BARNARD COLLEGE STATEMENT ON DIVESTMENT FROM ISRAEL

A petition signed by members of the Barnard College and Columbia University community has called on these affiliated academic institutions to sanction Israel for its actions toward the Palestinian people by divesting from companies supplying war materials to Israel.

Other members of the Columbia-Barnard and international academic communities have condemned the divestment campaign as an attempt to target Israel by demanding unilateral concessions from it alone in the Middle East conflict. The divestment campaign, moreover, is taking place in the context of such occurrences as boycotts against Israeli scholars and the withholding of scholarly texts from Israeli universities by publishers.

I am issuing this statement to make clear my opposition to a divestment demand that singles out one country in an unsupportable way. The current Israeli-Palestinian conflict will ultimately be solved through a political solution that will demand the give-and-take of compromise by all concerned parties. There are widely differing views on how peace in the region can be achieved and diverse opinions on the tactics and strategies used by governments in the region to achieve their ends. The approach taken by the divestment petition does not begin to do justice to the historical complexity of the current crisis.

Some signers of the divestment petition claim that it is intended to foster debate. I would note my own strong doubt that it will have this effect; on the contrary, we have already seen that it is serving only to further polarize views on the Middle East conflict with the likely result that positions become more entrenched. At the same time, I wish to emphasize that it reflects the exercise of free speech that is one of the central tenets of this institution. The goal that I trust we share is for Barnard to remain a place where intelligent, constructive debate and engagement can take place with regard to the conflict in the Middle East, as well as to other grave situations that we currently face.

Judith Shapiro
President
November 7, 2002