The University of British Columbia’s Statement on BDS

What this document is

This is a statement published by the Office of the President of the University of British Columbia on 12 April 2022, under the title “Statement on BDS” S041. It was issued by Santa J. Ono, then President and Vice-Chancellor, in response to a motion of the Alma Mater Society, the university’s student society, passed at its council on 23 March 2022, urging the university and its Board of Governors to divest from nine companies operating in Israeli settlements S041. The same web page later acquired an update signed by Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Ono’s successor, dated 18 December 2023 S041.

What it establishes

The university declined to support the motion, and gave as its reason that it does not support BDS S041. The refusal is grounded in the university’s commitments to academic freedom and to equity, diversity and inclusion, and in its duty to protect students from harassment S041.

The December 2023 update matters as much as the original. It records that the statement was made a year and a half earlier and that it remains the university’s position S041. Institutional positions are often said to have lapsed or softened; here the university returned to its own page and said in terms that it had not changed. Two presidents, twenty months apart, are on the same record.

This is a document about an administration declining to act on a student vote. The student society’s motion passed; the university’s answer was that a divestment campaign of this kind is not something it will adopt. The distinction between what a student body resolves and what a university does is one this site draws repeatedly, and here both halves sit on a single page.

Key passages

The statement is that the university “does not support BDS” S041. The 2023 update concludes: “This remains the university’s position.” S041.

How it is used on this site

The statement is cited on Canada’s position on BDS and on the timeline, where it supports the point that Canadian university administrations have refused BDS even where student bodies have endorsed it.

Provenance and access

The statement is published on the president’s own site, fetches normally, and has an Internet Archive snapshot recorded above. The date of the student society motion it answers comes from campus reporting rather than from the university’s page, and this site does not treat that date as established by this document.

Page history

2026-09-21: First draft.