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Donna-Jo Pepito

Overview

Donna-Jo Pepito [DeeJay Pepito] co-sponsored an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement resolution at the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in April 2013.

Pepito was acting in her capacity as a student senator of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). She later became president of the ASUC in June 2013.
As of August 2018, Pepito’s LinkedIn page said she was the Director of Research at the National Association of College Auxiliary Services.

She received a bachelor’s degree in Social Welfare, City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley in 2014.

BDS Campus Activism

In 2013, Pepito co-sponsored SB-160, a BDS resolution calling on UC Berkeley to divest from “companies that have an active role in materially aiding Israel’s illegal occupation and the resulting human rights abuses.”  

The resolution passed on April 18, 2013, by an 11-9 vote. 

On May 26, 2013, the ASUC Judicial Council ruled that SB-160’s clauses requiring the ASUC to divest from companies affiliated with the Israeli military were unconstitutional, since the ASUC had no constitutional power to craft specific investment policies.

Shortly thereafter, George Kadifa, who co-sponsored of the divestment bill, reportedly thanked Pepito and the other ASUC senators who supported the BDS resolution, and admitted none of the companies targeted for divestment were actually held by the ASUC.

In October 2013, Pepito wrote a letter in opposition to an anti-BDS resolution that was proposed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Pepito wrote the letter in her capacity as the president of UC Berkeley’s ASUC and referenced SB-160’s passage in April 2013.

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.


BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.



Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/1537171475

Donna-Jo Pepito
Status:
Professional
University:
California-Berkeley
Organizations:
BDS

Related Profiles:
Klein Lieu,

Last Modified:
06/23/2025

Photos & Screenshots

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