USask faculty association votes to support boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement

In May, members of the University of Saskatchewan’s Faculty Association passed a motion at their AGM to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, joining over a dozen other faculty unions in Canada that have voted in recent months to support boycotts and/or divestment from Israel. University of Saskatchewan (USask) faculty members passed two additional motions condemning Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza and urging USask to support Palestinian scholars and students by providing opportunities, scholarships, and financial aid to those affected by the current crisis.

We caught up with Dr. Colleen Bell and Dr. Maurice Jr. Labelle from the USask chapter of Faculty for Palestine, which brought the motions forward, to discuss the significance of these motions, how universities in Israel are enabling the genocide, and what universities in Canada can do to support the liberation of Palestine. 

 

How do you see the role of universities, and specifically faculty associations, in the Palestine solidarity movement?

Dr. Colleen Bell (Bell): Unions have often played a really important role in creating opportunities for collective action and social justice. My view is that unions have an integral role to play. We certainly get arguments from members that we should just focus on improving the conditions of our own work, but those are very often countered by other arguments that see the union movement as part of the broader social justice movement.

Unions are one of the most important places to advance an agenda that improves life for everybody because they represent organized labour, and people labour to survive in a capitalist economy. It’s not just about the workplace but also the broader society, and unions have been represented in large numbers in different social justice struggles. In that respect, I’m very pleased to be a part of a union that’s prepared to use its collective power to stand up and speak out against the horrifying atrocities that are unfolding in Gaza.

Thousands of students and professors and people who work at universities in Gaza have been killed by Israel. There is no [longer] higher education in Gaza, and accessing higher education in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is incredibly difficult. That scholasticide and educide – the destruction of educational institutions – has a global impact. Universities are places where people produce ideas to challenge entrenched power, and to question power, and I think that many of us who work at universities, who care about things like academic freedom and the right to education, see what’s happening in Gaza as a horrifying example of the destruction of people’s access to knowledge. It’s the destruction of people’s access to evidence-based, historically informed, and nuanced knowledge about how the world works, about power inequality, and also the possibilities for social change. So I think we have a real epistemic interest in wanting to participate in solidarity with students and educators who live in the Occupied Territories.  

Dr. Maurice Jr. Labelle (Labelle): When we talk about scholasticide and the genocide that’s taking place in Gaza, it’s important for all universities and students to be treated equally. A university in Canada isn’t somehow worth more than one in Gaza. I don’t want to support this sort of inequality. For me, that was a really important part of getting the faculty association to pass these motions.  

 

Unions are one of the most important places to advance an agenda that improves life for everybody because they represent organized labour, and people labour to survive in a capitalist economy.

 

What would BDS mean in practice at USask? What happens next as far as pushing the university to implement these motions? 

Bell: We had a meeting with the university president, Peter Stoicheff, and his team following a letter we sent to them about BDS and our concerns about the university’s ties to institutions in Israel. They came to that meeting prepared to disclose their investments, and the disclosure was that 0.01% of university investments are with Israeli institutions. 

There are a couple of angles here. One is that our investments are so miniscule that it doesn’t really matter. A potential counter to that is that if they are really small, then why not pull out and take a moral stand? They were prepared to disclose, but they also indicated that the investment managers work with a set of values the university provides to them (an example would be equity, diversity and inclusion). This indicates that the university has a framework and approach to try to move toward ethical investments, and it’s puzzling why this wouldn’t be included.

The counter-argument from the perspective of people who deal with investments is that they are always changing; they’re moving money around all the time trying to maximize returns for their client. Again, if that’s the case, how do you ensure that investments are aligned with the values that you’ve transmitted to your fund manager? 

Labelle: The argument that was put to us in that meeting is that divestment is a counterproductive strategy and that the university favours engagement. As an investor, the line goes, you can influence from within. I think it’s fair to say that everybody from our group in the room was like-minded in our opposition to the “engagement” approach.  

Bell: There weren’t any actual examples that were provided to explain how influence had worked toward taking a moral stand or doing something that aligns with human rights. But I think the other issue is that there’s an underlying capitalist logic that the market is a space where, if you don’t engage, someone will come in and take your place, and they’ll be doing trade with people who don’t care and therefore you’ll have no impact. The implication of that argument is that morality itself can’t be affected through divestment, and it can’t be affected through disengaging from activities that support human rights abuses, or agencies that engage in them. In some ways it tries to suggest that it’s pointless to worry about moral questions outside of whether you’ll be able to have a conversation with those that you engage with, where you might indicate that you have concerns. But I think there are a lot of examples where divestment has been impactful and can be impactful in building a more just world. 

Labelle: My preference, personally, is not to give a single penny to this genocide. If engagement means giving a single cent, I don’t want to do it. 

In terms of the boycott, from what we can gather, USask doesn’t have many partnerships with Israeli institutions. So divestment is really where we’re currently focused.

We’ve also been very clear that our boycott is not one of individuals, but of institutions. We uphold the universal right to academic freedom and adopt the guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which oppose boycotting individuals on the basis of their identity. Rather, they call for the boycott of all “events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israeli academic institutions” given their “decades-old, deep and conscious complicity in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights.”

 

In terms of the land, many of these Israeli institutes for higher education are on occupied land, and we’re talking here about post-1967. The very physical presence of those institutions contributes to the ongoing, unlawful dispossession of Palestinians. 

 

You’ve spoken a lot about cutting ties with Israeli institutions – can you talk about the role of Israeli universities in regards to the colonization and occupation of Palestine, and the current genocide?

Bell: There are a lot of different things to say about the war machine, but I would say the far-right, Zionist, Israeli philosophy – which essentially advocates for very disproportionate war fighting where civilian casualties are seen as largely expendable, contrary to international law – is an idea that was brewed in Israeli universities. Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University have been places where ideas about the ethics of warfare have been reconstrued or misconstrued in ways that try to stretch the argument for why it’s okay to kill hundreds of civilians in order to target a couple of adversaries. 

Normally, the way that international ethics around war work, a soldier is seen as less valued than a civilian. This includes civilians from the home country as well as from the other country. The logic goes that people who are commissioned or sign up for war – obviously in Israel it’s complicated, because people are required to do a certain amount of military service, but nonetheless – are protected by a whole range of institutions, and have body armour and weapons. The idea is that they have more capacity to protect themselves, and also that they are part of the offensive operations, and that civilians’ lives are supposed to be considered a last resort. You’re not supposed to be able to bomb an entire school of kids because you believe there might be an adversary in the school.

To give you an example, when the United States was on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, they made a calculation that they deemed would be justifiable within the proportionality concept of international law: that you could expend 30 civilian casualties to get a “high-level target,” as they called it. 

When Israel launched its invasion of Gaza, that proportion of civilians to “high-level” – or sometimes not particularly high-level – Hamas targets was 300 to 1. That’s why we saw whole apartment buildings being obliterated, full of civilians – because it was deemed justifiable. 

This issue of whose lives are worth what has been reconfigured in the Israeli context in a way that has rendered Palestinian civilians much lower than IDF soldiers, and [it] is very problematic.

It’s been knowledge producers within Israel that have come up with the rationale for why it is increasingly accepted within the establishment to expend the lives of Palestinian civilians or blur the lines between civilian and adversary or enemy. Palestinian civilians are increasingly regarded as probable enemies and are therefore seen as combatants when they are not armed or engaged in combat. There are a number of international legal principles that have been eroded, and some of that work has been produced by Israeli universities, although not only by Israeli universities.  

Labelle: There is a triangular relationship that has developed between the state of Israel, the Israeli military, and Israeli higher education. Scholars at those institutions receive stat funding to conduct research in various fields, whether it be humanities, social sciences, sciences, agriculture, and of course military science, that contributes indirectly or directly to the ongoing disenfranchisement and dehumanization of Palestinians, and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

That’s not to say that if you accept money as a researcher, this would be your end goal, but it’s understood that any information you produce can be applied to military situations. The big case these days is drone technology and artificial intelligence. 

In terms of the land, many of these Israeli institutes for higher education are on occupied land, and we’re talking here about post-1967. The very physical presence of those institutions contributes to the ongoing, unlawful dispossession of Palestinians. 

 

You can hold multiple positions and recognize that human rights and our shared humanity is one of the guides to see through what’s happening on the ground.

 

How have you seen conversations on campus shift since October 7?

Labelle: The truth is that Palestinians and their supporters, broadly speaking, have been publicly ostracized, and that impacts their lives, whether they be Palestinian or of another Arab ancestry, or French-Canadian like me. I think the Liberation Zone that was organized by the USask chapter of Students for Justice and Peace (SJP), in coordination with the URegina chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, was a fantastic community event. It was a student-led initiative aimed at showcasing solidarity, providing community support, and encouraging conversation among various members of the community. It also provided an opportunity to show members of the USask administration that there is a pro-Palestine presence on campus, and pressed them to engage in conversation with SJP executives. It brought a lot of people together, and it warmed my heart.  

Leading up to the BDS vote, I thought a lot about what would happen if it didn’t pass. My friend and colleague Ahmad Al-Dissi and I came to the same conclusion that, yes, we wanted it to pass, but the action still mattered. The pro-Palestinian community at USask has a big heart. It is well-intentioned, it is non-violent, and it wants to be constructive. It wants to be justice-centred. 

Bell: There were many people rightfully horrified by what happened on October 7, and I think the statement issued by the university at the time bolstered some of the sentiments [of people who] are very quick to condemn political violence when it happens, but may not think about what the reasons are for why it exists in the first place. A week or two later, when Israel engaged in a full-on siege of Gaza, the arguments were very much about the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself. 

I think what we’ve seen in the past few months is people beginning to recognize that that argument is not very credible, that what’s happening is not defence at all. It’s genocide. Even though I wouldn’t necessarily say that everyone agrees that this is genocide, I think it’s largely held that what’s happening is mass atrocities, and that Israel is in many ways hurting itself because it’s losing credibility internationally.

Our group has been trying to have conversations with faculty and students on campus about what apartheid means, and why it’s a reasonable way to categorize what’s happening in the Occupied Territories. I also think people are recognizing that you can have a criticism of Hamas while also having a criticism of Israel. You can hold multiple positions and recognize that human rights and our shared humanity is one of the guides to see through what’s happening on the ground. I think across university campuses in North America and Europe, students are clearly taking very strong positions on this issue, and political leaders and university leaders are trying to catch up at this point in terms of recognizing that the status quo of how Palestine has been treated is unacceptable, and simply needs to stop. 

 

Bios

Dr. Maurice Jr. Labelle is an associate professor in the department of history and the director of the international studies program at the University of Saskatchewan. 

Dr. Colleen Bell is an associate professor and graduate chair in the department of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She teaches courses on international politics and security, militarism, and political violence.