Students urge UMaine System trustees to adopt Jerusalem Declaration, press divestment from companies linked to Israel

Dozens of students and community members told the University of Maine System Board of Trustees on March 3 that the board should adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and reconsider the system’s investments in companies they said enable Israeli policy in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The public commenters argued the declaration would protect Jewish students while clarifying the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, and several speakers urged divestment from roughly $1.6 million the speakers said the system currently holds in companies they identified as complicit.

Willow Cunningham, a graduate student in the Computer Engineering Department and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), said Executive Order 14,188 and related White House language threaten campus speech and could be used to target student protesters. "The White House fact sheet for this order describes protesters as pro Hamas aliens and left wing radicals and threatens to deport them," Cunningham said, asking trustees to adopt the Jerusalem Declaration to protect student activists.

Talia Cullum, a secondary education major and president of the University of Maine chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, told trustees she and other students worry that federal pressure could chill campus advocacy and urged the board to "follow [Governor Mills'] lead and be bravely defiant." She and other speakers compared their request to the system’s 1982 divestment from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa.

Several speakers cited outside rulings and reports in support of their arguments. Jamila LaVasseur referenced a recent International Court of Justice finding about Israel's presence in occupied territory; Gracie Gable said the board lacks an institutional definition of antisemitism and that adopting the Jerusalem Declaration would provide that clarity for students and administrators.

Community members also pressed trustees on specific holdings. Connie Jenkins of Belfast cited investments in General Dynamics and described its role supplying munitions used in Israeli strikes, saying that divestment is not antisemitic but an effort to promote peace.

Trustees had earlier told student organizers that the board would not revisit a prior decision on divestment unless the "context has changed," and multiple speakers explicitly asked if the recent federal executive actions and international developments constituted a change in context that should reopen the board’s prior decision.

The trustees took no formal action on the request during the meeting. Several student speakers said they would continue to press the issue through petitions, alumni outreach and by publicizing the board’s decisions.

Ending: Speakers asked the trustees to recognize the perceived immediacy of the situation and to create clearer guidance protecting students’ free expression while distinguishing antisemitism from political speech. Trustees said they would continue to review materials and stay in touch with campus leadership about free-speech policy changes being proposed by system staff.