Marcelo López-Dinardi
Overview
Marcelo López-Dinardi is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Columbia University (Columbia) and Barnard College (Barnard), where he is an adjunct assistant professor of Architecture.López-Dinardi also retweeted a statement that accused Israel of practicing “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “settler colonialism.”
He is also an adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
Promoting BDS
In March of 2016, López-Dinardi signed a petition created by a Columbia student initiative to rebrand BDS at Columbia as Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).CUAD is comprised of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members, who joined forces in February 2016. The group called on Columbia to divest its equity holdings and endowment funds from companies that — in CUAD’s words — “profit from the State of Israel’s ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”
CUAD lists eight target companies that it believes “likely to be invested in by a university like CU,” without knowing whether Columbia actually had holdings in the corporations.
Demonizing Israel
The statement, titled “1,000 Black Activists, Artists, and Scholars Demand Justice for Palestine,” offered “reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.”
The statement also accused Israel of committing a “slaughter” of Palestinians and claimed that Israel sterilized Ethiopian women, an accusation based on a flawed report by Ha’aretz.
The statement also declared a need “for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and Zionism” and concluded with a call for BDS.
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/profile.php?id=577300261
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Barnard Columbia
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 03/26/2026
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