“Princeton outside Israel.”
This is read on one of the banners of the students protesting at the elitist university in the United States, one of the many that is the scene of demonstrations against Israel’s offensive in Gaza and the role in it of the government of Joe Biden and the own educational centers.
The Students demand that the American university disassociate itself from Israeli companies and those who “benefit” from the war in Gaza.
But what does a university have to do with what is happening thousands of miles away in the Middle East?
“Our university has financial investments in Israeli institutions. They are investing in the murder of Gazans and Palestinians,” says Achinthya Sivalingam, a 28-year-old graduate student at Princeton. “We are here saying that is not right.”
The scene is repeated in numerous universities throughout the country.
“What we are asking is that the University of California stop investing funds in those who profit from the genocide in Gaza,” says a student at UCLA in Los Angeles who prefers not to give his name.
Pro-Palestinian protesters want universities to divest from investments they have in companies linked to Israel through their endowment funds, which manage the wealth of these educational centers. This is what has been called the “divestment” movement.
Divestment consists of selling shares, assets or other investments for political, ethical or financial reasons.
So far, universities have rejected these claims.
University “will not divest from Israel”said this week Minouche Shafik, president of the University of Columbia in New York, one of the centers where protests have ended in confrontations with the police.
But what are university endowments and how do they link them to Israel?
“Divest in Israel”
The claim of “disinvestment” cannot be understood without taking into account that the majority of universities in the US have endowment funds that manage billions of dollars.
“A heritage fund (endowmentin English) is a fund in which capital is invested, and the university uses an annual distribution, financed by income and appreciation of investments, to support our work,” explains Columbia University on its website.
“The endowment provides Columbia with a permanent source of funding to support professorships, financial aid, research, capital projects, schools, departments, institutes, centers and more,” he notes.
In 2023 Columbia’s endowment had $13.64 billion.
Much of this wealth is invested in company shares through multiple investment funds that offer profitability.
“I have access to all these resources that my institution provides me, but if that comes from an investment that causes the deaths of thousands of people, I don’t want it,” says Achinthya Sivalingam, the Princeton student.
In this context, the students who demonstrate demand that the endowment funds of their universities “disinvest” in companies that may be benefiting directly or indirectly from the war in Gaza, whether Israeli or foreign.
Divestment as a tool to defend Palestinian rights is not new. For almost 20 years, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for boycotting Israeli companies as “a central form of civil resistance to Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid.”
They also use it environmental groups to pressure organizations to divest from companies dedicated to the extraction and marketing of hydrocarbons, for example.
As a result of that pressure, Columbia decided in 2021 to stop investing in oil and gas companies that are listed on the stock exchange.
“There is an undeniable obligation for Columbia and other universities to address the climate crisis in all dimensions of our institutions,” Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said at the time.
But in the case of the demands of the pro-Palestinian protesters, for the moment it does not seem that their pressure will have any effect.
On the one hand, The American political class is largely aligned with Israel and its interestsand federal and state authorities are pressuring universities not to give in to the demands of students, whom they accuse of allowing expressions of “anti-Semitism” in their protests and intimidation of students of Jewish origin.
On the other, there are the donors, billionaires who give millions of dollars to these educational centers every year, some of whom have threatened to withdraw their funds if the pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue.
In the context of the current protests, the students’ demand for divestment is not restricted to Israeli companies. The protesters maintain that companies of any nationality that do business in or with Israel “are complicit.”
In Columbia, protesters circulated a pamphlet listing the names of companies such as BlackRock, Lockheed Martin, HEICO, Google and Microsoftwhich have business relations with Israel and financial ties to the university.
For the organization Students for Palestine at New York University, there is the “moral imperative to call for divestment” in companies whose “actions are contrary to the values of the university.”
“Because if NYU can divest from fossil fuels and South African apartheid, why shouldn’t we put Israeli actions on the same level?” the organization said in an open letter.
“Boycott and transparency”
“We demand three things from our universities: divest, be transparent and disengage“, summarizes the student Achinthya Sivalingam.
And the protesters are asking, in addition to disinvestment, sever academic relations with Israeli educational institutions and that their universities improve transparency about the destination of the funds.
Researchers specialized in the conflict such as Dov Waxman, director of the Nazarene Center for Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reject demands to cut ties with Israeli institutions as unjustified.
“I oppose the boycott of Israeli academic institutions and the academic boycott in general,” Waxman wrote. “The Nazarene Center that I direct is dedicated to the academic study of Israel and has no ties to the Israeli government.”
On the subject of transparency, Students want the destination of the investments of the universities’ endowments to be known.
“At this time, 99.34% of Columbia’s investments are unknown, making it impossible to fully understand Columbia’s financial ties to Israel,” Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine posted on their social media.
But even if universities changed their position and decided to divest from companies with ties to Israel, it would be a “nearly impossible” task, according to experts.
Endowments invest in numerous index funds, which in turn invest in hundreds of publicly traded companies. These index funds in many cases They do not allow you to individually choose which companies to invest in.
The response of universities
So far, universities have rejected the idea of divesting from companies linked to Israel and breaking relations with that country’s academic institutions because they consider that the claim It responds to political interests and does not have consensus in the educational community.
At Columbia, the Advisory Committee on Responsible Investment (ACSRI), which serves to advise the university community on ethical issues, determined that not only there is no broad consensus but there is a strong rejection of withdrawing financial support from Israel.
Similarly, Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, argued that the center would not take action until broad agreement on the issue had been reached on campus.
From Princeton they argue that the university’s guidelines establish that “there is a strong presumption against the university adopting a political position or playing an active role with respect to external issues of a political, social or moral nature.”
The University of California also rejected calls for boycott and divestment from Israel.
“A boycott of this type affects the academic freedom of our students and faculty, and the free exchange of ideas on our campuses,” they said in a statement.
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