A Campus Divided: Students at the University of Michigan called on their school to divest from companies that contribute to human rights violations against the Palestinians.
Published March 30, 2014.
NOTE: an interesting inside view of the recent mishegas at Michigan.
Pro-Palestinian students got trounced on an Israel-related stock divestment vote recently at the University of Michigan. The student government’s 25 to 9 vote against their proposal wasn’t even close.
Yet Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the student group that put forth the proposal, declared the defeat a terrific victory. And they may be right.
I sat toward the front of the campus ballroom where the March 25 vote was held, among Palestinians, some in keffiyehs and hijabs, but also many other students from a diversity of racial and ethnic groups. Towards the back, a smaller number of Jewish students waited wearing maize and blue — the University of Michigan’s school colors — to attest their opposition to divestment and support for a unified campus.
All 375 chairs in the ballroom gallery were filled and hundreds more students were refused entry because of fire code restrictions. About 200 students were placed in an adjacent screening room where they and over 2,000 others at home tuned in to a live-stream of the event.
What I was witnessing was the first true campus-wide discussion of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its alleged violations of Palestinian human rights. And it was a discussion that had grown to involve hundreds, and maybe thousands, of students. CLICK THIS TO KEEP READING
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/195510/inside-university-of-michigans-israel-divestment-d/?p=all#ixzz2xVMQni7G
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