Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed
Overview
Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed discriminated against a Jewish student as a member of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) in 2015.Sadeghi-Movahed also co-sponsored an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolution proposed by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).As of February 2020, tweets posted by Sadeghi-Movahed indicated she was studying for the bar exam. On November 19, 2019, she had posted on Facebook that she had failed the July California bar exam.
As of February 2020, Sadeghi-Movahed’s LinkedIn page said she graduated from the American University Washington College of Law (WCL) in 2019 and received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UCLA.
Discriminating Against a Jewish Student
The student, Rachel Beyda, had been nominated to the council’s Judicial Board. At the February 10 USAC meeting, one of the four council members, Fabienne Roth, asked Beyda: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
Once Beyda left the room, the council debated “about whether her faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations… meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions that come before the board.”
Sadeghi-Movahed said: [00:15:10] “For some reason... I’m not 100% comfortable, I don’t know why… I definitely can see that she’s qualified, for sure, but I just worry about her affiliations, obviously.”
After a faculty member interjected that “belonging to Jewish organizations was not a conflict of interest,” the students held a re-vote and unanimously voted to appoint Beyda to the board.
The New York Times reported that the discussion, which was recorded in written minutes and captured on video, “seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes — particularly about divided loyalties — that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries, students and Jewish leaders said.”
Sadeghi-Movahed and the other three council members who had voted against Beyda submitted a collective letter to the Daily Bruin apologizing to the Jewish community.
Promoting BDS
Sadeghi-Mohaved co-sponsored a BDS resolution submitted on November 13, 2014 by SJP at UCLA, titled: “A Resolution to Divest from Companies Engaged in Violence Against Palestinians.” The resolution was passed by the undergraduate student government on November 18, 2014.The resolution targeted companies it accused of profiting from and enabling “human rights abuses and violence,” and said that investment in the companies “shows implicit support for the decisions and actions of these companies, as well as their consequences, which include the killings of civilians.”
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/negeensmTwitter: https://twitter.com/negeensadeghi
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/negeensadeghi/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/negeensadeghi
- Status:
- Professional
- University:
- California-Los-Angeles,
- more...
- American Washington Law
- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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