU,&rdquo; Fossil Free AU asserts on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/259432557841439/" >a Facebook event page</a> for a rally it is planning to hold during the March 2 Board meeting, during which its supporters will demand &ldquo;a new chair who truly values justice over personal profits&rdquo; and will &ldquo;immediately reconsider the question of divestment.&rdquo;
<a href="../?ID=8479" >[RELATED: AU students demand Trustee be fired for meeting with Trump]</a>
Along with the protest, Fossil Free AU has also been <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/letters/appoint-finance-investment-committee-chair-open-to-divestment" >urging sympathizers to send a form email</a> to members of Finance and Investment Committee &ldquo;demanding that they pick a new chair who is open to eliminating fossil fuel investments from the endowment.&rdquo; The form&nbsp;does not allow signatories to read or edit the text of the letter in advance of providing their information, but Fossil Free AU told&nbsp;Campus Reform that the website offers both options before the email is actually sent.
&ldquo;Gary Cohn, a staunch opponent of divestment from fossil fuels, has resigned from the American University Board of Trustees to join the Trump administration,&rdquo; a brief summary explains, adding that &ldquo;Cohn used his position as chair of the board's Finance &amp; Investment Committee to block divestment in 2014.&rdquo;
<a href="../?ID=6962">[RELATED: REPORT: Divestment about politics, not environment]</a>
The form letter adopts an accusatory tone, claiming that the Board&rsquo;s 2014 rejection of divestment was premised on the AU General Counsel&rsquo;s &ldquo;incorrect&rdquo; interpretation of a D.C. law requiring &ldquo;prudent fiduciary stewardship&rdquo; and insisting that the new Finance and Investment Committee chair &ldquo;provide a written commitment that the committee will reconsider divestment no later than its November meeting.&rdquo;
The letter, 129 copies of which had been sent as of press time, did not find a receptive audience with Meltzer, who began sending terse responses rejecting the demands and criticizing the senders for their lack of originality.
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t demand anything from ME,&rdquo; he indignantly responded to one submission. &ldquo;Also be original, if you really care with your AU education you can write your own email.&rdquo;
<img src="../img/CROBlog/8839/AUMeltzer1.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="315" />
Other replies were sent from his iPhone, but the additional typos did little to obfuscate his meaning.
&ldquo;Demand. Also can&rsquo;t u with your AU education be original. Come on. If u really cares [sic] u might spend sometime [sic] and write something that is a little more intelligent,&rdquo; he told one correspondent. Abbreviating the sentiment somewhat in another reply, he pointed out that an &ldquo;AU education&rdquo; is &ldquo;not cheap&rdquo; after reiterating his appeal for originality.
<img src="../img/CROBlog/8839/AUMeltzer2.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="513" /><img src="../img/CROBlog/8839/AUMeltzer3.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="532" />
&ldquo;Fossil Free AU is not intimidated by these aggressive emails, but we are surprised by the complete lack of professionalism employed by a man holding one of the most powerful positions at American University,&rdquo; Fossil Free AU told Campus Reform, adding that its members are &ldquo;amused by Meltzer's failure to see the irony in his sending completely incoherent emails claiming that it is we who need to &lsquo;spend sometime and write something that is a little more intelligent.&rdquo;
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/realJadeHaney" >@realJadeHaney</a>

AU Trustee scoffs at form letters demanding divestment

The New York University Board of Trustees rejected vehement demands from students to divest from fossil fuels because doing so would have amounted to a meaningless political statement.
<a href="http://www.nyunews.com/2016/06/16/nyu-decides-against-fossil-fuel-divestment/" >According to Washington Square News</a>, NYU President Andrew Hamilton explained the Board&rsquo;s reasoning in an email to the university Thursday in which he explains that a divestment of their holdings in fossil fuel companies, as students had requested in a 2015 University Senate resolution, would be more of a political statement than an actual strategy for fighting climate change.
<a href="../?ID=6962">[RELATED: REPORT: Divestment about politics, not environment]</a>
&ldquo;We applaud the efforts of faculty, students, and staff to advocate for addressing climate change and in proposing divestment, but do not support NYU using its endowment as a tool for simply making statements,&rdquo; Hamilton explained. &ldquo;We understand that some proponents of divestment argue that divestment in and of itself can help to advance the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependency on fossil fuels. However, we are not persuaded by this argument.&rdquo;
Board of Trustees Chair William Berkley added that the university would not give up its fight against climate change, but would do so using campus-wide initiatives, such as focusing on lowering NYU&rsquo;s greenhouse gas emissions, raising awareness on campus, and other projects.
The NYU Board&rsquo;s decision comes on the heels of a similar case at Stanford University, where students and faculty protested their university&rsquo;s fossil fuel investments by threatening to withhold donations until their demands are met, only to be similarly rebuffed by the Board of Trustees.
<a href="http://campusreform.org/?ID=7684" >[RELATED: Students, faculty pledge to halt donations until Stanford divests from fossil fuels]</a>
In March 2015, the NYU Financial Affairs Committee released a <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/univSenate/documents/fossil-fuel-divestment-working-group-3-26-2015.pdf" >report</a> recommending that the university keep its holdings. The Fossil Fuel Divestment Working Group, comprising both administrators and students, concluded that the university can have the &ldquo;greatest impact on global warming and sustainability through direct action and through its teaching and research mission,&rdquo; rather than through divestment.
Even so, the University Senate passed a <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/dam/nyu/stuSenatorsCouncil/documents/NYU_SSC_Resolution_For_Fossil_Fuel_Divestment.pdf" >resolution</a> in <a href="http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2015/04/nyu-senate-votes-against-new-investments-in-fossil-fuel-021748" >April</a> recommending that NYU avoid future investments and &ldquo;divest their holdings from fossil fuel companies and companies which profit from the continued emission of greenhouse gases.&rdquo;
NYU&rsquo;s endowment was valued at $3.6 billion in June of 2015, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-16/new-york-university-declines-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels" >Bloomberg reports</a>, though the university has not disclosed the exact value of its fossil fuel holdings.
Students, faculty, and alumni in favor of the Senate resolution began a series of protests on NYU&rsquo;s campus and formed the group <a href="http://nyu-divest.squarespace.com/" >NYU Divest</a> to demand action from the university, calling for NYU to &ldquo;live up to its stated values of sustainability and global community.&rdquo;
In October 2015, three years after Hurricane Sandy, NYU Divest staged a <a href="http://www.nyunews.com/2015/10/29/photos-divest-demands-accountability-from-nyu-in-face-of-climate-change/" >public demonstration</a> on campus urging the university to &ldquo;recognize the victims of climate change and divest from fossil fuels,&rdquo; during which members taped their mouths shut with fake dollar bills and held signs saying &ldquo;Climate justice is social justice&rdquo; and &ldquo;Climate change is local.&rdquo;
The group held another series of protests on April 18, which culminated with several members <a href="http://www.nyunews.com/2016/04/18/breaking-nyu-divest-occupies-bobst-library/" >occupying NYU&rsquo;s Bobst Library</a> and blocking an elevator to administrative offices. NYU Divest member Olivia Rich claimed the drastic action was necessary due to a lack of transparency on the part of the university, and demanded a meeting with the Board of Trustees prior to a formal vote on divestment.
Their occupation came to an abrupt end at 5:00 p.m., however, when administrators informed the protesters that they would be suspended if they remained in the building past library hours.
Despite the group&rsquo;s behavior, the Board agreed to look at NYU Divest&rsquo;s demands, and placed divestment on the docket for their June meeting.
NYU spokesman John Beckman reported that the Board took time to seriously consider NYU Divest&rsquo;s demands, but came to the conclusion &ldquo;that divestment was not the proper action to take.&rdquo;
Now that the Board has ruled against its aims, though, NYU Divest vows that it will continue its fight until it achieves its desired result.
&ldquo;NYU Divest will not end its campaign until NYU honors the wishes of its University Senate and broader community by divesting from fossil fuels,&rdquo; Olivia Rich declared in response to the decision.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/jelawrence72" >@jelawrence72</a>

NYU rejects fossil fuel divestment as meaningless political statement

A <a href="http://divestmentfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Bessembinder-Report-FINAL.pdf" >new study</a> shows that divesting university endowments from fossil fuel and fossil fuel-related investments could cause up to a 12% loss in value over a 20-year timeframe, amounting to billions of dollars.
Henrick Bessembinder, professor of finance at Arizona State University&rsquo;s Carey School of Business, calculated the costs associated with the growing call for universities to divest their endowments from fossil fuel investments.
&ldquo;The costs of divestment would be substantial, while its benefits are uncertain,&rdquo; said Bessembinder.
Usually, pro-divestment students stress the symbolic value of divestment, which is often their retort to critics who cite the increased risks, diminished returns, higher costs, and minimal impact on the fossil fuel industry associated with an endowment dumping its fossil fuel-related positions.
The study focuses on the &ldquo;frictional costs&rdquo; of fossil fuel divestment: immediate transaction costs associated with existing fossil fuel investments and ongoing management costs to avoid touching fossil fuel investments in the future.
<a href="../?ID=6962" >[RELATED: REPORT: divestment about politics, not environment]</a>
Transaction costs include those associated with selling off entire mutual funds, commingled funds, and private equity funds because a percentage of their holdings are in fossil fuels, and large blocks of assets in a short period of time. After the initial sell-off, endowment managers need to continuously pay for research to keep up with investment options that are free of fossil fuel positions. Besseminder observed the definition of such investments are constantly in flux.
Furthermore, the study points out that the top 10 actively managed &ldquo;green&rdquo; funds charge management fees ten basis points higher than other actively managed funds, and 73 basis points higher than passively managed funds.
Using 30 colleges across the country, Bessembinder&rsquo;s study found that for large endowments, fossil fuel divestment could lead to $7.4 billion in lost value over 20 years. For medium and small endowments, the losses could reach $289 million and $89 million, respectively.
That is in addition to diminished long-term returns caused by a reduction in diversification of the endowment investments.
Pro-divestment student activists usually don&rsquo;t make it past petitions and student government resolutions. Sometimes they manage to administrators to partially acquiesce, as in the case of <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/may/divest-coal-trustees-050714.html" >Stanford&rsquo;s divestment</a> from coal holdings, but most of the time they have been rebuked; for example, Cornell University&rsquo;s Board of Trustees recently decided fossil fuel production <a href="http://www.thecornellreview.org/cornell-board-of-trustees-reject-fossil-fuel-divestment/" >does not rise to the occasion for divestment</a>.
&ldquo;Markets deliver what society values and is willing to pay for,&rdquo; said Bessembinder. &ldquo; As long as society values fossil fuels, markets will deliver them. The only effective way of reducing reliance is to reduce demand.&rdquo;
This article was <a href="../?ID=7438" >originally published</a> in The Cornell Review, a conservative student newspaper affiliated with the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program. Its articles are republished here with permission.
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Study: Fossil fuel divestment would cost university endowments billions

Submitting to the demands of student protesters, the University of Massachusetts has decided to sell its investments in fossil fuels, making it the first major university in the country to divest from the industry.
UMass announced in <a href="https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-becomes-first-major-public" >a press release</a> Monday that its Board of Directors had unanimously endorsed the divestment, which the school describes as the culmination in a series of recent steps taken at the behest of students concerned about climate change.
Student environmental activists at the Amherst campus have been pressuring the university to divest for months, creating a Facebook group, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/divestumass/?fref=ts" >UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign</a>, to organize protests and sit-ins at the Whitmore administration building.
The group describes itself as a &ldquo;student power organization fighting for climate justice by demanding our institution divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies and reinvest in projects and funds that do not perpetuate racism, classism, sexism, and other systems of oppression,&rdquo; adding that its goal is &ldquo;to bring the crisis created by economic inequality and climate change to those who are responsible and challenge our University to take the bold action necessary to ensure a just future for its students, the Commonwealth, and the world.&rdquo;
<img src="../img/CROBlog/7629/UMassFossilFuelDivestmentCampaignrally.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="315" />
The protesters were determined, and were willing to brave arrest by refusing to disperse from the building. Many of them skipped classes and had to be forcefully removed by the UMass Police, but they would nonetheless continue to hold sit-ins until their demands were met.
<img src="../img/CROBlog/7629/Protester%20being%20arrested%20by%20UMass%20Police1.png" alt="" width="1200" height="630" />
At one point, Green Party presidential candidate <a href="https://www.facebook.com/divestumass/photos/a.321145978005518.75295.291413964312053/920353044751472/?type=3&amp;theater" >Jill Stein visited</a> the campus to commend the students for their efforts, and various professors also <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UMassAmherstEconomics/photos/a.236759713039172.53318.198484023533408/1017138355001300/?type=3&amp;theater" >encouraged their actions</a>.
In response to the demonstrations last month, university President Marty Meehan met with representatives from the Divestment Campaign, emerging from the meeting pledging to support not only full divestment from fossil fuels, but also increased investment in the &ldquo;green&rdquo; energy industry.
&ldquo;This action is consistent with the principles that have guided our university since its Land Grant inception and reflects our commitment to take on the environmental challenges that confront us all,&rdquo; Meehan said of the divestment vote. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m proud of the students and the entire University community for putting UMass at the forefront of a vital movement, one that has been important to me throughout my professional life.&rdquo;
He also provided additional details about his green energy plan, saying he plans to boost funding for &ldquo;sustainability/green technology projects&rdquo; with money from the President&rsquo;s Science and Technology Initiative Fund, which last year awarded over $900,000 in research grants.
UMass Board of Trustees Chairman Victor Woolridge, who plans to seek an endorsement of the divestment at the next Board meeting on June 15, suggested that the green energy funding would help to offset the financial losses that could result from selling the university&rsquo;s holdings in fossil fuel companies.
&ldquo;We do so, in part, because members of the UMass community have urged us to consider divestment in moral terms,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Since we acknowledge the moral imperative, we are willing to go beyond last year&rsquo;s action and take this additional step, but we&rsquo;re also mindful of our moral and fiduciary obligation to safeguard the University&rsquo;s endowment, which provides critical funding for faculty research and student scholarships, and must be protected against losses. We believe this conclusive action balances those two priorities.&rdquo;
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UMass caves after month of protests, agrees to fossil fuel divestment

An Israeli divestment bill at the University of South Florida (USF) was vetoed by the student body president and vice president shortly after its passage last week.
The student senate&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.usforacle.com/news/view.php/1015807/SG-Senate-votes-for-divestment" >joint resolution</a> called on the university to divest from corporations that the resolution says &ldquo;are continuously and knowingly complicit in violations of Palestinian rights.&rdquo;
The resolution asked that the university divest from corporations such as Caterpillar, which USF&rsquo;s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter claims supplies the Israeli army with bulldozers that destroy Palestinian homes.
&ldquo;These bulldozers demolish Palestinian homes, construct the separation wall and create settlements on Palestinian lands, and cause civilian casualties,&rdquo; the resolution stated.
Other companies on the list included: Hewlett-Packard, G4S PLC, Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Lockheed Martin, which they say provides weapons &ldquo;used in war crimes against Palestinian civilians.&rdquo;
This resolution was just the most recent step in an over two-year process by SJP to pressure the university into divesting from corporations providing aid and materials to Israel.
SJP circulated a petition in 2014 that generated over 10,000 signatures calling for the university to divest from these corporations. It has the most signatures ever obtained on petition at a Florida university.
When the petition was brought before the USF Investment Committee the SJP <a href="http://sjpusf.com/divestment/faq/" >website</a> claims they &ldquo;were shut down in under 15 minutes, because USF leadership doesn&rsquo;t want our message heard.&rdquo; They claim they weren&rsquo;t allowed to make a presentation to the USF Investment Committee.
However, Lara Wade-Martinez, the Director of Media Relations at USF, told Campus Reform that SJP did in fact get to present to the CEO and Foundation Board Chair for over an hour.
Wade-Martinez explained that after the presentation the petition and accompanying materials were then circulated to the members of the Investment Committee, which then passed a resolution and issued a statement declaring &ldquo;The USF Foundation will not divest investments or alter the investment policy or process based on requests from individuals or groups.&rdquo;
Since the issue was already taken up and considered, Wade-Martinez says it will not be taken up again or voted on at future meetings.
&ldquo;The USF administration has worked every step of the way to interfere with student voices. It&rsquo;s time for the USF administration to step back and allow the student voices to be heard,&rdquo; said Muhammad Imam, a student senator who sponsored the resolution, in an <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/university-south-florida-students-pass-israel-divestment-resolution" >interview</a> with Electronic Intifada.
Along with the petition and resolution, SJP also released a <a href="https://vimeo.com/86345489" >video</a> in 2014 telling students how USF&rsquo;s money allegedly goes to companies who make fighter jets that bomb Palestinians. In the video, these cartoon fighter jets drop bombs labeled &ldquo;made 2 kill&rdquo; on the Gaza strip, with the resulting explosions also exclaiming &ldquo;kill!&rdquo;
SJP has over 126 chapters at universities across the US that routinely initiate boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) campaigns against corporations and individuals that do business with Israel. SJP chapters have <a href="http://www.thecornellreview.org/cornell-sjp-celebrates-israeli-genocide-day-on-israeli-independence-day/" >accused</a> Israel of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Executive Director of Hillels of the Suncoast Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, who oversees all the campus Hillel organizations in the Tampa area, <a href="http://www.tbo.com/news/education/activists-usf-invests-in-firms-linked-to-rights-violations-20140518/" >told</a> the Tampa Tribune that the, &ldquo;Members of [SJP] are trying to de-legitimize the state of Israel through falsehoods, half-truths and blatant lies. This has gone beyond political discourse. This is anti-Semitism.&rdquo;
Imam told Campus Reform that the petition was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sjpusf/photos/a.460039870708709.101777.109802582399108/1025773204135370/?type=3&amp;theater" >endorsed</a> by Jewish Voice for Peace
&ldquo;We strongly believe that divestment demonstrates Jewish values of justice and healing the world,&rdquo; the organization said.
And Imam isn&rsquo;t deterred by the recent veto of the SJP resolution.
&ldquo;The movement at USF is growing. More and more students are speaking out,&rdquo; Imam told Campus Reform, &ldquo;Our efforts have opened up discussion of these issues in our academic communities and beyond. The world has been astonishingly silent during decades of Israeli occupation, and much of America still does not dare to raise any criticism of Israel. The charge of anti-Semitism serves to deflect attention away from Israeli governmental actions.&rdquo;
Student Body President Andy Rodriguez explained in the Executive Memorandum that vetoed the resolution that &ldquo;[w]e believe that bringing a topic as polarized and politically driven as this into the realm of student government serves only to divide the student body and to disparage students with opposing viewpoints, instead of uniting our students.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We are steadfast in our belief that it is not the role of student government to interject into international politics nor investment policies,&rdquo; Rodriguez said.
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Israeli divestment bill seeking to boycott HP, Boeing vetoed at USF

After initially resisting threats of disciplinary action, student activists demanding that Stanford University sell off all its investments in fossil fuel companies finally ended their week-long demonstration.
Five days after it began, the sit-in on the Main Quad organized by Fossil Free Stanford wrapped up with a rally Friday morning, just hours before the school pledged to remove the protesters by force, <a href="http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/11/21/fossil-fuel-divestment-sit-in-ends-with-rally-hennessy-meeting/" >according to The Stanford Daily</a>.
The administration had originally warned the students that their occupation of the Main Quad was a violation of school policy in a letter Tuesday night, only to receive <a href="http://www.fossilfreestanford.org/uploads/2/3/4/0/23400882/fossilfreenoticeresponse.pdf" >a scoffing response</a> the next day in which Fossil Free Stanford declared that they would gladly take the school up on its offer to demonstrate in another location on campus, but had no plans to leave the Main Quad area.
&ldquo;As a participant in the Fossil Fuels Divestment Protest, an unscheduled and unsanctioned event, you are violating the university&rsquo;s Use of the Main Quad Policy,&rdquo; the school&rsquo;s letter instructs the protesters. &ldquo;In order to comply with university policy, you must leave the Main Quad with your belongings and the university is instructing you to do so.&rdquo;
Explaining that the sit-in was preventing &ldquo;the usual conduct of university matters in Building 10, which includes the offices of the President and Provost among others,&rdquo; constituting a misdemeanor criminal trespass offense, the school strongly implied that the protesters should comply with the directive in order to avoid criminal charges, though it gave no specific deadline.
Fossil Free Stanford responded with a letter mimicking the format of the school&rsquo;s missive, in which they delivered an ultimatum of their own, reiterating their demand that the school divest from the rest of the fossil fuel industry, not just coal, and implying that by doing so they can avoid the negative repercussions related to climate change.
&ldquo;In order to comply with Stanford University&rsquo;s mission and Fundamental Standard, you must immediately divest from the rest of the fossil fuel industry,&rdquo; the group writes. &ldquo;Please make sure you are aware of the potential consequences of catastrophic climate change and continued investment in the fossil fuel industry. Can you accept the consequences of your own inaction?&rdquo;
They then thank the administration for &ldquo;temporarily [waiving] your usual restrictions on free speech&rdquo; in White Plaza to allow them to demonstrate, and say they will indeed utilize the space to join with protests organized by black and transgender students.
&ldquo;We will remain in front of Building 10, though, specifically to call for action from President Hennessy and the Board of Trustees,&rdquo; they add. &ldquo;We will continue to hold our administration accountable. This movement is not going away.&rdquo;
Having been rebuffed in its attempt to negotiate a conciliatory resolution, the university followed up Thursday night with an even sterner warning, this time stating specifically that the protesters would have until 5:00 p.m. Friday to vacate the Main Quad.
The second letter also stated that the university &ldquo;is considering suspending Fossil Free&rsquo;s request to APIRL [Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing] until they are in compliance with university policies,&rdquo; which would amount to a flat rejection, albeit a reversible one, of the group&rsquo;s demands.
In <a href="http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/11/19/we-are-not-going-away/" >a response published by The Stanford Daily</a> Thursday, Fossil Free Stanford announced that they would be concluding their demonstration ahead of the school&rsquo;s deadline, but rejected the notion that they were doing so in order to avoid the threatened disciplinary action, saying they were merely &ldquo;heading home to spend time with our families.&rdquo;
They concluded their response, somewhat absurdly, by challenging the university to &ldquo;come charge us at 11 a.m. in our encampment,&rdquo; rather than waiting until 5:00 p.m.
Ignoring the dare, President Hennessy instead agreed to meet with the students Friday afternoon, telling them that while he agrees with them regarding the threat of climate change, he could not promise that he would be able to persuade the Board of Trustees to follow through with full divestment.
&ldquo;Quite frankly if I asked SCIR [Board of Trustees&rsquo; Special Committee on Investment Responsibility] on to do divestment, they would say no,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will tell you completely honestly, [complete fossil fuel divestment] has no chance of passing because it has no background research.&rdquo;
While the students may have found Hennessy&rsquo;s response disappointing, the administration should have a reprieve from further unrest during the next week, because not only will many students indeed be heading home for the Thanksgiving break, some of the more strident activists will be departing Sunday to attend the United Nations climate conference in Paris, <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29145118/sit-at-stanfords-main-quad-ends-protesters-prepare" >The San Jose Mercury News reports</a>.
The timing of the sit-in, vis a vis the UN climate summit, is not coincidental, as the group <a href="http://www.fossilfreestanford.org/press-release-october-7-2015.html" >acknowledged from the beginning</a>. As detailed in a recent report by the National Association of Scholars, the Stanford movement is just a small part of a larger national campaign to promote radical action at that summit.
<a href="../?ID=6962" >[RELATED: REPORT: divestment about politics, not environment]</a>
&ldquo;When Stanford University announced in May 2014 that it would divest direct investments in coal, but would leave all mutual and commingled funds intact, and wouldn&rsquo;t touch oil and gas investments at all, activists sent up a victory cry,&rdquo; the report notes.
Yet when Georgetown University made an identical commitment the following year, the NAS documents the student group GU Fossil Free and other divestment advocates scolded the school for attempting to win public relations points with a half-hearted concession.
Meanwhile, as divestment efforts escalated around the country in anticipation of the upcoming UN summit, the report notes that Fossil Free Stanford &ldquo;has back-flipped into angry dissatisfaction with the university,&rdquo; publishing a press release on October 6 vowing &ldquo;civil disobedience&rdquo; if Stanford does not commit to full divestment, a threat that was carried out with last week&rsquo;s sit-in.
Although the leaders of Fossil Free Stanford declare that they &ldquo;are not going away,&rdquo; it remains to be seen whether the movement will be able to regain steam when students return from vacation and no longer have the potential of influencing the UN climate conference to serve as a motivating force.
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&nbsp;

Fossil fuel divestment activists fold after Stanford threatens disciplinary action 

A report released Tuesday by the National Association of Scholars concludes that the true purpose of the fossil fuel divestment campaign is not to help the environment, but to build momentum for a radical political agenda.
The report, titled <a href="http://www.nas.org/divestment" >Inside Divestment</a>, examines the history of the movement from its 2010 beginning at Swarthmore College, compiling extensive statistics on the 29 U.S. colleges and universities that have sold off institutional investments in fossil fuels since then.
In addition, the report includes frequent quotations from leading members of the divestment movement, such as Bill McKibben, the former Middlebury College professor whose <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719" >2012 Rolling Stone article</a> brought widespread attention to the campaign.
Claiming that at least 80 percent of remaining fossil fuel reserves will need to remain in the ground to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, McKibben&rsquo;s article eschewed the traditional environmentalist focus on encouraging individual lifestyle changes in favor of a divestment campaign inspired by the coordinated sell-off of South African stocks during the Apartheid era.
McKibben followed up on the article with a nationwide speaking tour called &ldquo;Do the Math,&rdquo; and has enlisted the support of <a href="http://350.org/about/what-we-do/" >350.org</a>, an organization he founded in 2007, to coordinate divestment campaigns at the grassroots level. As of the end of 2014, the organization had launched 1,162 such campaigns in total.
The efforts have met with only partial success overall, securing divestment commitments from 348 institutions of all kinds, but from just 44 of the world&rsquo;s roughly 18,000 colleges and universities, despite enthusiastic support from student activists. Of those, 29 U.S. colleges and universities have divested, a mere 0.62 percent of the 4,706 post-secondary institutions in the country.
Moreover, many of those institutions either only agreed to partial divestments, generally from coal but not from other fossil fuels, while others had only minimal investments in such industries to begin with.
Activists have been inconsistent in their reactions to those divestments, however, often applauding high-profile institutions for agreeing to partial divestments while demonizing smaller entities for making the same commitments.
Stanford University, for example, agreed in 2014 to divest from coal while leaving its commingled funds, as well as oil and gas investments, untouched&mdash;a move that divestment advocates hailed as a &ldquo;groundbreaking victory.&rdquo;
The NAS report contrasts this with the case of Georgetown University, which announced an identical divestment in 2015 only to have the decision excoriated as &ldquo;morally indefensible.&rdquo;
The crucial distinction between the two schools is the size of their endowments. Whereas Georgetown&rsquo;s endowment is slightly below $1.5 billion, Stanford&rsquo;s endowment is valued at $21.4 billion, which the report points out is &ldquo;two and a half times bigger than the sum total of all other 28 endowments combined ($8.4 billion).&rdquo;
Regarding the actual financial impact of divestment, NAS was only able to collect complete data for 13 of the 29 institutions, finding that together they sold off $16.9 million of an initial $34.2 million in fossil fuel investments, or about 49 percent. Another five schools provided partial data, allowing NAS to estimate that at least $27 million has been divested out of an original total of at least $72 million worth of fossil fuel investments (37.5 percent).
That figure would almost certainly be even lower if complete data were available for the remaining institutions, four of which the report describes as &ldquo;divestments in name only,&rdquo; or &ldquo;DINOs,&rdquo; because they did not involve selling any investments. Four other schools are labeled as &ldquo;runner-up DINOs&rdquo; in the report, indicating that divestment required only minimal alterations to their investment portfolios.
Even those that have fully divested, though, have not exerted any meaningful economic impact on fossil fuel companies, as McKibben and other activists have themselves acknowledged.
&ldquo;Divestment won&rsquo;t do this [harm the fossil fuel industry] by directly affecting share prices, at least in the short run,&rdquo; McKibben wrote in a 2013 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/27/is-divestment-an-effective-means-of-protest/turning-colleges-partners-into-pariahs" >New York Times op-ed</a>. &ldquo;Instead, as the country&rsquo;s colleges, cities, and denominations begin to cut their ties, we&rsquo;ll start to revoke the social license of these firms.&rdquo;
Previous divestment campaigns such as those targeting tobacco companies and supporters of Apartheid, he explained, succeeded not by bankrupting the companies, but rather by creating popular pressure that eventually had an influence on corporate leaders.
None of which is to say that the financial impact of divestment is negligible for those doing the divesting. In fact, the report claims that &ldquo;risk of financial loss is among the main reasons trustees reject fossil fuel divestments,&rdquo; noting that 22 of the 28 American colleges and universities that have provided an explanation for their rejection of divestment have cited financial concerns as a reason.
As a case in point, the report includes an entire chapter devoted to Swarthmore College, where the first fossil fuel divestment campaign was launched in 2010 after Visiting Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies George Lakey took students on a field trip to coal mining country and asked them to devise a strategy for combatting fossil fuel extraction.
Despite a well-organized campaign by members of the &ldquo;Swarthmore Mountain Justice&rdquo; student organization&mdash;whose tactics included &ldquo;occupying&rdquo; a board meeting and holding a 32-day sit-in outside the administration building&mdash;the college&rsquo;s board has twice rejected divestment, estimating that the move would cost $200 million over 10 years, potentially forcing the school to cut back on the generous tuition subsidy it provides to all students.
In response to such concerns, the divestment movement has begun emphasizing the alleged financial benefits of divesting, notably by arguing that fossil fuel stocks are significantly overvalued at present, and therefore that divestment will pay off once governments enact policies such as carbon taxes that cause those stock values to tumble. Acknowledging that government actors are unlikely to take such action on their own, though, the activists present divestment as a step toward stigmatizing fossil fuel companies, thereby &ldquo;[making] it harder for politicians to accept campaign contributions from and vote for policies that benefit&rdquo; those firms.
Harvard University President Drew Faust seemed to recognize that, saying shortly after the school rejected divestment in 2013 that &ldquo;we should &hellip; be very wary of steps intended to instrumentalize our endowment in ways that would appear to position the University as a political actor rather than an academic institution.&rdquo;
Yet, according to the NAS report, divestment activists are doubling down on their efforts this fall, sponsoring an &ldquo;escalation season&rdquo; from October 1 to December 12, the latter date marking one day after the UN Climate Summit in Paris is scheduled to conclude.
Indeed, 350.org seems to confirm the NAS&rsquo;s belief that the 2015 escalation is intended primarily to influence the outcome of the Paris summit.
&ldquo;An avalanche of public commitments to divest from fossil fuels would build momentum and send a powerful signal that the world is rapidly and irreversibly moving away from fossil fuels,&rdquo; the organization <a href="http://gofossilfree.org/paris/" >states on its website</a>. &ldquo;If you say you want action in Paris, then you have a responsibility to divest from fossil fuels.&rdquo;
Thus far, the NAS report notes, escalation tactics have generally been peaceful, mostly involving sit-ins and blockades. However, the report also asserts that &ldquo;the divestment movement&rsquo;s claims about the imperative urgency of its program, combined with the intolerance it has already exhibited at places such as Swarthmore, make it legitimate to wonder if divestment advocates will keep to non-violent tactics if the movement encounters sustained resistance.&rdquo;
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REPORT: divestment about politics, not environment

Members of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity at the University of California, Davis, awoke Saturday to see their home covered in Nazi graffiti.
According to fraternity leaders, the timing of the vandalism is no coincidence, occurring just two days after the UC Davis student senate passed a motion pressuring the university to divest from companies that have ties with Israel.
&ldquo;[T]his is not out of the blue,&rdquo; Joshua Wortsman, president-elect of AEPI, told <a href="http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/01/31/support-of-israel-reason-house-was-tagged-with-swastikas-frat-says/" >CBS Sacramento</a>. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re pretty sure this is directly related.&rdquo;
Following passage of the divestment motion, student senator Azka Fayyaz, a member of UC Davis&rsquo;s Students for Justice in Palestine, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/170492432993060/photos/pcb.848929121816051/848924941816469/?type=1&amp;permPage=1" target="_blank">posted a photo on Facebook</a> of students waving the Palestinian flag with the caption "Hamas and Shariah law have taken over UC Davis. BRB crying over the resilience.&rdquo;&nbsp;
In response to the vandalism, a coalition of 15 student organizations published a letter in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/170492432993060/photos/pcb.848929121816051/848924941816469/?type=1&amp;theater" >California Aggie</a> describing their campus as rife with xenophobia.
&ldquo;This reminds us that anti-Semitism, along with all other forms of hate, including, but not limited to, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, still exist and are rampant trans-nationally and on our university campus,&rdquo; read the letter.
The letter, signed by UC Davis&rsquo; Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, also contested allegations that the student senate&rsquo;s divestment vote provoked the anti-Semitic vandalism.
&ldquo;We reject any attempts to blame this on any single student community, including the UC Davis Divestment movement,&rdquo; the letter said.
Police identified the incident as a hate crime. According to Davis police Sgt. James MacNiven, the perpetrators could face felony charges and civil rights violations for the graffiti swastikas.
According to reports by <a href="http://www.kcra.com/news/Jewish-community-stunned-by-hate-crime-at-UC-Davis/31040720" >KCRA</a>, residents of the AEPI fraternity house plan to install &ldquo;security cameras and extra lighting&rdquo; in addition to assisting local police in their active investigation.
UC Davis&rsquo;s student senate joined six other UC schools that have passed divestment bills of their own.
According to Kristine Craig, a third-year student at UC Davis and editor-in-chief of the Davis Political Review, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement &ldquo;has no place for public consensus from a student panel that is inherently created to represent all student interests.&rdquo;
&ldquo;All it does is pit two ethnic student groups against each other in a hateful and divisive way,&rdquo; Craig told Campus Reform, adding that the student senate&rsquo;s &ldquo;decision to pass a resolution to divest from Israel places Jewish students in a separate category, isolating and pushing them into a defensive position.&rdquo;
For Jewish students at UC Davis, the crude graffiti sprayed on AEPI&rsquo;s house is not an isolated incident.
In 2010, a sign on UC Davis&rsquo;s campus was covered in swastikas and shortly after, a swastika was painted on a Jewish student&rsquo;s dorm room door.
"There's been a number of incidents, including at Davis and elsewhere, where Jewish students are simply approached on campus and sort of yelled at and screamed at," Barry Broad, president of the Jewish Federation of Sacramento, told KCRA.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/gabriellahope_" >@gabriellahope_</a>

Members of Alpha Epsilon Pi woke up to see their fraternity covered in spraypainted swastikas.

Jewish frat covered in swastikas days after divestment vote

After weeks of clashing between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups on campus, the University of Michigan&rsquo;s student government <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/news/central-student-government-votes-not-pass-divestment-resolution" target="_blank">struck down</a> a controversial divestment resolution Wednesday morning.
The <a href="https://csg.umich.edu/" target="_blank">Central Student Government</a> (CSG) heard impassioned speeches from both sides of the issue Tuesday evening going late into the night. Hundreds of students attended the meeting with more than 2,000 viewers watching the five-hour-long live stream online.
But early Wednesday morning, CSG ultimately decided to reverse last week&rsquo;s <a href="https://csg.umich.edu/executive-branch/executive-committee/presidents-posts/statement-indefinite-postponement-ar-3-050" target="_blank">indefinite postponement</a> of Assembly Resolution 3-050, A Resolution for the University of Michigan to Divest from Socially Irresponsible Companies that Violate Palestinian Human Rights, and struck it down. The resolution put forth by Michigan&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="http://umich.edu/~umsafe/" target="_blank">Students Allied for Freedom and Equality</a> (SAFE) was rejected by a 25-9 vote with five abstentions in a secret ballot.
&ldquo;Clearly this conversation on this topic needed to happen but it&rsquo;s not the time to spend time on this resolution when we have other things to focus on [here] on campus,&rdquo; CSG vice president Bobby Dishell told Campus Reform, stating he would rather focus on student initiatives&mdash;such as creating a <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2013/10/university_of_michigan_student_96.html" target="_blank">student presidential search committee</a>&mdash;that would have a greater impact on the student body.
Dishell, a 21-year-old public policy major, said executive members of CSG are not allowed to vote on matters of the assembly, meaning that he and President Michael Proppe could not cast a vote on the resolution. Both Dishell and Proppe did address the hundreds of students in attendance at the meeting prior to the assembly debate.
&ldquo;I think it would have been very difficult for everyone, based on the comments made [Tuesday night] to say this was a broadly desired thing,&rdquo; Proppe, a senior business and statistics major, told Campus Reform. &ldquo;There was definitely dissent on the issue. If we&rsquo;re going to pass this resolution, there needs to be a consensus on campus. And there was not a consensus.&rdquo;
Proppe said while the authors of the resolution &ldquo;did a really nice job of bringing in personal experiences to the argument,&rdquo; he was still under the impression that many members of the CSG assembly were unsure of the merits or complete validity of the resolution presented.
Last week as Michigan&rsquo;s CSG voted to indefinitely halt the resolution, a media frenzy escalated as SAFE and members of 36 other student groups <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/214457697/Why-We-Are-Sitting-In" target="_blank">organized a multi-day sit-in</a>, arguing that the student government had not properly listen to their concerns. Tensions ran high on both sides as reports of <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/pro-israel-students-called-kike-dirty-jew-at-university-of-michigan/" target="_blank">death threats</a>, racial slurs and &ldquo;<a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/bds-leader-posts-overtly-threatening-photo-to-facebook/" target="_blank">overtly threatening</a>&rdquo; social media posts escalated.
Both Dishell and Proppe told Campus Reform that as of late Wednesday night, no conflict had arisen from the student government&rsquo;s decision. Proppe said he expected to see some fallout but attributed much of last week&rsquo;s conflict to &ldquo;people outside of campus who see things on the Internet and start targeting people on social media.&rdquo; With <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23UMDivest&amp;src=tyah&amp;f=realtimeAfter%20weeks of clashing between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups on campus, the University of Michigan&rsquo;s student government struck down a controversial divestment resolution Wednesday morning. The Central Student Government (CSG) heard impassioned speeches from both sides of the issue Tuesday evening going late into the night. Hundreds of students attended the meeting with more than 2,000 viewers watching the five-hour-long live stream online. But early Wednesday morning, CSG ultimately decided to reverse last week&rsquo;s indefinite postponement of the divestment resolution and struck it down. The resolution put forth by Michigan&rsquo;s Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) was rejected by a 25-9 vote with five abstentions in a secret ballot. &ldquo;Clearly this conversation on this topic needed to happen but it&rsquo;s not the time to spend time on this resolution when we have other things to focus on [here] on campus,&rdquo; CSG vice president Bobby Dishell told Campus Reform, stating he would rather focus on student initiatives&mdash;such as creating a student presidential search committee&mdash;that would have a greater impact on the student body. Dishell, a 21-year-old public policy major, said executive members of CSG are not allowed to vote on matters of the assembly, meaning that he and President Michael Proppe could not cast a vote on the resolution. Both Dishell and Proppe did address the hundreds of students in attendance at the meeting prior to the assembly debate. &ldquo;I think it would have been very difficult for everyone, based on the comments made [Tuesday night] to say this was a broadly desired thing,&rdquo; Proppe, a senior business and statistics major, told Campus Reform. &ldquo;There was definitely dissent on the issue. If we&rsquo;re going to pass this resolution, there needs to be a consensus on campus. And there was not a consensus.&rdquo; Proppe said while the authors of the resolution &ldquo;did a really nice job of bringing in personal experiences to the argument,&rdquo; he was still under the impression that many members of the CSG assembly were unsure of the merits or complete validity of the resolution presented. Last week as Michigan&rsquo;s CSG voted to indefinitely halt the resolution, a media frenzy escalated as SAFE and members of 36 other student groups organized a multi-day sit-in, arguing that the student government had not properly listen to their concerns. Tensions ran high on both sides as reports of death threats, racial slurs and &ldquo;overtly threatening&rdquo; social media posts escalated. Both Dishell and Proppe told Campus Reform that as of late Wednesday night, no conflict had arisen from the student government&rsquo;s decision. Proppe said he expected to see some fallout but attributed much of last week&rsquo;s conflict to &ldquo;people outside of campus who see things on the Internet and start targeting people on social media.&rdquo; With #UMdivest trending in the Ann Arbor area over the past several day, Twitter users have been able to participate in the conversation from all over the world&mdash;contributing both statistics and racial smears. &ldquo;Students are generally pretty respectful on campus,&rdquo; Proppe said. &ldquo;I think there are still students who are being made to feel uncomfortable because of their opinion one way or another because of the resolution, and I don&rsquo;t know if all that is from students. I think some of that is coming from outside.&rdquo; Regardless of how CSG was to vote, Proppe said he did not believe Michigan&rsquo;s Board of Regents would have chosen to take up the divestment resolution as an inherent policy, although he did say that the administration has cited student assembly resolutions in the past. &ldquo;The Board of Regents would not, I think, vote to divest from these companies whether or not the Central Student Government put forth the resolution,&rdquo; he said. A university spokesperson declined to comment other than directing Campus Reform to a verbose statement the university made in 2005 regarding divestments. &ldquo;The primary purpose of our endowment is to generate the greatest possible income, subject to an appropriate amount of risk, in support of the University&rsquo;s missions of teaching, research and service,&rdquo; the statement says. However, the policy does assert that there may be &ldquo;unusual instances&rdquo; in which Michigan could make exemptions. Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @katie0509" target="_blank">#UMdivest</a> trending in the Ann Arbor area over the past several days, Twitter users have been able to participate in the conversation from all over the world&mdash;contributing both statistics and racial smears.
&ldquo;Students are generally pretty respectful on campus,&rdquo; Proppe said. &ldquo;I think there are still students who are being made to feel uncomfortable because of their opinion one way or another because of the resolution, and I don&rsquo;t know if all that is from students. I think some of that is coming from outside.&rdquo;
Regardless of how CSG was to vote, Proppe said he did not believe Michigan&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.regents.umich.edu/" target="_blank">Board of Regents</a> would have chosen to take up the divestment resolution as an inherent policy, although he did say that the administration has cited student assembly resolutions in the past.
&ldquo;The Board of Regents would not, I think, vote to divest from these companies whether or not the Central Student Government put forth the resolution,&rdquo; he said.
A university spokesperson declined to comment other than directing Campus Reform to a verbose statement the university made in 2005 regarding divestments.
&ldquo;The primary purpose of our endowment is to generate the greatest possible income, subject to an appropriate amount of risk, in support of the University&rsquo;s missions of teaching, research and service,&rdquo; the <a href="http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/pa/key/cfo.html" target="_blank">statement</a> says.
However, the policy does assert that there may be &ldquo;unusual instances&rdquo; in which Michigan could make exemptions.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/katie0509" target="_blank">@katie0509</a>

The resolution went down in a 25-9 vote in a secret ballot.

Michigan student government rejects controversial Israeli divestment resolution

The University of California &ndash; Berkeley (CAL) administration will ignore a resolution passed 11-9 by the student government early Thursday morning, which demands the school divest assets from companies conducting business with Israel, a spokesperson for the school told Campus Reform on Thursday.
<div class="caption" style="width:400px;">
	<img alt="" src="http://oi50.tinypic.com/2d6kvwh.jpg" style="width: 400px; height: 212px; " />
	
		The CAL student government voted 11-9 for divestment from Israel.
</div>

	&ldquo;Their vote will have no bearing on our investment decisions,&rdquo; said spokesman Dan Mogulof.

	&ldquo;Our chancellor&#39;s personal belief is that divestment is not constructive in terms of peace in the Middle East that can and should be progressed with dialogue between parties,&rdquo; added Mogulof.

	The resolution, S.B. 160, passed by the student government, accuses Israel of &ldquo;illegal occupation and ensuing human rights abuses,&rdquo; and calls on CAL to divest more than $14 million in assets from companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Caterpillar.

	The final vote apparently occurred at around 5:30 a.m. after hundreds of students, faculty, and community members watched the student senators debate the controversial resolution for over ten hours, according to the official student newspaper, <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2013/04/18/asuc-senate-passes-divestment-bill-11-9/">The Daily Cal</a>.

	According to The Daily Cal, the resolution&rsquo;s passage was met with cries of joy and cheers from supporters.

	In 2010, the student senate passed a similar resolution calling for divestment, but the measure was ultimately vetoed.

	It is not clear whether or not this time the bill will find a similar fate. Student body president Connor Landgraf could not be reached for comment at the time of publication to provide details on his intentions.

	Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/oliverdarcy">@oliverdarcy</a>

UC Berkeley admin will ignore student gov resolution demanding divestment from Israel

The student government at University of California &ndash; Riverside voted 10-2 to rescind a resolution that had called for school administrators to divest from companies that do business with Israel.
<div class="caption" style="width:400px;">
	<img alt="" src="http://oi50.tinypic.com/2d6kvwh.jpg" style="width: 400px; height: 212px; " />
	
		The UC Riverside student government on Wednesday night voted to rescind a resolution that called on administrators to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
</div>

	The hotly contested vote took place at around 11:30 pm on Wednesday, and was designed to correct <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4653">a March 6 vote for divestment</a>, which many students said was held hastily and unfairly, following a controversial presentation from UCR&rsquo;s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

	&ldquo;Their presentation was full of wild accusations, libelous, and since nobody got a chance to really answer them, the senators voted without really realizing what they were voting on,&rdquo; Philippe Assouline, a research associate for the pro-Israel organization Stand With Us, told Campus Reform.

	&ldquo;Once that became apparent to them, they reconvened to reconsider, and this time the opponents of divestment made their case, and I guess swayed the senators to realize that it was wrong in substance and also divisive to the campus.&rdquo;

	A live<a href="https://twitter.com/i/connect"> Twitter stream</a> from SPJ reflected the charged atmosphere leading up to the vote.

	&ldquo;Hokooka tells about family in Palestine she stayed with, &amp; witnessing a Caterpillar bulldozer demolish a home.<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23UCRdivest&amp;src=hash"> #UCRdivest</a>,&ldquo; read one of the SJP&rsquo;s tweets.

	A series of Tweets also detailed one divestment opponent&rsquo;s story about his uncle&rsquo;s death in a terrorist attack in Israel:

	&quot;I do not hate [the suicide bomber]. Let me make that clear. I hate the people that segregate us-- the people who put this resolution to the Senate a month ago,&rdquo; the student said, according to the account.

	Assouline, who said he attended both votes, said students who opposed the divestment did not find out about the initial vote in March until about 20 hours before it was held, while SJP had a month and a half to prepare the presentation.

	In an article he wrote for the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philippe-assouline/you-can-fool-some-people-_b_2934844.html">Huffington Post</a>, Assouline said the first vote consisted of &ldquo;4 or 5 surprised UCR students to speak disjointedly against the motion, while the SJP arrived with dozens of supporters delivering a well-oiled series of tested sound bytes.&rdquo;

	The article also quoted an excerpt from a piece published in <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/divestment-movement-gaining-ground-on-california-campuses.premium-1.510088">Haaretz</a> on March 17, which reports that SJP waited to inform anti-divestment activists about the impending vote on purpose:

	&ldquo;Amal Ali, the president of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Riverside, said keeping the resolution under wraps was the only way to &lsquo;level the playing field,&rsquo;&rdquo; it states.

	Assouline told Campus Reform that not only the tactics but also the content of the presentation was unfair.

	SJP did not respond to a request for comment on the article.

	Follow the author of this article on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/kctimpf" target="_blank">@KCTimpf</a>