February 20, 2024
We, the undersigned students and community members, demand that the $2 billion endowment Lehigh University possesses is invested ethically. To this end, the Investment Office at Lehigh must publicize the list of companies which the Lehigh Endowment funds, divest funds from companies operating in Israel, and end programs that normalize relations with Israel.
The state of Israel is responsible for the slaughter of over 30,000 Palestinians, and the ethnic cleansing of over 1 million Palestinians, since October 7th, and more before that date. Over 12,000 of these dead were children. For decades, the Israeli occupation has committed egregious war crimes including the use of illegal chemical weapons, the targeting of safe zones such as schools and hospitals, the kidnapping of civilians and using them as human shields, and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in densely populated areas. Entire family lineages have been wiped out, genocidal intent has been established, and millions of innocents have been enduring famine as Israel blocks international aid from entering Gaza. On January 26th, 2024 the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide. Human Rights Watch has since found that Israel has failed to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, as ordered by the court.
The Lehigh community will do everything in its power to help end this violence and the occupation of Palestine. This petition ignites the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) campaign against Israel here at Lehigh University. BDS is a strategic movement that began in the 1980s to end apartheid in South Africa. This movement began on college campuses, with students just like us demanding that their institutions invest ethically. By the time apartheid ended in 1988, 150 US universities had divested from companies operating in South Africa. With funds withdrawn on a large scale, the apartheid former South African regime was made to understand that their violent practices were not acceptable. This lead to the collapse of apartheid, election of Nelson Mandela, and a brighter future for millions of South Africans.
In 2002, in light of the end of former South African apartheid, anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Prize recipient Desmond Tutu wrote that "There is no greater testament to the basic dignity of ordinary people everywhere than the divestment movement of the 1980s", and that "a similar movement has taken shape recently, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. We should hope that average citizens again rise to the occasion..." We know that Israel depends on American financial support to carry out their crimes. Israel already receives billions from the US Government - it shall not receive a penny more from Lehigh University. As Nelson Mandela famously stated, "we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
And today, as Lehigh community members, we will rise to the occasion. We refuse to idly stay silent while one of the largest and most prominent universities in the Lehigh Valley continues to align itself with the far-right genocidal government of Israel. Our demands include:
1. ISSUE A STATEMENT: that (a) calls for a ceasefire; (b) recognizes the actions of Israel as a U.S.-funded genocide, rather than a "conflict," which infers symmetrical claim, power and aggression; (c) contextualizes the violence and recognizes the 75 years of settler-colonial violence that preceded October 7th; (d) explicitly condemns the Israeli regime.
2. END PRO-ISRAEL PROGRAMMING: Lehigh-supported programs such as TAMID and Israeli study abroad (Technion and Tel Aviv University) normalize relations with a far-right, settler-colonial, and genocidal state. Lehigh University does not have such relations with other states that perpetuate large-scale violence against civilians, such as Russia. These programs must end, in line with the BDS movement.
3. PUBLICIZE LEHIGH'S INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO: A core tenant of the Lehigh Endowment is to uphold university values and morals. The values of the university are determined by the community which inhabits its campus. To ensure accountability, the actions taken by the Investment Office must be transparent to that community. We demand that the list of companies and all other entities supported by our endowment is included in all future Endowment Reports.
4. DIVEST from all entities (including but not limited to governments, companies, NGOs, and individuals) directly operating in collaboration with the Israeli government.
Follow @lehigh4palestine on Instagram for updates. Read more about the global BDS movement against Israel here:
https://bdsmovement.net/ 