Make the fight personal, because it is. BDS scapegoats Israel, Israeli students, Jewish students, pro-Israel students and harms the campus environment.

....For years Jewish students had felt that there was sustained hostility aimed at them from their anti-Zionist and pro-BDS classmates.” When these heartfelt arguments “were treated with varying levels of disdain,” students “came to vote with us because they saw the toll that the aggressive and at times personal attacks took on their friends.”

The McGill model teaches important lessons. First, make the fight personal, because it is. BDS scapegoats Israel, Israeli students, Jewish students, pro-Israel students and harms the campus environment. Students mobilized to support their friends. Second, make the fight about fairness, about treating Jewish and pro-Israel students with the dignity all students deserve. And third, don’t just say no. Turn the negative into a positive. Celebrate the open, tolerant pro-Israel, pro-democracy campus the McGill students and professors cherish, the provocative, civil academic values the principal champions, the fair, equitable, civil learning community the Judicial Board endorses, and what Paransky proudly calls “the strong Jewish and Zionist values” he learned from camp and his family.

Finally, be proactive. Other campuses shouldn’t wait for BDS ugliness to strike; celebrate fairness and openness by articulating what you believe now, affirming that your campus has zero tolerance for BDS intolerance.