At Pomona College, a highly selective school in California, the student government passed a resolution declaring that it would not use its funds to patronize a long list of companies that do business with Israel. The same resolution also states an “end goal” of requiring all student groups and clubs to adhere to the boycott, on pain of losing funding, throughout the five-college Claremont Consortium of which Pomona is a part. Thus a campus Hillel house could be banned for buying goods from Israel, let alone organizing a trip there. Jonathan Marks comments:
When the resolution was first discussed without a word of objection, the outgoing senior-class president explained that it was “a great concrete example of how we can stand in solidarity with all [sic] students.” The mission of Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) to foster an “inclusive campus climate” has room for everyone, except for Zionists, who may feel less than included by the ASPC’s use of an anti-Israel litmus test to allocate money it takes in from mandatory student fees.
There is nothing the [Pomona] administration can or should do about a duly elected student government choosing not to use Expedia to book its trips, though Expedia’s sole “crime” appears to be listing lodgings in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. But . . . a college that promises to protect free expression cannot abandon that promise by farming out funding decisions to a student government.
Using the threat of defunding to compel pro-Israel groups to participate in an anti-Israel boycott, apart from being perverse, violates the expressive rights of those groups. For that matter, using that threat to compel any group to participate in a boycott it does not care to participate in, violates that group’s rights. So far, the administration’s response has been to express “deep concern.” It needs to do better.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/jonathan-marks/inclusivity-sure-but-not-for-the-zionists/