The Teaching Assistant's Association passed a resolution Tuesday for the UW System to divest from contractors who have military contracts with regimes around the world, as opposed to the original proposal which focused only on Israel.
According to TA Mohammed Abed, who proposed the original resolution, the TAA should consider this resolution as a part of a civil-society campaign. He said Israel was chosen because it has been a violator of human rights with the longest-standing illegal military occupation in history.
\We called for the university to drop investment as a way of sending the companies a message saying your approach currently is not moral and in complicate violation of international law,"" he said.
The TAA has a long-running policy of supporting resolutions like this, but it was not passed in its original form because some members were not comfortable with the wording, according to TAA Co-President Ryan Gavin.
""They did not feel comfortable with specifications to the Middle East, Israel and Palestine,"" he said. ""They amended it to not limit it to that region of the world and generalize to the entire world.""
According to TA Marisa Jacobson, the original resolution was inappropriate for the TAA to even be discussing.
""It reported to be on human rights violations but it singled out Israel and failed to focus on any other countries that commit these violations,"" she said. ""This is the only approach if the TAA is concerned about social-justice issues.""
But according to Abed, the amendment made the resolution unworkable. ""I don't think the Board of Regents can implement the divestment unless there is a specific reference to a state,"" he said.
Although some labeled the amended resolution pointless, the original had no merit because the Board of Regents said it would never divest from the corporations that do business with the Israeli military, UW-Madison law student Elizabeth Herman said.
According to TA Jake Gates, who proposed the amendment, the original resolution was overly specific when there are so many other violations occurring around the globe. It did specify certain contractors like Boeing, Caterpillar, and General Electric, however.
""[The amendment] tries to broaden the university's concern in terms of the kinds of research it needs to do before it invests in a company,"" he said.
If the Political Education Committee had brought a resolution against any other state, it would not have run into this kind of resistance, according to Abed.
""We will keep coming back until this specific issue is taken seriously because I don't think Israel is above the law,"" he said.
