GPSG passes resolution calling for UNC divestment from Israel

The Graduate and Professional Senate passed a resolution, 35-6 with four abstentions, on Tuesday calling for UNC to divest from companies that invest in or provide funds to the Israeli government or military. 

Katie Heath, the graduate and professional student body president-elect, led and moderated the debate and public comments about the resolution. At the meeting, senators also voted to pass legislation drafted by the Travel Awards, External Appointees, Town Hall and Appropriations Committees.

Here's what you should know.

The Gaza Ceasefire and Israel Divestment Resolution, which is the resolution the students were discussing, called for the University to condemn war crimes committed in Gaza and to divest from companies and assets that financially support Israel — as well as a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

The resolution also called for President Joe Biden and congress members to suspend military funding to Israel, and it  condemned Islamophobia and antisemitism, as well as anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hatred.

Senators Wynne Ebner and Hashem Amireh, representing students studying health behavior and economics, respectively, co-authored the bill. Senator Nyssa Tucker, who represents toxicology Ph.D. students, was it co-sponsor.  

"We can disagree on whether Israel is committing genocide or note — I think it would be very hard to argue that Israel is not committing war crimes, and if a country is committing those crimes at a very large scale, there needs to be maximum pressure to stop those war crimes," Amireh said. 

During public comment on the bill, members of UNC’s Jewish community expressed differing opinions on the resolution.

"Since Oct. 7, the majority of Jewish students have not felt safe," former GPSG Senator Mitchell Pinsky said. "This resolution over here makes zero mention of the atrocities that Hamas perpetuated on Oct. 7."

Liv Linn, a Jewish graduate student in public health and social work, asked the senators to pass the ceasefire resolution and said that she had seen widespread support for divestment measures in her departments.

"Ceasefire and divestment are Jewish issues," she said. "To be clear. it is my Judaism that obligates me to ask this of you in the decades-long tradition of Holocaust survivors, rabbis and Jews across the diaspora who are doing the same."

Senators Isaac Weiss, representative of mathematics students, and Joshua Bakita, who represents computer science students, commented in opposition to the resolution.

Weiss said his constituents were concerned about wasting political capital by passing Amireh and Ebner's resolution.

"A lot of them were worried about the fact that this [resolution] is not really germane to what we do as a body, to fend for the rights of graduate students," Weiss said.

Bakita moved to heavily rewrite the legislation and send the resolution back to the State of Graduate and Professional Students Committee. Later, he moved to revise the resolution so that it only called for the suspension of offensive military funding, rather than all military funding, to Israel. Both of these motions failed.

Ebner and Amireh's resolution passed 35-6, with four senators abstaining. In an interview with The Daily Tar Heel after the meeting, Amireh and Ebner spoke about their motivation for co-authoring the bill.

"I think that decades of blind support for Israel have created this environment where people are not critically questioning what Israel does, and we wanted to change that," he said.

Ebner said she'd made efforts to encourage the staff and faculty at the Gillings School of Global Public Health to speak out against the health crisis occuring in Gaza.

Weiss and Bakita were among the six senators who voted against the passage of the resolution. 

"Whether or not I personally agree with my constituents, I have to represent them, and they were very clearly vocal that they don't want the GPSG wasting their time on such a resolution," Weiss said.

Batika said he still had his reservations, but that democracy was at work in the meeting. 

Beyond the resolution, at the beginning of the meeting, Graduate School Dean Beth Mayer-Davis spoke about the Graduate Student Experience Initiative, which aims to improve the university experience for graduate and professional students.

The GSE Initiative intends to conduct a comprehensive review of the graduate school experience, paying particular attention to student working conditions. She said there have been concerns and calls to increase mental health counseling and wellness for graduate and professional students.

"The question is ‘Why?’" she said. "What is it about how we are delivering graduate and professional education at [UNC] that could be improved?"

GPSG president Lauren Hawkinson congratulated Heath for her successful presidential campaign. Hawkinson also spoke about the fact that there is, as of now, no graduate student representation on the search committee for a permanent University chancellor.

“My first plea to you all is to show up for the listening sessions,” she said. “We need to show the administration not only here at UNC but across the UNC System that graduate and professional students care, and that we are going to make our voices heard.”

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