Eleanor Wikstrom

Overview

Eleanor Wikstrom [Eleanor V. Wikstrom] served on the Harvard Crimson (the Crimson) editorial board when it endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and promoted the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Harvard University (Harvard) in 2022. 

In April 2022, Wikstrom served as an associate editorial editor of the Crimson and was a member of its editorial board when the board published a staff editorial endorsing BDS. The editorial also endorsed the school’s SJP chapter, which is called the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (Harvard PSC). 

As of May 2023, Wikstrom’s LinkedIn page said she had been an editorial chair at the Crimson since July 2022, a Crimson editorial board editor since September 2020 and an Op-Eds editor from January to July 2022.

Also as of May 2023, Wikstrom’s LinkedIn said she was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social studies at Harvard, which is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was slated to graduate in 2024. However, as of the same date, Wikstrom wrote on Facebook that she lived in Oakland, California.

Harvard Crimson Editorial Board Endorses BDS

On April 29, 2022, while Wikstrom was on the Crimson editorial board, the board published a staff editorial titled: “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine.” 

The editorial said: “As a board, we are proud to finally lend our support to both Palestinian liberation and BDS — and we call on everyone to do the same.”

The editorial also showed support for Harvard PSC and its display which demonized Israel’s security barrier and supported BDS. The display included multiple panels and was erected during Harvard PSC’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a week of SJP events common at American universities.

Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

The editorial said: “This editorial board is broadly and proudly supportive of PSC’s mission and activism, including its recent art display. The admittedly controversial panels dare the viewer to contend with well-established, if rarely stated, facts.”

One panel on the display, which was called the “Wall of Resistance,” featured text that said [slide 2]: “Zionism is Racism Settler Colonialism White Supremacy Apartheid.” Another panel showed [slide 1] support for the “Right of Return.”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

The Harvard PSC “Wall of Resistance” also featured a panel that portrayed [slide 1] an arched bridge with train cars on it that had the names of Israeli and American companies. Text above the train cars read: “BOYCOTT! DIVEST! SANCTION!” 

The same panel featured a black and white painting of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians next to the security barrier and behind tall fencing. Critics of the display compared it to photos from a “concentration camp” during the Holocaust. 

The editorial also said that “Israeli soldiers have killed nearly 50 Palestinians, including eight children, this year alone.” At the end of March and beginning of April 2022, Palestinian terrorists killed 14 Israelis in a number of attacks where the terrorists were also killed.

The editorial was condemned by pro-Israel student groups, Harvard faculty, former Harvard Crimson editors and alumni.

During a May 3, 2022 faculty meeting, then-Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow declined to comment on the editorial, but said: “Any suggestion of targeting or boycotting a particular group because of disagreements over the policies pursued by their governments is antithetical to what we stand for as a university.” Bacow also stated: “I think academic boycotts have absolutely no place at Harvard, regardless of who they target.”

In a November 2022 report released by the Amcha Initiative, Harvard ranked [p. 20]first in “Highest Incidence of Overall Threats to Jewish Identity” for the 2021-2022 academic year.

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/eleanor.wikstrom

Twitter:https://twitter.com/eleanorwikstrom

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/eleanorwikstrom/ [Private]

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-wikstrom-58a90a168

The Harvard Crimson:https://www.thecrimson.com/writer/1216316/Eleanor_V._Wikstrom