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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Campus protesters are calling for divestment. Here’s what that means | |
By Samantha Delouya, CNN | |
Updated: | |
5:00 AM EDT, Tue April 30, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
College campuses across the country have been thrown into disarray by | |
this month. | |
While the demands among protesters vary at each university, nearly all | |
the demonstrations have called for universities to divest from Israel | |
in some form. | |
But divesting may not be so simple for many academic institutions. | |
While there is some historical precedent for divestment, so far, | |
universities have refused to budge. | |
Here’s what to know: | |
What is divestment? | |
“Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” protesters | |
at Columbia and universities across the country have chanted. | |
Put most simply, divestment is the opposite of investment. | |
Many universities have an endowment, which is donated funds generally | |
invested in stocks, bonds and other financial instruments to help the | |
university earn money. | |
Student protesters who oppose Israel’s military action in Gaza are | |
demanding that their universities sell investments in companies with | |
ties to Israel. | |
However, the scope of those demands varies by school. | |
For example, at Columbia, seen by some as the epicenter of the latest | |
student protest movement, the student coalition called Columbia | |
University Apartheid Divest wants the university to divest from any | |
company linked to Israel. That includes tech behemoths like with | |
business ties to Israel. | |
Protesters at other schools, such as Cornell and Yale, are asking their | |
schools to stop investing in weapons manufacturers. | |
Many schools aren’t yielding | |
Some schools have been hesitant to take a political stance and divest | |
for a number of reasons. For one, untangling a school’s financial | |
interests to all companies with ties to Israel would be complicated, | |
experts say. Another reason is that many defenders of Israel believe | |
calls to divest in the only Jewish-majority country can be antisemitic. | |
Pro-Palestinian protesters say divestment would send an important | |
message of disapproval of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. | |
But while demonstrators have spread their messages across the country, | |
many schools haven’t acquiesced to protesters’ calls for | |
divestment. | |
Some schools, like the University of Michigan, have to students that | |
the institution is not directly invested in Israeli companies. | |
However, protesting students across the country say their schools are | |
not being transparent about financial ties to the country. | |
On Monday, Columbia’s administration reiterated that it would not | |
divest from Israel. | |
The University of California also said divestment wouldn’t happen. | |
“The University of California has consistently opposed calls for | |
boycott against and divestment from Israel. While the University | |
affirms the right of our community members to express diverse | |
viewpoints, a boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of | |
our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our | |
campuses,” the state school system . | |
However, a few schools’ administrations seem willing to hear the | |
protesters out. | |
A statement from the University of Texas, Dallas, said the university | |
“welcomes the opportunity for open, respectful dialogue.” | |
At Brown, university president Christina Paxson sent a letter to | |
demonstrators saying she would agree to hear a divestment proposal if | |
the school’s encampment is disbanded, according to the student-run | |
newspaper, the . | |
At least one academic institution has taken action: on Monday, Portland | |
State University said it would pause gifts and grants from Boeing after | |
students and faculty called for the university to sever ties to | |
businesses that support Israel. | |
Is it hard to divest? | |
There are historical precedents for university divestment. In the | |
1980s, a group of Columbia students protested the school’s financial | |
ties with amid its apartheid racial segregation policy. | |
Columbia eventually voted to sell the majority of Columbia’s stock in | |
South Africa-connected companies, including major companies like Ford | |
and Coca-Cola. Other colleges followed suit. South Africa’s apartheid | |
policies ended in the early 1990s. | |
However, university investments are much more complicated these days. | |
“The economy is so global now that even if a university decided that | |
they were going to instruct their dominant management groups to divest | |
from Israel, it would be almost impossible to disentangle,” Nicholas | |
Dirks, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, . | |
“It’s not clear to me that it’s really possible to fully divest | |
from companies that touch in some way a country with such close | |
political and trade ties to the US,” Dirks added. | |
Fully divesting from major American companies like Alphabet (Google’s | |
parent company) and Microsoft may come with its own set of challenges. | |
Most Americans’ retirement accounts are invested in big tech | |
companies, and any funds that track the broader stock market will | |
likely hold a stake in these companies, due to their size and relative | |
importance to the market. | |
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