Columbia Delivers Two Setbacks to Campus BDS

Student Workers of Columbia, a union representing roughly 3,500 graduate and undergraduate workers, removed an Israel-linked divestment demand from its contract proposal. At the same time, Columbia is moving ahead with its long-planned Tel Aviv Global Center, preserving an institutional link to Israel despite sustained boycott pressure.

• The UAW-affiliated student-worker union withdrew divestment from its bargaining demands during contract negotiations.
• Columbia’s Tel Aviv center is expected to support research, teaching and academic collaboration in Israel.
• The two developments separate symbolic campus agitation from the university’s labor and institutional decisions.

Campus BDS has generated disruption and reputational pressure at Columbia without converting that pressure into either a labor-contract divestment mandate or institutional disengagement from Israel. The measurable test is whether the retreat remains confined to Columbia or signals a broader failure to turn protest leverage into durable university policy.

Police are investigating swastikas placed inside an Orthodox synagogue in Lakewood, New Jersey, while officials in Oak Park, Michigan, condemned antisemitic literature distributed across their community. Westford, Massachusetts, separately reported antisemitic and racist graffiti under investigation as a possible hate crime.

• Multiple swastikas made from yellow tape were found inside Congregation Ohel Shulamit in Lakewood on July 29.
• Oak Park, a city of about 29,000, said public-safety officers are investigating distributed antisemitic literature.
• Westford police are probing July 22 vandalism containing antisemitic, racist and obscene graffiti as a hate crime.

The incidents show antisemitic intimidation operating through low-cost, locally repeatable tactics against both Jewish institutions and entire neighborhoods. The enforcement distinction will be whether local condemnations produce identified offenders and prosecutable cases rather than an accumulating record of unresolved incidents.

A campaign calling on schools to drop ADL education programs is explicitly organized around opposition to ADL’s support for Israel and its treatment of anti-Israel antisemitism. In California, opposition to AB 2551 centers on claims that faculty-union-backed changes would weaken student protections under the banner of free speech.

• ADL describes #DropTheADLfromSchools as a boycott campaign led by activists opposed to its Israel position and antisemitism work.
• The Jewish Journal argues that AB 2551 would privilege faculty-union political activity over safeguards for students facing anti-Israel discrimination.
• Both campaigns contest the institutional rules used to distinguish protected advocacy from discriminatory conduct.

The next phase of the school fight is control over the definitions, training programs and enforcement standards that administrators use before an incident reaches formal discipline. Weakening those inputs would allow anti-Israel organizing to shape institutional practice even where explicit BDS resolutions fail.