RES.03.29                                                SENATE OF THE ILLINOIS STUDENT GOVERNMENT

OCTOBER 16, 2019                                                                        3RD ASSEMBLY

Condemning Ignorance of Racism and Equating Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism

Recommendation to Pass 15-0-4

AUTHOR(S):         Chair of the Committee on Environmental Sustainability Bugra Sahin, Senator James Kosmopoulos, Senator Sudarshana Rao, Senator Anna Sekiguchi, Senator Akil Guruparan

SPONSOR(S):         Senator James Kosmopoulos, Senator Arnoldo Ayala, Director Kirsten Peterson, Senator Icardo Isasa, Speaker Pro Tempore Susan Zhou

ENDORSEMENT(S):         Chief of Staff Ali Mirza, President Connor Josellis

WHEREAS,        The Illinois Student Government stands in solidarity with marginalized populations and aims to advocate against acts of injustice; and;

WHEREAS,        the University administration has repeatedly ignored clear, active, and threatening anti-Semitic behavior, and have yet to take sufficient or appropriate actions given the severity of these events and,

WHEREAS,         the University administration has created space for holocaust deniers, Nazis, and other individuals -- by allowing an individual to spread hateful anti-Semitic ideologies on campus; and,  

WHEREAS,         the ongoing, anti-Semitic actions at this university have not been publicly addressed via mass mail; and,

WHEREAS,        the Illinois Student Government does not take issue or condemn the acknowledgement of pervasive and increasing prevalence of Anti-Semitism on the University of Illinois campus; and,

WHEREAS,         University of Illinois Administrators stated to the members of the public and the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion that hate crimes are a common occurrence and that if the administration was to “send out a safety alert every time  hate crimes were committed,” we "would get safety alerts every day”; and,

WHEREAS,         the University has not actively invested a sufficient amount of its time or resources to prevent hate crimes; and,

WHEREAS,         the University has not provided its students with an adequate level of transparency necessary for these types of situations in order for students to be informed and aware of the safety concerns present at the University of Illinois; and,

WHEREAS,        the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a history of responding with empty words to hateful events that have occurred on campus without taking the necessary  immediate restorative measures to prevent future hateful occurrences; and,

WHEREAS,        the University of Illinois administration, including Chancellor Robert Jones, has repeatedly refused to include the student body when deciding measures to be taken to respond to hateful or predatory acts on campus; and,

WHEREAS,         the presentation mentioned in Chancellor Jones’ Massmail on October 9, 2019, was improperly characterized, had no Anti-Semitic content in it; and,

WHEREAS,         this presentation should not have been equated with the image of a swastika, a symbol

that literally and violently threatens Jewish people across the world; and;

WHEREAS,        Zionism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a political stance whose object is “the assured settlement of [Jewish people’s] race upon a national basis in Palestine,”^[1] 

WHEREAS,        while Anti-Semitism is defined as “Prejudice, hostility, or discrimination towards Jewish people;”^[2] and,

WHEREAS,         the administration has had a history of equating Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism; as with the 2018 Divest campaign, and;

WHEREAS,        this false equivalence has gained national prominence as a method for cloaking legitimate anti-Semitism behind attacks on political ideologies opposed to religious violence; and;

WHEREAS,        this false equivalence has been used as a scare tactic against students and workers in the Palestine movement, and it is rooted in a false understanding of what the movement advocates for; and;

WHEREAS,         the rights of the student targeted in the email are being violated by the very administration responsible to protect them, including possible legal defamation issues; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         that the Illinois Student Government condemn the following part of the University of Illinois administration’s October 9, 2019, mass mail that reads the following:

“In addition, concerns were raised about a recent presentation with anti-Semitic content at a staff development program by a Housing student-worker. Housing staff have been meeting individually with all who were present to understand fully the presentation and the nature of the conversations that followed.”; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,        that the Illinois Student Government further condemn any and all other mentions of the equation of Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the Administration’s October 9th Massmail; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         the Illinois Student Government condemn the constant conflation of Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         that the Illinois Student Government condemns the passive tolerance shown by the University to racism, hate speech, bigotry, and white supremacy on campus; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         that the Illinois Student Government request the retraction of the part of the mass mail that conflated Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism and an apology to the student(s) in question and to the general university public for wrongfully categorizing Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism, slandering many students’ image and their cause; and,

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         that the Illinois Student Government support the demands put forth by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) with the exception of calling for the resignation of Chancellor Jones should these demands not be met; and

LET IT BE RESOLVED,         that the Senate requests the President direct the Executive to take any action necessary and proper to carry out the provisions of this resolution.