Less than 300 out of 3,000 graduate students at Carleton voted and passed a plebiscite March 21 and 22 calling on the university to adopt a “socially responsible” investment policy.
While Israel wasn’t explicitly mentioned, it was launched by Students Against Israeli Apartheid, a movement that runs a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against the democratic state of Israel, often comparing it to previous efforts against South African apartheid.
Motorola, one of the companies targeted, has run programs to help at-risk teenagers in Israel, provided classes for deaf children, scholarships to students, and employment opportunities for handicapped people, according to Motorola Israel’s 2007 social responsibility report. Their crime? They supply communication technology to the Israeli military. Tesco is a British grocery chain. Their crime? They sell vegetables in disputed territories.
Not convinced? Perhaps you’re uncomfortable with any company operating in Israel. As destructive a point of view as that may be, you’re entitled to it. The point of democracy is that we can have disagreements and resolve them by majority vote with fairness, impartiality, and genuine discussion. Unfortunately, the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA)’s largely unnoticed “vote” two weeks ago not only suffered from severe democratic deficit, but made a mockery of the very idea of democracy.
Part of having a GSA is giving students the right to choose. Students can choose to boycott Israel while ignoring mass murder in Syria, the execution of gays in Iran, or the plight of aboriginals in Canada. They can choose to engage in honest criticism of the government of Israel or to vilify their peers and de-legitimize the very idea of a Jewish state. At the very least, they should be able to choose.
Students can’t make meaningful choices when the question is posed as “Do you support Carleton University adopting a binding socially responsible investment policy that would require it to divest from companies complicit in illegal military occupations and other violations of international law, including but not limited to: BAE Systems, Motorola, Northrop-Grumman, and Tesco Supermarkets?” This biased formulation of the issue is sort of like asking someone whether they support child pornography. Vic Toews, anyone?
Of course, you can’t blame them — there was seemingly no opposition. This is probably because the email “informing” graduate students that a plebiscite vote was coming led to a page that posed the question with the same opaque wording.
In reality, a movement was forming to oppose this message, which was not offered space on the GSA website or given a reasonable opportunity to campaign on campus. Practically no graduate students were aware of the vote until a week before, when SAIA began their aggressive campaign.
Even so, it only took opposing students a few days to mobilize. When they got to the GSA’s office the week of the vote, the “deadline” (previously unmentioned by the GSA) had passed and the opposition had been effectively excluded.
To add insult to injury, advertisements for the “yes” campaign were prominently featured on every voting table on campus. You know, just like in federal elections where there are Conservative placards decorating the voting booths — yet another campaigning advantage the opposition wasn’t aware of until too late.
This partiality against Israel and disrespect for democratic values was so impressive that Iran’s state propaganda machine, Press TV, picked up the story, nostalgically thinking back to their own election debacle in 2009. Graduate students deserve better than this. The GSA owes us all an apology and a new vote.
— Jonathan Pinkus
first-year NPSIA graduate student
