Lillian Osborne
Overview
Lillian Osborne was an activist within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Loyola University Chicago (Loyola), where she was the 2015 President of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).Osborne was also a defender and admirer of disgraced anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita.
As of November 2018, Osborne’s LinkedIn page said she was a student at Loyola from 2012-2016. Osborne was listed on Facebook as a 2015-2016 member of the Loyola student government executive committee but later resigned after participating in a rowdy campus demonstration in November 2015, demanding higher wages for unionized food service workers.
As of April 2018, Osborne was an organizer with Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
BDS Campus Activism
Osborne promoted the 2015 Loyola Divest campaign as a member of the Loyola Divest coalition.On March 10, 2015, Osborne featured [00:01:50] in a promotional video for Loyola Divest on Youtube, saying she supported Loyola Divest because “as a woman, I believe that gender equality is tied with the liberation of Palestine.”
The divestment effort culminated in a resolution, titled “Divestment from Companies Profiting from the Illegal Occupation of the Palestinian Territory To ensure adherence to Loyola’s University Chicago’s Socially Responsible Investment Policy.
The resolution resolved to urge the Loyola’s Chief Investment Office to collaborate with “students, faculty and staff” to “create and enforce a publicly available socially responsible investment policy and the Shareholder Advocacy Committee that will ensure that Loyola is upholding its Jesuit Catholic mission and Jesuit values in regard to investments” and divest from “corporations profiting from human rights violations committed against the Palestinian people.”
The resolution invoked the 2005 Palestine civil society call for BDS, and quoted Al Jazeera, claiming that “Israel had been buying and ‘weaponizing’ Caterpillar bulldozers then using them to demolish Palestinian homes, build settlements and the separation wall, clear land to build Jewish-only roads, uproot olive and fruit trees, and carry out military operation [sic].”
The resolution, which was the third such proposed in as many years, passed on March 24, 2015, after an initial tie vote.
The Loyola Divest Facebook page, created on January 30, 2014, said that it was previously named “SJP Loyola” and listed the group’s email address as “sjpluc@gmail.com” and the group’s website as “http://sjployola.com. The SJP Loyola Facebook page history said the page changed its name to “Loyola Divest” on September 16, 2014.
In response to the resolution, Loyola University President Michael J. Garanzini wrote an open letter, titled “Endorsing a Community of Dialogue” to the student body.
Garanzini’s letter decried the divestment resolution as a divisive, harmful and ineffective way to conduct discourse about the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
SJP Loyola - Harassing Jewish Students
In November 2015, during Osborne’s tenure as SJP President, SJP Loyola was sanctioned with probation and “dialogue training” after the group surrounded and disrupted a Hillel student group tabling for Birthright heritage trips to Israel in September 2014. Hillel was processing applications for the trip at their table.SJP Loyola members formed a human wall in a reported attempt to block Hillel’s tabling to advertise the trip and reportedly accosted Hillel students with “a variety of insults,” asking: "How does it feel to be an occupier?" and "How does it feel to be guilty of ethnic cleansing?"
SJP Loyola was later “found responsible” for not adhering to the university's free expression and demonstration policy, was put on probation for the rest of the academic year and was directed to attend “intergroup dialogue training.”
In February 2015, Osborne co-authored an article with fellow SJP member Hadeel Barrawi titled “Loyola Silences Palestinian Speech on Campus” in the Loyola Phoenix Student Newspaper.
In the article, the authors defended SJP’s anti-Birthright demonstration, described Birthright trips as “fundamentally racist” and wrote that Birthright participants foster “an imagined connection with a presumed homeland, simultaneously perpetuating, without ever acknowledging, the violent history of that stolen land.”
In October 2014, Osborne wrote another article defending SJP Loyola’s anti-Birthright demonstration on the anti-Israel propaganda site Mondoweiss.
In her article, titled “Loyola SJP investigation reflects double standard towards Palestinian voices on campus,” Osborne attacked Hillel and Birthright, who she accused of “blurring... Jewish apolitical and political identities” to form “a new Jewish identity based on ethno-religious nationalism.”
Osborne also alleged that “Both the administration and Zionist students continue to employ inflammatory rhetoric to frame Palestinian activism in a way that spreads misinformation about the Israeli occupation.”
She continued: “The administration and Zionist students essentialize both Jews and Muslims and reinforce any opposition to the occupation as anti-Semitic and divisive.”
Support for Steven Salaita
In October 2015, Osborne was featured on a panel alongside anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita at an event titled “Palestine on Campus: Questions of Free Speech at Loyola and Beyond.” On October 12, 2015, Osborne posted on Facebook: “It was an honor to speak alongside inspiring advocates of free speech and justice in Palestine.”In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
In Osborne’s October 2014 Mondoweiss article, she interviewed Salaita and claimed that Salaita’s “Zionist opponents willfully misconstrued his political criticisms as anti-Semitic and uncivil, and successfully pressured the university to fire him despite the fact that they had already granted him a tenured position.”
SJP
SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.
The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.
SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.
SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.
SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.
Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.
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
- Status:
- Unknown
- University:
- Loyola
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- SJP
- Related Profiles:
- Nashiha Alam,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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