Huge victory for Goldsmiths students as Uni accepts divestment demand and more

by Yakel1

3 comments
  1. Details from the twitter thread:

    >1 Divestment

    >Goldsmiths have agreed to a new ethical investment policy + switching fund manager. @Gold4Palestine
    will also present evidence at the uni’s finance committee.

    >Goldsmiths will also review Candida Gertler’s honorary fellowship due to her ties with occupation.

    >2 Statement on Genocide

    >Goldsmiths will release a collaborative statement between management, @Gold4Palestine
    and the student union.

    >Goldsmiths has also agreed to write to the UK government and the local MP to call for a ceasefire and support rebuilding education in Gaza.

    >3 IHRA Definition

    >Goldsmiths will conduct a review of the IHRA definition, independent of the ongoing antisemitism inquiry, as soon as possible.

    >4 Palestinian Scholarships

    >Goldsmiths will introduce undergraduate scholarships for Palestinian students + an additional fully funded postgraduate scholarship will be implemented from this year.

    >This will be the only undergraduate Palestinian scholarship offered in Britain!

    >5 Protect the Right to Protest

    >Goldsmiths conceded that protest guidelines were a direct response to Palestine protests and will review them to protect Muslim students.

    >Body worn camera policies will be implemented so students can’t be filmed without their knowledge

    >6 Immortalise the Student Occupation

    >One of the lecture theatres that students occupied in the media department will be renamed after Shireen Abu-Akleh.

    >The @Gold4Palestine
    occupation will also be memorialised in an exhibition wall in the Professor Stuart Hall Building.

    Good to see a university hearing and making steps to reflect the views of its student body. “Immortalising the occupation” seems a bit silly honestly though. Can’t see anyone but the most ardent war hawks really objecting to point 1; seems glaringly obvious that our liberal arts institutions shouldn’t be accepting money from Netenyahu cronies or Israeli state agencies during an illegal occupation. Likewise 4 & 5 pretty self evidently good. 3 I think will be controversial but personally it’s a relief to see some movement away from the definition of antisemitism as things like “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. The IHRA and other similar definitions deliberately conflate Jewishness and Israel to use one as a shield for the other. It undermines labeling genuine instances of antisemitism as such, and does the very thing it claims *is itself a form of antisemitism* by making Jews accountable for the actions of Israel.

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