Eduardo Cadava

Overview

Eduardo Cadava supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Princeton University (Princeton). He is a professor in the Department of English, the Department of Comparative Literature, the School of Architecture, the Center for African American Studies and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Cadava has signed a BDS statement put forward by the Modern Language Association Members for Justice in Palestine (MLA MJP), which has called on the MLA "to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions." The resolution failed to pass at MLA’s annual meeting in January of 2017.

Cadava is also a professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School (EGS).

Biased Graduate Course

Cadava teaches a graduate course at Princeton that “explores the Israeli-Palestine conflict as a history of spatial and environmental transformations.”

The trip incorporates a visit to Israel.

According to Cadava’s course description, “we will travel to Israel/Palestine during the spring break to conduct onsite investigations and to devise novel ‘testimonial strategies’ to corroborate and expand the investigations of the Zochrot Truth Commission.”

Zochrot is an anti-Israel NGO largely funded by European governments that focuses on “promot[ing] acknowledgement and accountability for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 and the reconceptualization of the Return as the imperative redress of the Nakba.”

The Zochrot Truth Commission, also known as the “Truth Commission on the Responsibility of Israeli Society for the Events of 1948-1960 in the South” is aimed at “expos[ing] the Jewish society in Israel to knowledge about the ongoing Nakba.”  

Princeton Divests Campaign

In April of 2015, Cadava was part of Princeton Divests — a coalition of Princeton students and faculty "committed to divesting from companies committing human rights violations in occupied Palestine" — that initiated a BDS referendum at Princeton. The referendum, voted on by Princeton students, was narrowly defeated.

Singling Out Israel

In 2009, Cadava signed a letter addressed to United States President Barack Obama, calling Israel the perpetrator of “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times.”

The letter, which accused Israel of practicing "apartheid" and “ethnic cleansing,” was written during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (OCL), launched to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas tunnels used for smuggling weapons into Gaza.

Faculty Divestment Petition

On November 5, 2014, Cadava signed a petition entitled "An Invitation to the Tenured Faculty at Princeton" that was featured in Princeton’s student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. The petition invited tenured faculty to support divestment from companies “that contribute to or profit from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank until the State of Israel complies with UN Resolution 242, ends its military occupation of the West Bank and lifts its siege of Gaza.”

The faculty petition was rejected by the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community, because it did not meet guidelines for consideration. It was reported that organizers of the faculty petition “plan to press on.”

According to Professor Max Weiss, a co-founder of the faculty divestment initiative, the “faculty petition urging divestment set the stage for the student referendum.”

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

University Website:https://english.princeton.edu/people/eduardo-cadava