Illustrative: Pro-Hamas activists rally at an encampment for Gaza on April 25, 2025. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine has rejected the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, as its Board of Trustees voted to accept the counsel of a committee that recommended maintaining investment practices which safeguard the institution’s financial health and educational mission.

“The endowment exists solely to provide financial support of the college across generations,” said a report submitted to trustees in February and, according to The Bowdoin Orient, ratified by them last week. “It should not be used as a tool for the advocacy of public policy.”

The reported, authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility (ACIR), continued, “Interventions in the management of the endowment that are rooted in moral or political considerations should be exceedingly rare and restricted to those cases where there is near-universal consensus among Bowdoin’s community of stakeholders … if such actions are pursued, they should be taken only where the financial trade-offs are identifiable, measurable, and limited.”

Bowdoin’s review of its investment practices was prompted by a May 2024 “Solidarity Referendum” in which Bowdoin students called for the college to accuse Israel of “scholasticide” in an “institutional statement” and divest from companies supplying Israel with armaments and other services which contribute to its security. Having passed by what the Orient described in May 2024 as a “66 percent supermajority,” the referendum earned a response from Bowdoin president Safa Zaki. However, Zaki, citing an established practice of her administration, declined to issue any such statement and referred the other referendum items to the board of trustees.

The following semester, Zaki created ACIR, appointing it to study the issue and recommend policies for any “future specific requests regarding the endowment.”

The committee’s mission was always “broader” than addressing divestment from Israel, as it was being asked to rule on matters which involve binding agreements with “generations of alumni, family, and friends who created endowed funds for Bowdoin College underpinned by a contractual guarantee that their gifts would be managed and invested prudently to further the educational mission,” ACIR said in last month’s report.

“Among the hundreds of signed endowment terms in the college’s files, there are no explicit donor instructions that the gift be invested using practices that would advance a position on social or political questions,” the committee explained. “Each of these transactions involved entrusting the college to manage the money in a way that maximizes the benefit for both current and future students. Another important aspect of the educational mission of the college is to create and maintain an environment in which all topics can be discussed openly and respectfully, where ideas can be challenged and analyzed, and where differing viewpoints can coexist and be understood and appreciated … using the endowment as an advocacy tool for a specific political position may run counter to maintaining this atmosphere.”

Zaki endorsed ACIR’s report on Friday, saying that “using our endowment to make political statements on world affairs introduces the risk of losing access to the best investment managers.” Meanwhile, the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine told the Orient that “it’s really impossible to argue that this committee structure was anywhere near as effective as the referendum was in engaging the community and gathering perspectives.”

Bowdoin College is not the first higher education institution to cite its fiduciary obligations as cause for eschewing divestment from Israel.

Boston University did so last month, with its president, Melissa Gilliam saying, “the endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East.”

Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”

The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.

Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.

The losses JLens forecasted are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.

“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”

As for Bowdoin, college officials there recently withstood an attempt to secure compliance with BDS by force.

Lasst month, members of SJP stormed Smith Union and installed an encampment there in response to US President Donald Trump’s proposing that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and transform it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism. The roughly 50 students residing inside the building had vowed not to leave until Bowdoin agreed to boycott Israel and accede to other demands.

Ultimately, the college imposed light disciplinary sanctions on eight students — who were later given the sobriquet “Bowdoin Eight” by their collaborators — it identified as ringleaders of the unauthorized demonstration, sentencing them to probation.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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3D-printed gun parts seized in an investigation into Pascal Tribout, 38. Photo: Royal Canadian Mounted Police

A man who pleaded guilty in December to manufacturing 3D-printed firearms and to posting antisemitic comments on the internet will spend years incarcerated for his crimes.

On Wednesday, at a courthouse just north of Montreal in St-Jérôme, Quebec, Judge Sylvain Lepine sentenced Pascal Tribout, 38, to four years for the gun charge and one year for the hate speech, each to be served consecutively. He is the first person in Canada convicted under a December 2023 law criminalizing the creation of 3D-printed guns.

Canada’s Security Intelligence Service had identified Tribout as a participant in a “GDL Chat 2.0” Telegram channel associated with the Goyim Defense League, a neo-Nazi group known for its antisemitic flier distributions and public provocations. The Anti-Defamation League says the organization wants “to expel Jews from America. To that end, their propaganda casts aspersions on Jews and spreads antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories in hopes of turning Americans against Jewish people.”

According to documents submitted to the court, “between March 14, 2024, and April 2, 2024, 66 messages of an antisemitic, racist, anti-government, and alarmist nature were attributed to the accused.” In his online postings, Tribout claimed that Jews created the COVID-19 virus in order to use the vaccine — which he called a “Jew Jab” — to target the broader population.

Following a visit to Tribout’s condo in February 2024 for a tripped burglar alarm, police found blocked windows, multiple 3D printers, and a home “strewn with debris and tools.” Tribout called himself an entrepreneur, telling the officers he modified paintball guns and participated in military-style simulations.

Tribout later spoke with an undercover officer, sharing conspiracy theories and his anti-vaccine views before transferring computer files to create the FGC-9 firearm with a 3D printer. (FGC-9 stands for “F—k gun control” and the 9 refers to a 9-millimeter barrel.) He reportedly told the officer that Jews needed “to be crushed all around the world” and turned into “ashes.” Tribout also said that 3D guns enabled the “perfect crime” because “you can melt the gun and there will be no evidence.”

In a search of Tribout’s home, investigators found more than two dozen gun frames for use in pistols and semi-automatic rifles with a prohibited magazine and Nazi propaganda. They found a document stating, “Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda is Jewish.” Tribout also created 3D-printed bladed weapons. Arrested in June, the St-Joseph-du-Lac resident has remained in detention since then with a judge denying him bail.

“This verdict is a welcome sign for all Canadians,” Henry Topas, who attended the sentencing and serves as B’nai Brith Canada’s regional director for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, said in a statement. “This case shows that antisemitism is not only a threat to Jews but also can be a matter of national security.”

Topas said that he chose to appear at the sentencing “because I believed that it was important that all people present in the courtroom, from the prosecutor to the representatives of the RCMP, to the judge, defense attorney, to the convicted felon and his family, that there was a visibly Jewish person in courtroom.” He explained that “this is not the nonsense going on in the streets every night. It’s a very different kettle of fish.”

B’nai Brith said in a community impact statement in December that “for the Jewish community of Montreal, which after the Holocaust in Europe became a haven for survivors to rebuild their lives, this dual threat of hatred and the potential for violent action raises horrific fears. Montreal is still home to some elderly survivors and their descendants who bear the scars of their parents and grandparents.”

The group said that “these scars, combined with the violence we now see on our streets and campuses, make it all the more necessary for the justice system, the last bastion of hope for the community, to stand up and act in the face of these threats.”

Prosecutor Gabriel Lapierre said, “We are very satisfied with the sentence,” and noted that the weapons “were not functional.”

Canada’s Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs stated that “as we said last year, this case reminds us that antisemitism can take many forms, including among neo-Nazi and anti-vaccine conspiracies. We welcome this sentence. From arrest to conviction, authorities acted decisively against Tribout and the threat he posed to society. We need the same level of commitment to fighting all cases of antisemitism.”

Pascal Tribout. Photo: LinkedIn via Montreal Gazette

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Argentine President Javier Milei visiting the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens, New York. Photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

Argentine President Javier Milei will visit Israel on March 23 for his second trip to the Jewish state, aiming to strengthen bilateral ties and cooperation.

The planned trip comes after Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana invited Milei last month to deliver a landmark address to Israel’s parliament. The Argentine president is also expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli officials.

Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels and in the process breaking with decades of Argentine foreign policy tradition to firmly align with Jerusalem and Washington.

Milei, who won Argentina’s November 2023 presidential election, has been outspoken in his support for Israel and Judaism, both central to his campaign. His presidency has come amid an economic crisis, soaring inflation, and longstanding corruption scandals that have burdened the country.

In February 2024, on his first international trip as president, Milei visited Israel in a show of wartime solidarity and reiterated his pledge to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem. During his visit, he also traveled to Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Negev, where Hamas-led terrorists kidnapped several Israelis from their home including the Bibas family on Oct. 7, 2023.

Nearly 25 percent of Nir Oz’s residents were murdered or kidnapped during Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

At the time of his visit, Milei said that he was traveling to Israel to express his “support against the attacks by the terrorist group Hamas.”

Since taking office, Milei has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization and condemned Iran’s terrorism more broadly, vowing to prosecute in absentia Iranian suspects linked to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Earlier this year, Argentina’s Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded that Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the country’s capital, was murdered in 2015. Marking the 10th anniversary of his death, prosecutors released the report as part of the ongoing and still unresolved trial, reaffirming that Nisman was killed.

“The federal prosecutor Natalio Alberto Nisman was the victim of a homicide,” and “his death was motivated by his work in the AMIA Special Investigation Unit and, specifically, by his actions related to the Memorandum of Understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the 56-page report said.

Last month, Milei declared two days of national mourning for the Bibas children, Ariel, 4, and nine-month-old Kfir, who were murdered in captivity in Gaza along with their mother, Shiri. Their bodies were returned to Israel by Hamas a year and a half after they were kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorists.

The Bibas are Argentinian through their father, Yarden Bibas, who was also abducted during Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7 and was freed last month as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The Israeli-Argentine family became a symbol of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the terrorist group’s massacre, with Kfir being the youngest hostage taken from Israel on Oct. 7 and the youngest to be killed.

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