Campus Divestment Resolutions in the USA

The first BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) resolutions were proposed in student governments in 2005-6; of the four introduced, two passed, and two were defeated. Only five other resolutions were proposed in the following five academic years combined, and three were defeated. The campaign began to take off in 2012-13 with ten resolutions (six were defeated), followed by 19 in 2013-14 (12 were defeated) and 27 in 2014-15 (20 were defeated). Following that upsurge, the movement was petering out. It got new momentum in 2023-2024 as protests roiled campuses across the country over the Israeli counteroffensive in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, massacre and kidnapping of Israelis by Hamas.

BDS Resolutions

Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2022/2024
Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2013-2021/2022
Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2005-2012/2013
Notes
Cumulative Results

Since 2005:

• A total of 182  BDS measures have been considered, and 104 were defeated (57%), including those vetoed or repealed by student government presidents.
• Those votes were limited to 85 schools, less than 2% of America’s 4,298 four-year colleges. (The California Community College Association is counted as one college, and the UC Student Association, which has no power and represents no individual schools, is excluded, as were five graduate student programs).
• A total of 61 schools have approved a BDS resolution, representing about 1% of universities (excluding those vetoed).*
• A total of 62 schools have rejected BDS (there is some overlap as some of these have adopted BDS in other years).
• The schools holding the most votes (9) - UCSB [defeated every time], Michigan, and University of Michigan-Dearborn.
• Only nine schools (University of Michigan Dearborn, Northwestern, UC San Diego, UC Irvine,  UC Riverside, UCLA, and UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota) have passed BDS more than once.
• Of the 85 schools that voted on BDS, 12 were ranked (at the time of the vote by US News & World Report) in the top 20, and 14 of 22 (64%) resolutions were defeated.
• A total of 24 schools in the top 50 entertained BDS initiatives, and 42 of 70 were defeated (60%).
• In 2019, Brown became the first Ivy League school to pass a divestment resolution.
• Resolutions are often adopted by a small number of students who are unrepresentative of the student body. In 2024, for example, the UC Davis student government passed a boycott resolution with only eight votes out of an enrollment of nearly 50,000.

Even the handful of divestment resolutions that students adopted have no authority, and administrators have repeatedly made clear they have no intention of divesting from Israel. Sonoma State was the first university to announce it would divest. The president did so on his own without a vote in response to anti-Israel protests during the war in Gaza. That decision was reversed, however, and the president was removed for “insubordination” and making the statement without “appropriate approvals.”

Many of the same schools (e.g., UC Irvine) dramatically increased cooperation with Israel after the votes. More than 98% of American campuses have had no divestment votes and have little or no BDS activity.

Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2022/2024

Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2013/2021-2022

Results of Campus BDS Resolutions 2005-2012/2013

Notes

¹ Brown 2006 - No vote, activist proposal to investment comm that failed.

²2014 Passed, vetoed, passed.

³ 2015 Marquette passed a divestment bill after removing references to Israel.

⁴ 2015 failed then passed.

⁵ 2014 A section of the resolution was later found invalid.

⁶ 2015 passed then failed on technicality, then passed again. Ruled unconstitutional in 2019.

⁷ 2014 failed then passed.

⁸ 2013 passed then revoked.

⁹ 2014 passed then vetoed.

¹⁰ Divestment was tabled but a comm was set up to divest from companies more generally.

¹¹ Michigan Student Senate vote.

¹² Reversed veto of 2014 divestment resolution.

¹³ Passed divestment rejected Hummas boycott.

¹⁴ Won, was vetoed, won again but ruled unconstitutional.

¹⁵ Defeated the first time, then passed.

¹⁶ Dearborn has had the most votes; 2016 was the first defeat.

¹⁷Defeated twice.

¹⁸2015-2016 Did not count grad student votes supporting BDS at CUNY, Umass, and NYU (which was reversed by UAW).

¹⁹Passed watered own version that wasn’t anti-Israel - counted as victories.

²⁰Tabled.

²¹Investment Committee rejected divestment; it was not a student govt resolution.

²²Vote on the eve of Passover at Tufts on Passover at Pitzer when Jewish students were gone.

²³Administration rescinded.

²⁴Trustees announced they would not divest from Israel in 2015 http://oberlinreview.org/9008/news/board-rejects-student-divestment-proposals/.

²⁵Failed to reach support needed to bring to the floor.

²⁶Resolution passed after anti-Israel boycott language was removed.

²⁷Resolution passed with a number of anti-Israel clauses, but after the call for boycotting Israel was removed.

²⁸Referendum.

²⁹Vote canceled.

³⁰Passed, then vetoed, and the veto was sustained.

³¹Not considered because of a possible violation of state anti-boycott law.

³²In 2019, the resolution was deemed unconstitutional.

³³Student government passed a resolution but stripped out mention of Israel before the final vote.

³⁴Student govt rejected divestment and later passed it.

³⁵Failed despite the vote being held during Passover over objections of Jewish students.

³⁶Passed then vetoed by the student government president.

³⁷Repealed by the student senate in 2020.

³⁸BDS removed from a resolution calling for defunding university police.

³⁹In 2021, UCLA passed a broad divestment resolution that was directed at a variety of targets and referred to the 2014 UCLA BDS vote and speciously accused Israel of “Ethnic cleansing.” It is not included here.

⁴⁰Resolution withdrawn.

⁴¹Passed but not signed by the council president.

⁴²Passed but later nullified.

⁴³The student government conceded its handling of the referendum was “unfair and incorrect,” concluding that the elections manager misled students about how the vote would be tallied when he told students that abstentions would count as a part of the final vote total before reversing course. Hence, the student government said it would “not make a statement on behalf of the student body in favor or against the referendum,” which called on the university to stop contracting with the construction company Caterpillar because it is a supplier of the Israel Defense Forces. The vote was 44% yes, 40% no, 16% abstained.

⁴⁴Resolution also called for divestment unrelated to Israel.

⁴⁵Vote held the day before Passover.

⁴⁶Withdrawn before vote.

⁴⁷Student government president blocked the vote.

Cumulative Results

Other Notes:

The list does not include all resolutions that did not come to a vote, for example, in cases where BDS resolutions were withdrawn or removed.

In 2009, under pressure from anti-Israel activists, Hampshire College divested from a mutual fund with Israeli holdings but denied the decision was boycott-related.

In 2010, Berkeley passed a divestment resolution, which the student government president vetoed, and that veto was sustained, nullifying the resolution.

In 2010, DePaul and Princeton boycotted Sabra Hummus, but the boycott was reversed.

In 2015, Western Washington preemptively voted against all boycotts

In 2015, the UC Student Association (UCSA) passed a divestment resolution, but it is not counted as a campus.

#*In 2015-16, four graduate programs voted on divestment: the NYU Graduate Union voted no; graduate students at CUNY, Amherst, and the U of Washington voted yes. UAW later reversed NYU’s vote.

Sources: AICE and news sources.
Jaweed Kaleem and Colleen Shalby, “Sonoma State president on leave for ‘insubordination’ after supporting anti-Israel boycott, divestment,” Los Angeles Times, (May 15, 2024).