Gabi Stern was disappointed when the University of Maryland student government voted to pass a boycott, divestment and sanctions resolution on Yom Kippur in October.
So the junior at UMD testified at the United States Commission on Civil Rights’ Feb. 20 hearing on campus antisemitism.
“I’ll be telling this story and arguing that it just doesn’t feel like we’re being represented by a representative body for students,” said Stern, who identifies as modern Orthodox Jewish.
The resolution, which passed 29-1, urges the university and its charitable foundation to implement BDS policies against companies and academic policies that it says “support or profit from Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation.” The resolution is symbolic and will not affect university investments or policies, according to campus officials.
Jewish leaders on campus condemned the timing of the BDS resolution, which left many Jewish students unable to participate.
“The problem is that the vote for the bill was scheduled for Yom Kippur, which is the Jewish Day of Atonement on the Jewish calendar, and that effectively excluded the entire Jewish community from showing up to the vote and either speaking in opposition or just putting up numbers in the meeting room,” Stern said. “I think that was pretty disappointing to see from a body that’s supposed to be representative of students.”
UMD is home to about 5,800 Jewish undergraduate students — roughly one-fifth of the undergraduate student population, according to Hillel International. “It just feels like that was kind of a deliberate attempt to exclude us from the representative process,” Stern said.
He said he doesn’t think this was a mere scheduling error.
“I find it hard to believe that nobody who was involved in that knew what day it was,” Stern said. “Yom Kippur is well known, even among non-Jews … I know when Christian holidays are. I know it’s Ramadan right now.”
The bill had been introduced to UMD’s SGA multiple times before, but had not passed until October, according to Stern.
“Each time the bill came up, there was a sharp uptick in antisemitic hate messages on campus social media and message boards,” Stern said in his testimony.
In the weeks leading up to and after the BDS resolution, members of UMD’s Jewish student community contacted the student organization leaders, including the executive board members of Students for Justice in Palestine, who put the bill up for the vote, according to Stern.
“[We] have been kind of ignored,” he said. “I’m not part of that leadership, but I do know that there have been attempts made to reach out and [they] haven’t really gotten through.”
Stern is among the 22 Jewish college students in the current cohort of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center’s Leaders in Advocacy Training Fellowship, which is in its second year. One other fellow also testified before the USCCR this week.
“It’s important to me,” Stern said of his testimony. “First of all, it’s a way to be involved in policy and government. That’s what I’m interested in.”
Rabbi Elie Buechler, the director of the LIAT Fellowship, said the program comes in response to the current times, explaining that Jewish students initially “felt powerless” amid the rise in antisemitism.
“At this moment, our fellowship is really training the next generation of Jews who will be out there to be advisors, policymakers and we’re giving them the tools to engage in all of these different areas and giving them the opportunities — both on a local level and also on a federal level — to bring advocacy to the next generation of Jews,” Buechler said.
A double major in economics and psychology, Stern hopes to pursue economic policy and research after graduation.
“But more importantly, I really would not want to pass up an opportunity to speak up about something and to share the experiences of my peers with an audience that has a lot of influence,” he said, adding that Feb. 20 was his first time speaking publicly.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I’m obviously nervous because public speaking is nerve-wracking for a lot of people, but I do think I’m confident in what I want to say, in the message I want to get across, and I feel good about that.”
Stern planned to speak broadly on behalf of UMD’s Jewish student population, while fellow UMD student and LIAT fellow Lucy Schneider planned to speak from a more personal level. (Schneider was unable to testify due to illness.)
Though the student government resolution doesn’t affect university policies, this instance matters to students such as Stern.
“It’s important because it’s symbolic,” he said. “Whether we want to let it affect us or not, it does. And it’s empowering the people who believe that Jewish and Israeli students don’t have a place here to see that the student government also will side with them, and it sends a message that we’re not a valued group to students and … that maybe people who want to take more serious action are legitimate and validated in doing so.”
Stern hopes lawmakers are not only listening to what college students have to say, but that legislative change may come from his advocacy.
“I don’t know if they’re planning to take things that we say to heart, but at the very least, people will hear what we have to say and think a little bit more about the diverse communities that American campuses have,” he said. “Best-case scenario, maybe something will find its way into a congressperson’s office and we’ll see some protections.”
