Yale University students support divesting from Israel over the oppressive and authoritarian regimes of Russia, Iran, and China, according to a survey the Ivy League school’s Buckley Institute released Monday.
The largest share of students (36 percent) opposed divestment from any nation, the survey, conducted during the fall semester, found. But among those who favored divestment, Israel—a democracy and America’s greatest ally in the Middle East—topped the list with 31 percent support, surpassing Russia (27 percent), Iran (20 percent), and China (12 percent).
That finding falls in line with recent sentiment at Yale. Students overwhelmingly passed a referendum last month calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers arming Israel. More than three-quarters of the 3,000 voting undergraduates favored divestment, while nearly 80 percent said Yale should invest in “Palestinian scholars and students.”
The Buckley Institute survey also found that 55 percent of Yale undergraduates believe “Israel’s war in Gaza is morally wrong and genocidal, even if [they] think the October 7 terror attacks were wrong as well.” In contrast, only 34 percent said “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people from terror, even if [they] don’t agree with every action Israel has conducted in the war.” Another 8 percent consider Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which killed over 1,200 Israelis, justified resistance.
Like many elite universities, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic fervor has roiled Yale. In April, student agitators occupied a World War II memorial, tore down an American flag, and sent a Jewish student to the hospital. They refused to vacate an encampment for days, eventually resulting in 48 arrests.
Nearly 60 percent of Yale students said the university should have let the protest continue “as long as the students wanted without interference,” the Buckley Institute survey found.
The university, meanwhile, spent a year investigating a Jewish professor after he published an op-ed describing anti-Semitism in the Yale Postdoctoral Association, a group that runs social and academic events for researchers, the Washington Free Beacon reported in May. In April, school officials stood by as students unveiled a large “Free Palestine” banner during an official class photograph for the School of the Environment.
Yale also failed to disclose $15 million in contributions from Qatar in violation of federal reporting laws, the Free Beacon reported in June. The Middle Eastern nation has provided funding and shelter to Hamas’s top leadership.
Yale did not respond to a request for comment.
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