NYU Students For Justice In Palestine Receiving ‘Service Award’ From University
By Aiden Pink April 15, 2019
The New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine will receive an award from the school administration on Wednesday.
The club announced on its Facebook page last week that it had been selected to receive a President’s Service Award, which goes to more than 50 clubs and 100 individual students every year, according to the NYU website.
“We are thrilled to announce that we have been selected to receive a presidential service award at NYU,” NYU SJP wrote on their Facebook page last week. “Despite the pushback we have received from our institution, we agree that we have made ‘significant contributions to the university community in the areas of learning, leadership, and quality of student life.’ Anyway, New York University, divest from Israeli apartheid. Xoxo.”
SJP is one of the biggest student groups promoting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, and the NYU chapter was instrumental in lobbying the student government to pass a resolution last December calling on the school to divest from certain companies with ties to the Israeli military. The school administration said they would not abide by the student government’s request, and university president Andrew Hamilton has publicly denounced BDS as antithetical to academic freedom.
The pro-Israel student club Realize Israel slammed the decision to award SJP in a statement on their Facebook page, describing the club as having “spent the last several years making Jewish and pro-Israel students feel unwelcome and unsafe on campus.”
The award will be presented on Wednesday at the Kimmel Eisner and Lubin Auditorium at 4:00 p.m.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor for the Forward. You can reach him at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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