The Endowment Justice Collective, a coalition of organizations at Rutgers University, held a “Die In” on March 19, 2024 in Piscataway, New Jersey. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

Faculty unions at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, have passed a resolution calling for the takeover of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

According to an announcement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) university group, 58 percent of faculty members voted “yes” to divest from Israel-affiliated companies and suspend all programs with Tel Aviv University, while 38 percent voted “no.” . ” A similar resolution was adopted by the university chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO that represents adjunct professors, with 62 percent voting yes.

“Our unions have many battles ahead of them,” said a joint statement from the two groups last Friday. “We must work together to resist the Rutgers administration’s continued attempts to undermine our contract successes. We at Rutgers will face the consequences of the new Trump administration’s looming attack on all of higher education.”

It continued: “As we face the challenges that 2025 brings, we will be stronger when we are united across union, rank, department, school and campus – as we did in our victorious strike in 2023 case was. Together we fight!” Together we win!”

The BDS campaign, launched in 2005, opposes Zionism – a movement that supports the Jewish people’s right to self-determination – and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation state. The aim is to isolate the country through economic, political and cultural boycotts. Official guidelines for the campaign’s academic boycott state that “projects with all Israeli academic institutions should be terminated” and outline specific restrictions that its supporters should abide by – for example, refusing letters of recommendation to students applying to study abroad in Apply to Israel.

The unions’ passage of a resolution calling for BDS comes amid new investigations into the role that faculties – particularly the group Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) – have played in promoting unrest, extremism and anti-Semitism on campus. an issue that drew renewed attention this week when it was announced that Columbia University would allow a professor who applauded Hamas’s atrocities against Israelis on October 7 to teach a course on Zionism teach. At Rutgers, for example, this month’s resolution was strongly supported by the FJP, which accused the university of supporting genocide in over a dozen social media posts it made to this effect.

As already reported by The GeneralFJP is a faculty spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with numerous ties to Islamist terrorist organizations. Since the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7th, FJP chapters have been opened at universities. Throughout the 2023-2024 academic year, its members, including faculty from the most elite US colleges, have fomented unrest on campus, spread anti-Semitic cartoons and advocated for severing ties with Israeli companies and universities.

According to a study by campus anti-Semitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, “Academic Extremism: How a Faculty Network Fuels Campus Unrest,” its presence is insidious throughout academia.

Using data analysis, AMCHA was able to establish a connection between hosting an FJP chapter at a school and anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activities. For example, the study found that the presence of FJP on a college campus “increased the likelihood of physical assault and Jewish students sevenfold” and increased the likelihood that a Jewish student was subjected to violence and death threats threefold – This is what happened It occurred in November 2024 at Rutgers University when 19-year-old freshman Matthew Skorny called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as Israeli, and in Popular social media forum YikYak said: “To all pro-Palestinian rallies (sic)… Kill him.”

The FJP also “extended” the duration of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on university campuses, during which students illegally occupied part of the campus and refused to leave the premises unless the administration capitulated to the demands a boycott of Israel. The study added that such demonstrations lasted more than four and a half times longer, with FJP teachers free to exert influence and provide logistical and material support to students. Professors at FJP schools also protested 9.5 days longer than professors at non-FJP schools.

“So much attention has been focused on Students for Justice in Palestine, for example, the camps and all the unrest. The main face of this has been students and student groups, and they have captured the attention of administrators, members of Congress and the public, but when you look closer – behind closed classroom doors, at department meetings and statements, etc. “The activity of groups like (FJP) poses one an even more important predictor and determining factor that triggers anti-Semitism,” said AMCHA Executive Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin The General recently during an interview in which she discussed the latest research on faculty anti-Semitism.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.