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US faculty votes overwhelmingly for ‘non-cooperation’ with Israel University

May 7, 2019 at 12:58 pm

New York University [Benjamin KRAFT/Flickr]

The Department of Social and Cultural Analysis of New York University (NYU) voted overwhelmingly, on Thursday, in favour of a resolution of non-cooperation with the university’s Tel Aviv campus over what they say is “Israel’s long-standing discriminatory policies”.

The vote was carried out at the last department meeting of the year by a large majority vote. Only one faculty member reportedly opposed the resolution.

In a statement about the pledge of non-cooperation with Tel Aviv, NYU said: “The department’s members took this step in order to uphold NYU’s own Policy on Ethical Conduct, which prohibits discrimination and guarantees equal opportunity.”

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The statement describes Israel as “having a longstanding practice of barring entry to persons of Palestinian descent” and “prohibit entry to members of groups that are critical of government policies”.

NYU revealed that many members of its “community (including members of the department) are affected by these policies and are effectively unable to access NYU’s program in Tel Aviv” and that the resolution was seeking “to protect the department from complicity with these forms of racial, religious, and political profiling”.

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Cited the US State Department report, NYU said that access to university programs was being obstructed by “Israel’s long-standing discriminatory policies of barring entry to Palestinians or persons of Arab descent and Muslim heritage, and by the recent amendments to its Law of Entry, which advocate for the exclusion of persons on account of their political speech. Moreover, the Israeli government routinely prevents Palestinian students from enrolling in higher education institutions outside of the West Bank and Gaza.”

The faculty urged other departments to pass similar resolutions saying that it non-cooperation with Tel Aviv was “in the spirit of abiding by NYU’s Code of Ethical Conduct and opposing racial and religious profiling on campus”.