By Ben Lauren PZ ’25

On April 11, with over a two-thirds majority, the Pitzer College Council passed resolution 60-R-5 in favor of an academic boycott of Israeli universities — preventing the school from opening any new study abroad programs in Israel. However, just minutes before the vote, Pitzer President Strom C. Thacker announced he would be vetoing the resolution, regardless of the result. It went on to pass with a 48:19 majority.

Both during the meeting and in a statement sent to the Pitzer community later that night, Thacker critiqued the bill on two points: Its interference with Pitzer’s normal procedures for opening and closing study abroad programs and, most significantly, his own ideological stance against academic boycotts altogether.

“I do not support an academic boycott of any country, as it directly opposes our educational mission and our commitment to academic freedom,” Thacker wrote in his statement. “A key role of a liberal arts college is to educate students to think critically, listen actively, and develop their own informed views. We must always promote academic freedom, even when it is denied to others.”

But is an academic boycott of Israel inherently opposed to “academic freedom?” Thacker believes it is, yet the College Council’s vote suggests they disagree. Why are students and faculty at Pitzer specifically calling for an academic boycott? And how could it directly affect people in Gaza?

First, what would it mean for Pitzer to boycott? Essentially, the school would not create any new pre-approved programs with any university in Israel in response to its decades long occupation of and its over six-month long siege of Gaza.

“Whereas Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN

Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories declared that

the state of Israel is committing apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian

people,” the resolution reads.

Pitzer students would still be eligible to study abroad in Israel, but would need to go through the process for non-approved programs.

It would also endorse Pitzer’s closure of its formerly pre-approved program with the University of Haifa as part of the academic boycott. The program was closed on April 1 by Pitzer’s Study Abroad and International Programs Office after receiving two proposals, including one challenging its alignment with Pitzer’s core values.

Resolution 60-R-5 aligns itself with Pitzer’s “Suspend Haifa” campaign which began years ago joining the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in response to a 2005 call for solidarity from 175 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees.

The BDS movement has guided much of the action taken by 7C pro-Palestinian organizations such as Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine, who began the “Suspend Haifa” campaign, and Pomona Divest from Apartheid. In an email to The Outback, Amanda Lagji, associate professor of English and world literature at Pitzer, described the tangible effects of a boycott and the influence it gives students to participate in BDS.

“The goal of BDS to use non-violent means to apply pressure to the Israeli government to end the occupation; the academic boycott is just part of a larger cultural and economic boycott,” Lagji wrote in an email to The Outback. “Some have argued that BDS measures, especially academic boycotts, are mere symbolic gestures, but I think we all know the power of the symbolic– and the way colleges are so quick to use force to undermine these measures (protests and civil disobedience related to BDS calls) speaks to their power.”

Earlier this semester, Lagji moderated a panel discussion with Gary B. Nash Professor of History at UCLA Robin D.G. Kelley and author Maya Wind, who wrote the book “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.” Lagji cited Wind’s book to challenge Thacker’s attempt at protecting academic freedom, stating that it “shows that academic freedom is always already compromised in Israel.”

“[Wind] describes how ‘university administrations aligned with the state and Israeli far-right groups…narrowly define permissible research, teaching, and discourse on their campuses,’” Lagji said in the email. “Tel Aviv University, for example, won state funding that was constrained by a 53 page list of conditions, including that the university will ‘undertak[e] to ensure that the academic staff will refrain from offensive statements toward the [Israeli Defense Force (IDF)] soldiers studying at the institution, whether it is statements concerning their actual military service in the IDF or whether it is statements concerning them wearing uniforms. This commitment is essential.’”

“In short, freedom, of the academic kind or otherwise, is constrained at Israeli universities not only for Palestinian students and faculty, but also for anyone critical of the Israeli state. When conducting her interviews, Wind noted that Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli interlocutors asked for anonymity for “fear of retaliation both within and outside their universities.” The University of Haifa is especially egregious in my view (including the granting of academic credit for active deployment in the IDF, and their role in Israeli hasbara) but not exceptional.

Lagji additionally addressed Thacker’s statement’s citation of the guidelines set in 2005 by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) advocating against academic boycotts.

“The AAUP … has long advocated against academic boycotts: ‘We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas.’ I concur.”

Lagji explained that the AAUP statement quoted by Thacker was introduced in direct response to what would become the BDS movement, and was never voted on by the entire AAUP body. She went on to describe the dissension from the vote within the organization in the years since.

“One of the original backers of the AAUP position, Joan Scott, has written at length about reconsidered her position back in 2013, and many of the members of AAUP have shifted in the intervening years,” Lagji said in the email. “There’s movement afoot to revisit that blanket statement about boycotts.”

On April 24, Thacker’s claimed alignment with the AAUP was challenged further in a statement by the 7C AAUP Executive Committee of the AAUP’s Claremont chapter. The statement, signed by representatives from all 5Cs plus Claremont Graduate University, states Thacker’s April 11 statement “elides several salient facts about that 2005 [AAUP] position.”

They clarify that the 2005 position has never been incorporated into the AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports or in the “Redbook,” therefore making it an inaccurate depiction of the organization’s opinions.

“Thacker’s invocation of the 2005 position on boycotts, without acknowledging the context or complexity surrounding that position, gives the impression that his decision is rooted in universally accepted core AAUP policies when it is not,” they wrote.

The statement also called out Thacker for the “several ways Pitzer College is otherwise

not in compliance with AAUP policies and principles.”

They specifically cited Thacker’s decision to veto the vote, stating that although their statement should not be read as an endorsement of an academic boycott, the veto directly undermined the democratic vote on the resolution.

“We find it profoundly disappointing that the effect of the presidential veto is to undermine the

AAUP’s long standing insistence that shared governance is a fundamental principle of

academic freedom,” they wrote in the statement. “While President Thacker need not endorse the College Council resolution, we urge him to reverse his veto and refrain from standing in the way of the democratic practice of shared governance at Pitzer College.”

In his statement, however, Thacker made clear that he believed shared governance was better represented by the college’s committee system, where groups like SAIP, who decide the fate of study abroad programs, are made up of both students and faculty.

“We now have in place in our system of shared governance a more rigorous process to ensure that our programs meet our academic and operational standards and provide the best possible learning and growth opportunities for students,” Thacker wrote. “The College Council recommendation would undermine this element of our shared academic governance.”

Nevertheless, the 7C AAUP Executive Committee statement disagreed with this statement, standing behind the College Council, which is also composed of student senators and faculty members, as a definitive form of shared governance at Pitzer.

They additionally noted how the presidential veto has only ever been used twice in Pitzer’s history — then President Melvin Oliver’s veto of a 67:28 College Council vote to close the Haifa program in 2019 and the Board of Trustees’ veto of a unanimous Student Senate vote to boycott products from certain Israeli companies in alignment with BDS guidelines — both times against pro-Palestinian legislation. They compelled Thacker to be mindful of how powerful of a tool his veto is.

“The presidential veto exists in Pitzer’s governance system, but this power, like similar powers of college trustees, is a power that must be exercised with the utmost restraint and respect for the College’s shared governance system to avoid harm to the College,” they wrote in the statement. “The veto should not be used to support a political agenda at odds with the outcome of the shared governance process.”

Finally, in his statement Thacker raised the point that this resolution, and with it an academic boycott of Israel, could increase divisiveness among students as well as potentially bring a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

Related to the broader concept of freedom of expression, we must likewise guard against creating the impression that some perspectives are more welcome on campus than others,” Thacker wrote. “I believe the College Council recommendation, if accepted, could have such an impact. We will not tolerate anything, including Islamophobia and antisemitism, that threatens our ability to maintain a safe and productive campus learning environment for all.”

Thacker’s qualms raise similar concerns to those of Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, who prior to a student referendum vote that showed overwhelming support from the student body for disclosure and divestment from “the apartheid system in the state of Israel,” released a statement titled, “Pomona Opens Doors, We Don’t Close Them” where she claimed the referendum would divide Pomona’s community and that it “raises the specter of antisemitism.”

Still, Lagji spoke out in favor of a boycott, specifically challenging Thacker’s worries surrounding antisemitism.

“If it’s the charge of anti-semitism, I think it’s frankly disingenuous and sloppy to continue to equate BDS actions which target the Israeli state with Jewish people everywhere; as our peers and colleagues and students in [Jewish Voice for Peace] have continued to insist, the state of Israel does not represent all Jews, and it endangers our students when the two are equated,” Lagji said through email.

Speaking on the questions of human rights, Lagji, whose work centers on the history of colonization and apartheid, called out the United States for its “deep investment in the Israeli state through weapons and other funding.”

She followed by calling on supporters to actively listen to Palestinian voices, highlighting BDS as a form of non-violent, effective resistance.

“BDS is a Palestinian-led movement … and they have asked the global community to stand with them in principled solidarity through BDS,” Lagji said through email. “I am following the lead of those most impacted by the occupation, as they believe, following the example of South Africa, that BDS is the way to effect change in a non-violent way.”