On Saturday, Oct. 5, Claremont McKenna College’s (CMC) Open Academy hosted a discussion titled “Should Universities Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel” at CMC’s Kravis Center. Featuring two professors, one advocated the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement while the other argued against it.
The BDS movement calls for institutions to cut ties with “companies that participate in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” The debate around this sentiment is especially prevalent among U.S. college and university students, including those at the 5Cs.
Yuval Avnur, an associate professor of philosophy at Scripps College who specializes in agnosticism and epistemology, represented the anti-BDS position. David Lloyd, a professor of English Emeritus at UC Riverside whose expertise focuses on Irish culture and postcolonial and cultural theory, represented the pro-BDS stance.
Facilitated by Heather Fergusen, associate professor of history at CMC, the emotionally charged event had community members challenging the professors’ perspectives, sharing their own experiences and asking questions.
Following Fergusen’s brief introduction to the professors and outline of the event’s structure, each professor delivered opening statements, addressing their stances on the movement.
Avnur gave an opening statement on why universities should reject BDS and encourage engagement with Israel instead of resisting. Avnur said he disagreed with Pitzer College’s decision to remove its study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel, which was driven by the BDS movement.
“The University of Haifa is an incredibly diverse school that provides substantial opportunities for its students,” Anvar said. “If the aim was to encourage Israel to provide better opportunities for Arab-Israelis, this, I think, was a spectacular and hypocritical failure. We should instead engage with the University of Haifa to strengthen the positive role it plays for Arab-Israelis.”
Avnur closed his statement by emphasizing why he believes the BDS movement can cause harm to the 5C community.
“As an academic community, we must do better than getting into simple good versus evil narratives and into false colonizer-colonized dichotomies where they don’t exist,” Avnur said. “We need to think critically and seek out knowledge about the problems we wish to solve, not accept sloganeering and propaganda. This is why we should reject BDS.”
Lloyd followed up with his pro-BDS argument, countering Avnur’s argument that the movement is divisive.
“BDS is a civil rights movement,” Lloyd said. “It seeks to transform a situation by placing external pressure, not divisive pressure, by any means, in the interest of having people learn to live together.”
Lloyd explained how the practices of BDS hold power when targeted toward a country such as Israel.
“Sanctions and divestment and boycott are only really effective where it is possible to put pressure on a population that might conceivably make them change,” Lloyd said. “It is possible for Israel to decolonize.”
When asked why universities are the appropriate setting for discussions and boycotts, Lloyd noted larger academic spaces as the ideal place for these difficult conversations.
“If we are going to proximate truth or social justice, and I don’t think the two are fully separable, then this is how we do it,” Lloyd said. “We talk. We try to persuade and we try to introduce people to facts they haven’t heard before. The boycott strategy is precisely designed to do that.”
Following the professor’s opening statements, Ferguson opened the conversation for comments and questions. During this time, several students detailed their personal experiences relating to the situation, resulting in some tension and high emotions.
Event attendee Alyssa Wu PO ’28 said that while the space allowed for a productive and necessary conversation, at times, questions felt targeted toward Lloyd.
“Some questions, which were back-to-back, were asked in what felt like an antagonistic manner,” Wu said. “It didn’t really feel as if some of the questions were coming from a state of wanting to know more but instead an unwillingness to hear out the other perspective.”
Wu said that overall, the event was helpful in education on the topics and left her feeling prepared to engage in discourse surrounding them.
“A lot of history, terms and specific documents were talked about,” Wu said. “Just being able to hear them explained in a more simplified manner was really nice, and I plan to use this as a gateway to do my own reading and research.”
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