AMHERST — The faculty of Amherst College is joining the college’s Student Senate in asking trustees to divest from corporations supplying military equipment to Israel in its ongoing war in Gaza.

The divestment appeal, made last week, came with support from Amherst College Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine. The college’s faculty members are the third in the country to endorse divestment through a full vote, following the faculty senates at Pomona and the University of Michigan, said Ashwin Ravikumar, an assistant professor of environmental studies.

“To make this happen, a group of 22 professors invoked a provision in our bylaws that allows any group of at least eight faculty to call a special faculty meeting,” Ravikumar said in a statement. “We encourage colleagues at other institutions with faculty governance to examine whether they are able to do something like this, too.”

College spokeswoman Caroline Hanna said that the campus community has been informed that the board of trustees will consider this topic and the resolution during its May meeting. Trustees typically meet on campus during commencement weekend.

The faculty group cites statistics in its appeal, including that nearly 35,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, including 14,500 children, have been killed by the Israeli military as of May 1, and at least 131,000 homes have been destroyed and 2 million Palestinians are currently displaced.

Earlier, the Association of Amherst Students, which represents the students, passed a resolution “to divest from multinational companies that facilitate Israel’s occupations and blockades of Occupied Palestinian Territories, unlawful settlements in the West Bank, and systemic displacement and widespread violence against Palestinians.”

In December, 60 faculty members wrote a letter calling for Amherst College to divest from companies that could be making money off the Israel-Hamas war. In that communication, to President Michael A. Elliott and members of the trustees, they contended that Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack violates international humanitarian law and constraints on a just war.

“Fulfilling our educational mission requires us to speak out in defense of our shared moral commitments,” said Christopher Dole, an anthropology professor and member of Amherst College Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine. “We cannot have a robust intellectual culture while remaining silent in the face of genocide.”

Christopher Grobe, assistant professor of English and another member of the faculty and staff group, said the two votes for divestment should mean trustees acting swiftly on this consensus, adding that the call is for the trustees “to respond within two weeks with further details on how they plan to divest the college’s endowment from corporations supplying military equipment for Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.