When Victoria Hinckley, a 21-year-old student organizer at the University of South Florida, attended a pro-Palestine protest on Tuesday night, the night ended with tear gas and rubber bullets used by police against activists.
“I’m very disappointed, but more than anything I’m very, very angry to see that kind of response,” says Hinckley, who says he has was suspended later that night via email. The college senior, however, remains adamant in one of her demands that led her to protest that night: that her university divest funds from Israel.
Hinckley is one of thousands of students who choose to participate in camps or protests around the world. more than 100 faculties across the U.S. The protests are framed as an act of solidarity with the more than 34,000 Gazans who have died, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, following Hamas’ kidnapping of more than 200 hostages and the murder of 1,200 Israelis on October 7th. .
Divestment from Israel is one of the demands echoed by student protesters across the country. At several colleges, students have erected tents on campuses as they demonstrate for their cause, calling on universities to sell investments from Israeli companies and those with ties to Israel, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Alphabet and Amazon. About 100 U.S. colleges reported grants or contracts from Israel totaling $375 million over the past two decades, according to one study. Department of Education Database.
“Divest all of Colombia’s finances, including endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,” the Columbia University group Apartheid Divest wrote in its list of five demands, which also includes an academic boycott and an end to campus policing. “Ensure accountability by increasing transparency around financial investments.”
What are students asking for?
Although requirements among universities vary, students generally ask their schools to disclose their investment profiles and commit to divesting from any company that profits from or has a relationship with Israel.
“We think we should have the right to see where our tuition money is going and have a say in where our money goes,” Hinckley says.
At least one of the companies Hinckley named, and claims his school has current investments in, is listed on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement websitewhich calls for the withdrawal of support for companies that say they support Israel or that otherwise “engage in violations of Palestinian human rights.” The University of South Florida did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.
But students elsewhere are also calling for divestment from technology companies like Google, which provides cloud computing services to Israeli troops and has been the target of protests by its own workers, leading to dozens of people being fired. Other student protesters also invoked Amazon, which has a joint contract with the Israeli government and military.
At Yale University, students advocate divestment in the production of military weapons. The university previously banned investment in assault weapons retailers that facilitate sales to the general public. But in April, the Yale Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility announced that divestment from military weapons production did not meet its divestment criteria “because this production supports socially necessary uses such as law enforcement and national security.”
How do university donations and investments work?
Calls for universities to divest from companies that profit from the Israel-Hamas conflict have highlighted the intricate workings of university endowments and the practical implications of divestment.
University endowments serve as the financial backbone of educational institutions, comprising vast sums of assets that can be used to support future investments and are managed to ensure long-term sustainability. Endowment numbers at major universities can reach billions, with Columbia University’s endowment standing at $13.6 billion in 2023. At Harvard, the endowment is around $50 billion.
These endowments – which are entrusted to boards of directors – are not just idle money, but rather investments actively managed and cultivated to generate returns that help support the institution’s mission.
“Grants are basically the college version of a 401(k),” says Chris Marsicano, who researches higher education finance and is an assistant professor of educational studies at Davidson College. “There are a set of different investments and the goal is to make enough money in income over the next few years that you can take some of that income and put it into your operating funds.”
Investment managers typically select companies for endowment portfolios that demonstrate strong financial performance, although many institutions also consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their investment process, selecting companies based on their ethical practices.
What would divestment in Israel mean in practice?
Although the concept of divestment in Israel seems simple – selling shares in companies linked to the country – its practical implications are much more complex.
Divesting from Israel would mean that universities would reevaluate their investment portfolios to identify and potentially divest from companies implicated in Israel’s war effort, such as supporting Israeli settlements in occupied territories or providing equipment used in military operations. Some higher education finance experts say divestiture can be a time-consuming and complicated process, since most universities hold diversified portfolios managed by outside investment managers who cannot provide easy identification of which companies are linked to Israel.
“There is no guarantee that any fund owned by a university has no connection to Israel,” says Marsicano. “It’s an almost impossible task, just to accomplish it functionally.”
He adds that it would be particularly complicated for universities to divest from any company doing business in Israel, since almost all large American multinational companies do business in the country. Endowment fund managers also have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the organization they oversee, which can be a “tough pill to swallow,” says Marsicano.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also marked by a high degree of geopolitical sensitivity, suggesting that protesters may have difficulty persuading universities to divest. Such actions can provoke negative reactions from alumni, donors, and political groups that oppose divestment initiatives on grounds of academic freedom or solidarity with Israel.
Have colleges ever gotten rid of anything before?
There is a history of divestment movements that have had both symbolic and tangible impacts. Student-led divestment campaigns under the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s pressured Columbia University to withdraw its investments from companies operating in the country. In 1988, a total of 155 faculties had divested, at least partially, from South Africa, with five institutions divesting completely.
On its website, the Apartheid Divest group at Columbia University published compared to protests on the same campus almost 40 years ago. “We are a continuation of the anti-Vietnam war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa.”
This movement was soon followed by several decision of schools divest from the tobacco industry. “The effort to punish South Africa was student-led, involving the occupation of administrative buildings, but tobacco doesn’t resonate that way with students,” said Douglas Cogan, then director of the tobacco information service at the Responsibility Research Center. of the Investor. told New York Times in 1997. “Today, faculty and administrators are leading the charge. This is particularly true when a school does cancer research and faculty and administrators see a contradiction with their portfolio.”
Other institutions, such as Stanford University, chose to divest from Sudan in 2005. “I don’t want the endowment that was supposed to serve me and this community to be invested in a country that practices genocide,” said Seth Silverman, a Stanford student. said during a town hall meeting that year. At least 60 other colleges and universities chose to do the same, according to Investors Against Genocide, an organization that previously worked to advocate divestment from two foreign oil companies that helped finance the Darfur genocide.
More than 140 higher education institutions have divested from fossil fuels since 2011, for Research Article published on the University of California Press website. Schools have also withdrawn investment from private prisons, with Columbia being the first university do so in 2015.
“We’ve seen other campuses divest when students demand it, so we know it’s something they can do, and we know it’s something they will do, as long as we put pressure on them to do it,” Hinckley says.
While divestment from American companies that have ties to Israel would likely hurt university endowments, Marsicano says there are some examples of cases where divestment did not have a negative impact on endowment numbers. “Divestment from fossil fuels did not hurt Stanford’s endowment, or Dayton’s occupancy, or Syracuse’s endowment…in some cases, endowment values increased substantially after divestment.”
How schools responded
Several universities stood firm against student demands. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced on Monday that the school would not divest from Israel, but offered to “publish a process for students to access a list of Colombian direct investment holdings and increase the frequency of updates to that list of holdings.” Colombia also offered to make investments in health and education in Gaza.
In late March, University of Michigan Regent Sarah Hubbard said the Board of Regents was “not moving to do any type of divestment” because the university needs a diversified investment portfolio to ensure returns remain high. and the risk remains low. She stated that “less than a tenth of 1% of the endowment is invested indirectly” in companies with business ties to Israel, despite claims from students that the number was about a third of the allocation, according to University Registration. The University of California and Yale University have also resisted calls for divestment.
So far, Brown University appears to be the only college to consider divestment in response to the latest protests. Administrators agreed to have five students meet with members of the Brown University Corporation in May to present their arguments in favor of divestment, although their decision on the matter is not expected until October.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
