The Undergraduate Student Government of the University of Connecticut has defeated an attempt to hold a referendum on the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, delivering a blow to the anti-Zionist movement on college campuses.

Among the student government, 27 USG senators voted on the measure on Wednesday, with a clear majority, 15, voting against it, eight voting for it, and four abstaining from registering an opinion at all. According to StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group, a caucus of students convinced the body that the referendum violated USG bylaws on ideological neutrality while promoting a “biased, hateful agenda.”

Their efforts halted BDS’s momentum on the UConn campus, which surged in February when 184 students voted to begin the first steps toward placing the idea on the ballot.

“Proponents of BDS have long proposed biased referenda like these. The BDS strategy involves using any platform to spread anti-Israel messages and turn public opinion against the only Jewish state,” Roz Rothstein, chief executive officer of StandWithUs, said in a statement responding to the vote. “We are tremendously proud of students at UConn for their leadership, determination, and strength in highlighting the campaign’s hypocrisy, lies, and hate.”

Launched in 2005, the BDS campaign opposes Zionism — a movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state. It seeks to isolate the country with economic, political, and cultural boycotts. Official guidelines issued for the campaign’s academic boycott state that “projects with all Israeli academic institutions should come to an end,” and delineate specific restrictions that its adherents should abide by — for instance, denying letters of recommendation to students applying to study abroad in Israel.

“It’s so important to stand up for what you believe in, even if you feel outnumbered or overpowered,” Sophie Rifkin, a UConn USG senator and Emerson Fellow of StandWithUs, said. “At the USG meeting, students from all grades and all backgrounds stood up for the Jewish community at UConn, setting a precedent across college campuses. Antisemitism is rampant, and cannot be allowed to thrive at colleges. Speaking out against it, standing up for ourselves despite fear of backlash, is how we make that change.”

BDS is being defeated at colleges across the US where it attempts to take root despite having received a boost in support from far-left students who seemingly interpreted Hamas’s atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as a signal to advance an anti-Zionist agenda.

In May, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) unanimously rejected a proposal calling for it to adopt the BDS, citing the sheer divisiveness of BDS — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — and its potential to “degrade” rather than facilitate “additional dialogue on campus.”

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine did the same in March when 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, subsequently ratified by them. “It should not be used as a tool for the advocacy of public policy.”

The report, authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility, 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.”

Boston University rejected BDS in February, 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.”

Colleges and universities will squander tens of billions of dollars in endowment returns if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September 2024 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 projected 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 in growth, 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.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.