BDS motion

On this day, July 8, 2024, the Department of Communication Studies adopts a collective position opposing the ongoing devastation in Gaza. We commit at an institutional level to signing on to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) guidelines which outline the specific ways to boycott complicit Israeli academic and cultural institutions.  

We condemn the killing and targeting of all civilians and all acts contrary to international law and humanitarian values. We emphasize the need to protect civilians including the release of any such detainees. We stand with international human rights organizations––such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—who have concluded that Israel’s policies toward Palestinian people constitute apartheid, as well as the International Court of Justice, which is pursuing the claim that Israel’s recent actions in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide according to the provisions of the Genocide Convention (Orders of January 26, 2024 and March 28, 2024). While the government of Canada has ratified the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with a commitment to preventing its unfolding, insufficient action has been taken to prevent the staggering loss of Palestinian life and the near-total destruction of housing, hospitals, universities, and other infrastructure. 

In our commitment to anti-racism, anti-ableism, decolonization, feminist and queer politics and climate justice (present in our pedagogy, research and departmental values), we condemn Israel’s actions that have led to the destruction of the life-worlds of Palestinians — including their healthcare systems, infrastructures of care, culture, education and ecological worlds. We also condemn the use of broad information and data-driven systems (including the use of AI) in committing genocide, leading specifically to the killing of large numbers of Palestinian civilians.   

As scholars of communication, media and cultural studies, we recognize that violence is facilitated through interconnected systems and structures on local and global levels. Communication scholarship attends to the relationship between discourse and power, and as such we stress our commitment to fighting antisemitism in academia while rejecting the notion that criticism of Israeli policies and actions is inherently antisemitic. In endorsing PACBI guidelines, we join the many Jewish voices worldwide who are similarly appalled by Israeli state military actions in Gaza and elsewhere.  We also join the chorus of voices from other universities, academic associations, and trade unions in Canada and elsewhere, including at Concordia University. Finally, we call on other departments at Concordia University, and the university itself, to adopt a similar Boycott Divestment and Sanctions mandate within the PACBI Guidelines.