A First-Hand Report on Stanford’s Bizarre BDS Debate

The Stanford University student senate recently debated a resolution calling on the university “to divest from companies violating human rights in occupied Palestine.” After rejecting the resolution in an initial vote, the senate reconvened and passed it. (The university’s trustees chose to ignore the resolution.) Subsequently, a Jewish candidate for the student senate was reportedly questioned about how her Jewish identity might influence her perspective on the issue of divestment. Miriam Pollock describes the bizarre campus political dynamic that led to the resolution being considered in the first place, the session of the senate in which the resolution was debated, and what happened in the re-vote: