BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- Yale University's student government voted 12-12 on a resolution to demand the university apologize for facilitating a donation to a nonprofit that supports the Israeli military.
- The proposed resolution called for Yale to issue a formal accountability statement and to cease donations to organizations that some senators said engage in human rights violations.
- Previous student efforts included a referendum for divestment from companies supplying weapons to Israel, but the university has not acted on such resolutions.
Yale University’s student government did not pass a proposed resolution to denounce the school’s role in a donation to a nonprofit that supports Israel’s military.
The Yale College Council tied 12-12 on a vote demanding a “formal statement of accountability” from the university for a prior donation to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, according to the student newspaper. The group is a registered nonprofit in the United States, according to its website.
Yale received money through a donor-advised fund and then gave some of this to the nonprofit, the Yale Daily News previously reported. “Part of the funds remain at Yale and part of the funds may go to one or more other charitable organization,” a spokesperson told the student newspaper in September. However, the donation occurred in Nov. 2023.
The resolution failed when the college council’s vice president, Jalen Bradley, abstained from voting.
“The proposed YCC statement would have also called for Yale to end further donor-advised distributions of donated funds to organizations implicated ‘in genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or other human rights violations,’” the student newspaper reported.
A group called Yale Endowment Justice Collective first reported on the allegedly $1 million donation.
“If Yale wants to stand for all its students, the least it can do is acknowledge this mistake and refuse future donations to organizations implicated in human rights violations,” sponsor Hassaan Qadir told the student newspaper.
There were three abstentions on the vote in addition to the vice president’s, the student newspaper reported.
The Yale Daily News also said members debated whether the council should be making political stances.
Senator Benjamin Barkoff called the resolution “a waste of time.”
“Our job is to have fun food truck fests, create stipends and do fun things,” Barkoff said. “It’s not about virtue signaling, saying that we condemn this when we have no power over this.”
Senator Saniya Mishra said the resolution could lead to further federal scrutiny.
“Right now, it has been a politically tumultuous time. Yale has been safe, under the radar. I do not want to end up like our other peer institutions,” Mishra said. “President McInnis has already said that student financial aid could be impacted, and that is not something that I want to put out this year.”
Others argued in favor of the resolution, while some said broader standards for divestment could be pursued, but not narrow ones.
Last year students passed a referendum demanding the school divest from companies that provide weapons to Israel. However, the school said it had no plans to implement the resolution, the Washington Free Beacon reported in Dec. 2024.
MORE: Catholic U. of America removes Israeli flags from students’ Oct. 7 memorial
