Serguei Oushakine

Overview

Serguei Oushakine [Serguei A. Oushakine] supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Princeton University (Princeton), where he is an associate professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures, as well as the director of the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies.

In an October 22, 2015 Facebook post, Oushakine encouraged the American Anthropological Association (AAA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions. In June of 2016, the AAA announced that a resolution to boycott Israeli universities was defeated, but that there are “other actions planned.”

The AAA vote on the anti-Israel resolution took place from April 15 to May 31, 2016, with approximately half of the AAA membership voting on the resolution. Of the half that voted concerning the resolution, 50.4% voted against it, meaning that only one quarter of AAA’s membership — at most — voted in favor of the resolution. 

Princeton Divests Campaign 

In April of 2015, Oushakine 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.

Faculty Divestment Petition

On November 5, 2014, Oushakine 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.”