From the summer of 2019 through 2022, I served as an elected board member for Judaism On Our Own Terms (formerly Open Hillel), a student-led initiative working to make Jewish campus communities more inclusive, transparent, and democratic. Though I supported JOOOT in a variety of capacities, I am most proud of my involvement in our speaker series with Jews For Racial & Economic Justice: “Setting the New Agenda: A Speaker Series on Anti-Blackness and the Jewish Community.”
- Here’s a link to a recording of the first event, “The Thin Green Line: Israel Advocacy as a Barrier to Black-Jewish Solidarity.” Here’s a link to a recording of the second event, “Nostalgia & Reality: Black & Jewish Relationships in the 1960s and Beyond.” And here’s a link to a recording of the third event, “We Keep Each Other Safe: Safety Beyond Policing.”
- You can follow and interact with us on Twitter and Instagram.
While living in Scotland, I spent quite a bit of time organizing with No Tech For Tyrants (NT4T), a student-led organization working to sever the links between higher education institutions and technology businesses that enable violence, particularly against migrants and migrant communities. (Make sure you check out Isobel Van Hagen’s stellar report on NT4T in Current Affairs! ) Here’s what we got done:
- For Privacy International, we drafted “All roads lead to Palantir: A review of how the data analytics company has embedded itself throughout the UK.” Read the summary here, or check out the full report here. (And if you want to see if NHS England ever responds to my Freedom of Information request, you can follow along here.)
- For Privacy International, we scrutinized the NHS’s decision to grant technology businesses like Palantir access to unprecedented quantities of patient data. Read our analysis here.
- For Refugee Week, we partnered with Unis Resist Border Controls to host a timely webinar: “Universities Without Borders: Higher Education and the Technologies of Hostile Environments.”
- We argued in Justice Everywhere that universities should implement ethical guidelines regulating corporate partnerships.
- We hosted a beautiful and poignant digital summit: “Power, Migration, and Ethics in the Age of Surveillance.”
- We delivered a talk to St Andrews’ Women in Computer Science society on ethics washing in the technology industry and wrote a corresponding reading guide.
As an undergraduate student, I did lots of volunteer organizing with Jewish Voice for Peace. (I’m currently a member and patron of JVP DC Metro.) Here are some of the cool things we did:
- We helped host the University’s first Interfaith Week and worked to open an interfaith prayer and meditation space in the Multicultural Student Services Center. We also ran monthly interfaith Shabbat dinners open to the entire student body.
- We played a crucial role in the successful effort to pass a divestment resolution through our student senate. We argued that it is wrong for the University to profit off violence committed against its students and staff.
- We hosted some real cool Jews, like artist extraordinaire Molly Crabapple, poet Kevin Coval, and cartoonist Eli Valley.
Outside of Jewish student life at GW, I helped my friends at Hackital put on two 100+ developer hackathons and served as a leadership council member for the Undergraduate Business Association. I also started a blockchain club, which was both a distinct failure and a formative learning experience.
Jacob Zionts 