There was a Harvard-MIT petition opposing divestment a while ago. Does anyone reading this know the exact wording that was in it? I was able to find news reports about it, but they only had excerpts, not the full text. I'm thinking about putting together an online anti-divestment petition in response to the PSM's conference at Georgetown, and I thought I might model it to some extent on the one used in the Harvard-MIT case. I'm a little anxious about anti-Semites on the net, so I haven't used my email address here, but perhaps any readers who have the full text of the Harv.-MIT anti-divestment petition could reply in this comments space? I'd be very grateful for help with this. Solomon: I'm a relatively new reader of your blog. It's excellent!

Thank you for the compliment, 'a.'

They appear to have allowed the url to lapse (harvardmitjustice.org), but the Internet Wayback Machine still has it, complete with the text of the petition:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://harvardmitjustice.org

Don't worry about your email address. It doesn't show (here at least). I'm testing that with this comment, in fact.

That link didn't parse right, let's try again:

Petition

And nope, only I see your email here.

Edit: OK, try this:

Petition

Thanks, Solomon!
I'll be in touch again if I do organize a petition. There needn't be only one petition, of course (i.e., people shouldn't wait till I cobble together mine.) I'd urge people to bear in mind the following: Georgetown's President's gone on record saying that though Georgetown will host the PSM, the university itself won't divest. So there's not a need for a petition to target Georgetown specifically re. divestment (unless the aim is to express support for the decision already taken, not to divest.) But there are two other important issues:

i. even though the university won't divest, arguably it shouldn't host a group like the PSM because targetting Israel for divestment is anti-Semitic at least in effect (i.e., whatever the intent.) Personally, I agree about that divestment has that effect, but it might be that the university's commitment to fairness to student groups (so long as those groups aren't doing things that are illegal) overrides that--I don't know. It doesn't require too much strain to see some merit in Georgetown's administration's claim that allowing a student group to sponsor x does not imply a wholesale endorsement of x, and in the case at hand the university has, as I said, announced that it won't divest. There's a good piece at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf24.html#a45
however, that suggests that PSM ought to be prohibited from coming in any case. To my mind, a lot hinges on the question, just how anti-Semitic is the PSM? I don't know the answer to that. I mean: yes, their conference centers on an issue that is anti-Semitic in effect. That makes them bad enough in my eyes, but is it a sufficient reason to deny the campus group sponsoring them the right to do that...

ii. But a distinct issue from whether the PSM should or shouldn't be allowed to come to a university campus, is the expression of our opposition to divestment itself (not just at Georgetown, where as I've said, divestment's already been rejected) Thus, whether or not we agree that the PSM should be allowed to come to Georgetown, the fact that it looks like they will in fact be coming is a good opportunity to express (through petitions and other means) opposition to divestment.

An additional means of opposing divestment is, of course, going out of one's way to purchase Israeli products:
http://cms.hillel.org/Hillel/Israel/Israel+on+Campus/Take+Action/BuyIsrael.htm

Solomon: thanks again for your help, and for giving me the space for such a long comment. Keep up the good work your blog does!

One thing that Georgetown should be pressured to do to show that this conference is comapatible with an academic mission is to make sure that each and every event is open to the public and the media and available for video and audio recording without exception. This is something they prevented at Duke because they know how radical and incompatible with their stated mission their events and speakers really are.

I'd like to have all their events open for recording as well. But it's a tricky demand to make because it has to be formulated as a general principle. Let's say the PSM claims, as it does, that only some events will be open to the media, and that "strategy sessions" will be closed. If you argue that those should be open as well, then what about strategy sessions for pro-Israel groups on campus? I'd want _those_ to be closed but how could I argue that the one type of strategy session should be open and the other type legitimately closed? I know that the aims of the two groups are different...but the point is that it's difficult to persuade procedure-bound administrators to see why the PSM's "strategy sessions" are different enough from other groups' strategy sessions to warrant forcing them to be open.

That's a good point, but my impression was they kept the press away from everything in the past. Is that not the case?

I read a quote from their media spokesperson (I think it was in G'town's student newspaper, The Hoya, but I can't seem to find the piece now) that most events would be open to the media, and on the PSM's site you can indicate, when reg'ing for the conf., that you're from the media. (I thought I might go and challenge some of the b.s. at the conf., but in the end my timidity won out. I mean: if I'm not posting my name here, I'm hardly going to give it to the PSM people. :-)) I imagine that given the attention this has been getting, they will in fact make some of the sessions open to the media. But that's almost useless if it's partial 'cause they can save the really vile stuff for the sessions that are closed.
I'm sort of torn about the media question. If there were full exposure, the publicity might just win them more converts. ..That's why I'm sort of torn about whether to ignore them or whether to give them the attention that protesting against them, etc., can give. Part of me just wants to sit back with a glass of Israeli cabernet and wait till it all blows over.
Let them have their self-righteousness fest, vent, and get out of here. Of course, how any of it is supposed to help the Palestinians is beyond me.