The Associated Students of Stanford University Undergraduate Senate defeated yet another BS proposal, following a failed effort at Stanford in 2013 and another failed effort in 2010. Though BSemites tried to salvage the bill by cutting the number of targeted companies from 8 to 2, the bill did not pass, again.
The Stanford Israel Alliance led the opposition to the vote and organized a petition signed by 1,600 students, faculty and alumni. The pro-Israel students were backed by House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor, Congressman Charles Rangel, and several Nobel Prize winners, including Stanford professors
Roger Kornberg and Al Roth.
The repeated failure of BS efforts at Stanford are particularly painful to the BS movement because Stanford has a rich history of divestment. For example, last year, the university made headlines when it divested from coal-mining companies, a move that both students, faculty and administration supported enthusiastically. It is precisely this record that explains why the BS movement has failed again, and again, and again on this campus: Stanford students have enough experience to recognize when they are being manipulated for hateful (and futile) ends.
The third defeat for BS on this campus in recent years stands in contrast with the University of California system, which went over the deep end earlier this week. UC became the laughing stock among U.S. campuses when it was manipulated by pro-Israel students into divesting from the United States of America, thus discrediting itself and the entire BS circus.
