Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Loyola Student Senate Votes for Israel Divestment

The Student Government of Loyola University in Chicago narrowly passed a resolution to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

The vote on March 26 was 15 to 15, with two abstentions. The speaker of the student senate broke the tie with a vote in favor of the resolution.

More than an hour of public debate and three hours of debate by student senators preceded the vote, according to the university’s student newspaper, the Loyola Phoenix. The voting was anonymous due to fear of reprisals.

The companies named in the resolution are Caterpillar, United Technologies Co., Raytheon, and Valero.

The tie-breaking vote came from an intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the College Fix news website reported. The CAIR Chicago chapter assisted the Loyola Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which sponsored the resolution, after it was temporarily suspended from holding campus activities following the harassment of a Jewish group on campus.

The Loyola Student Government passed a divestment resolution in March 2014, but the resolution was vetoed by the student body president. The university also issued a statement at the time that it would not adopt the student’s divestment proposal if passed.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.