PACBI is heartened by the increased coordination and growth of Students for Justice in Palestine on campuses across the US.  The SJP national conference in October 2011 carefully studied how to implement BDS on campuses, and this year an unprecedented number of US universities will be holding Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) activities.  Although an upcoming US national BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania has come under attack from the usual coterie of Israel lobby voices in an attempt to censor and silence any critical discussion on Palestinian basic rights and international law, PennBDS organizers are on track with their plans and the conference promises to be yet another milestone in spreading BDS.

Across campuses in the UK and the rest of Europe, there is also a deepening of BDS activism, and once more IAW will take place on more campuses than ever before.  Importantly, there has been a direct response to the campaign waged by PACBI, PFUUPE, Stop the Wall, and the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) against the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), which is “a multi-billion euro European Union research funding scheme that provides funds for universities and companies from different countries to work together on specific research projects.”  Students at King’s College (London), in close cooperation with BRICUP, launched a petition against a joint FP7 research program between their university, the Natural History Museum and Ahava. The students gathered signatures and lobbied for support from the UK National Union of Students, which in turn voted to support the campaign adding more pressure on the university.