From November 21 to 25, the Cornell Graduate Student Union is advancing a BDS referendum to a full vote and demanding the union refuse research grants and collaboration with institutions tied to the U.S. or Israeli militaries.
A document put out by the union about the referendum, titled, “International Solidarity with the Palestinian Liberation Struggle,” states, “CGSU-UE recognizes that solidarity with Palestine is both a moral imperative and the most effective means of defending Cornell graduate workers against escalating attacks. The ruling class that invests in the genocide of Palestinians also profits from the erosion of our rights as workers. But we know silence is not safety. Therefore, we must go on the offensive.”
The document also says it will “undertake political education about the Palestinian struggle,” and claims that Cornell is “implicated in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians through research, recruitment, and financial ties.” It concludes: “Standing with the strength of Palestinians resisting a genocide, and their unequivocal UN-backed human rights to resist oppression by any means necessary including armed resistance, workers around the world are building power through the belief that we free Palestine, and Palestine frees us.”
According to David Rubinstein, a History Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University and an alumnus of the U.S.-Poland Fulbright Program, “This vote is merely the latest chapter of escalating antisemitic harassment by the union – which has been emboldened by a lack of response from Cornell’s administration. Calling for ‘armed resistance’ not only goes against advocating for peace, it tells Jews that our existence is up for debate. Depicting ‘Zionist interests’ as undercutting the working class has nothing to do with wages or benefits. Rather, it reveals an antisemitic, conspiracy-tinged worldview.”
“Calling for ‘armed resistance’ not only goes against advocating for peace, it tells Jews that our existence is up for debate.” – David Rubinstein
A graduate student at Cornell, who asked to remain anonymous because of a fear of retaliation from the union, said, “The current referendum, which centers violence against Jews and Israelis in every graduate student’s contract with Cornell, has been honestly the stuff of science fiction. Instead of advocating for student rights—the mission it claimed to serve—this overly politicized organization still chooses to push another agenda which has dominated all other union discourse over the past few years: setting up Palestine, and recent terror attacks, as the heroic mascot of the working class. Even after the war has ended, and amid countless other dominating urgent global crises, every resource available to the union is once again directed towards making campus more hostile for Jewish students, calling for resistance ‘by any means necessary, even armed resistance.’”
As for Rubinstein, he’s frustrated that his school is allowing the referendum to go ahead.
“Even as CGSU-UE urges violence against my relatives in Israel, Cornell makes me fund them unless my harassers grant an exemption,” he said. “It is wrong to force graduate students to financially support a pro-Hamas union as a condition of earning a degree. When Jewish students report a hostile environment on campus, the university must act to hold the union accountable.”
