Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons On November 8th, the Pitzer College faculty passed two separate resolutions, both of which concerned the university’s relationship with Israel. The more concerning of the two was the faculty’s vote to suspend the school’s study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel. The faculty’s resolution called for the “suspension of the College’s exchange with Haifa University, until (a) the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and (b) the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.” This resolution has received significant backlash from students and community members. The Pitzer Student Senate will vote on a resolution on November 29th, which condemns the actions of the faculty for not consulting with the student representatives and for promoting their own “political agenda at the expense of students.” The faculty’s decision to suspend the program, according to the student resolution, “eliminates student learning opportunities,” singles out an Israeli institution, and does not apply the same standards of review that are applied to other study abroad programs. The resolution also points out the fact that “the faculty are not linked to any quantifiable nor intangible positive or negative consequence of either the suspension or prolongation” of the program. In other words, students are the ones who are impacted by the decision to suspend the program. Pitzer Voices for Academic Freedom, a group of “strong supporters of free speech and academic freedom on campus,” has started a petition supporting the Haifa study abroad program. The petition urges the Student Senate to adopt the resolution condemning the faculty’s action, issue a statement supporting the study abroad program, and “convene a campus-wide committee consisting of students, staff and faculty, tasked with ensuring that the shared governance model is practiced in a fair and transparent manner across all corners of Pitzer College.” Additionally, the AMCHA Initiative started a petition, urging Pitzer College President Melvin L. Oliver to endorse the “University Leaders Statement Against the Implementation of an Academic Boycott of Israel.” The next stop for this resolution will be the College Council, where it will be voted on by faculty and student delegates sometime in January. Daniel Segal, the professor who introduced the resolution, expects the Council’s vote to be binding, saying “I do not think there has been a single time when College Council has made a curricular decision that is clearly within their purview that has not then become policy.” Pitzer spokeswoman Anna Chang has confirmed that the Haifa program is not currently suspended, but that the college administration is declining to comment on the matter at the moment. She said, “The college community of students, faculty and staff are deliberating the issue through Pitzer’s shared governance process. The college do not plan to release any formal statements until the process is completed.” The Pitzer College Faculty also passed a second resolution on November 8th, which was a dissension from the decision by the Board of Trustees and President Oliver in June to nullify the Student Senate’s passage of a budget amendment endorsing BDS. This is yet another way the faculty has shown support for the BDS movement. The resolution, also introduced by Professor Segal, stated, “Independent of agreeing or disagreeing with that resolution, we the Faculty object to the president and trustees singling out this one issue as a basis for not accepting the Senate’s longstanding autonomy in controlling its funds, in the context of Pitzer’s governance system.” The initial BDS resolution was passed by the Student Senate over Passover, when Jewish students who would have voted against it were off campus, and singled out Israeli companies like Caterpillar, SodaStream, Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard, and Sabra to boycott. Pitzer is not the first school to have faculty members go rouge with their support for the BDS movement. For example, faculty at University of Michigan have recently come under fire for refusing to write letters of recommendation for students who want to study abroad in Israel.