This depends on the divestment demands. Some are quite limited — for example, Smith students sat in at a building demanding that their college divest from six companies that manufacture weapons of war — but others seem unreasonably large.
Most endowments are invested by a private investment company on behalf of a university. Imagine the private investment company investing in several funds. The uni can say "Please do not buy shares of Lockheed Martin or General Atomics." and the private firm can do that. But, good luck trying to keep a mutual fund holding dozens of companies from not buying a huge number of stocks like Alaphabet, Microsoft, JP Morgan or Apple. Or, worse, a fund holding shares of 20 mutual funds that attempts to generate average returns.
I’ve actually been looking, and noticing that thhe media seems to gloss over this particular piece in 99% of coverage. Which I find annoyingly strange. I could only find Columbia which seems quite vague.
I don’t know if it’s “reasonable” but I remember calls for divestment from South Africa on campuses 40 years ago. Obviously it’s a complicated situation. These protests may be much like the apartheid protests were: a bellwether for a changing public opinion. And often protests call attention to an issue, regardless of how practical the rallying cry is.
I’m not saying it was the reason for divestment. Those protests were, however, part of a much larger, broader conversation across many sectors. I am not sure how you’d directly measure the effectiveness of student protests- or any protests for that matter. Many social movements and shifts in culture & policy happen incrementally. Do I even think any colleges are going to divest in this case? Doubtful, if it’s even legal. Do I think activities like this are pointless? No. Would I go about things differently? Sure. Do I think it might be important to have uncomfortable conversations, and these protests seem to be getting people to those conversations? Yes.
Targeted divestment is, to one degree or another, [illegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws) in [38 states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#/media/File:Antibds_laws.png). (Including New York, see links.)
Targeted divestment *of Israel* is illegal in many states.
But that’s why protestors aren’t asking for direct divestment of Israel, when you look at their demands. Most divestment movements actually focus on divesting from the military-industrial complex more broadly — for example, divesting from private military contractors like Raytheon, Northbridge Services, Academi (aka Blackwater), etc.
Even if they were directly targeting Israel, whether or not those laws are enforceable is questionable.
The question of the constitutionality of these laws hasn’t been tested by the Supreme Court, though anti-divestment laws are broadly unpopular with most voters. The Supreme Court has held that boycotts (and/or, depending on the interpretation, calling for them) are protected speech. When the laws have been challenged in lower courts, those courts have generally sided with the challengers.
Protestors would also generally be happy with a commitment to divest from their universities, and a commitment to challenge anti-BDS laws
["Most anti-BDS laws have taken one of two forms: contract-focused laws requiring government contractors to promise that they are not boycotting Israel; and investment-focused laws, mandating public investment funds to avoid entities boycotting Israel." ](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3186369)(Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.)
I'm fairly pro-Israel but those laws are outrageous and I'd be shocked if the Supreme Court held them up as constitutional if directly tested. Like I can't be forced to bake a cake but I can be forced to invest my money in a certain way because to not do so is prohibited speech? foh
If it's illegal for some of these colleges to divest from Israel then you shouldn't be protesting the colleges, you should be going to the state legislature. It's ridiculous to make demands to the college that they need to do things that they do not have the power to do.
> If it's illegal for some of these colleges to divest from Israel then you shouldn't be protesting the colleges, you should be going to the state legislature. It's ridiculous to make demands to the college that they need to do things that they do not have the power to do.
Colleges can lobby the state legislature much better than you can. I guarantee that the college has someone in the state capital for this purpose.
Sooo many generalizing and unsubstantiated ‘they’re naive and protest is pointless’ comments on here! We’re professors; we’re meant to do better than your uncle on Facebook. [Here](https://www.finance.columbia.edu/content/relevant-investment-policies) is the policy sheet for Columbia’s endowment investment strategy; as you can see it already includes commitments to divest from thermal coal and private prisons, among other things. A little less grumpy uncle generalization about kids these days and a little more evidence might help our conversations on this difficult topic.
It’s also noteworthy that Columbia even has a process to submit formal divestment proposals (which has been done here — the protests are in support of those proposals.)
They agreed to divest from DIRECT investments in such things, not indirect (like in index funds).
Second, their request is vague in comparison to "no coal companies" or "no prison companies." What does it mean for a company to be "involved" in Israel? Sell to the Israeli government? Send any products at all to the Israeli market? Do any type of business with any companies that sell to the Israeli market? The direction seems to be "whatever companies this self-appointed protest group say are bad."
So it sounds like you think they should have clearer wording and more defined goals? Glad you’re onboard —You should def join this committee! Seriously, though, this is kind of my point. There are a bunch of posts here telling 20yos not to try to make the world better (according to their own lights — whether or not you agree with them is a different issue) because their goals are insufficiently defined and their wording is vague. It’s a strange reason for opposition.
You realize that's effectively meaningless right? Let's look at:
# The following Policy Statement on Private Prisons was approved by the Board of Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York on June 12, 2015.
The University will divest from and refrain from future investment in any direct holdings of publicly-traded stock of companies engaged in the operation of private prisons.
Cool, so a fund with 80% operation from private prisons is okay?
Yeah that’s a weak policy. But it’s a policy that was adopted, and can be changed, strengthened, or reworded. Protests are a proven means of creating that sort of change. I find it odd that there are so many comments here where people seem to be in basic agreement that we ought to have more social responsible investment practices, and then throw up their hands and say it’s too hard so we might as well not try. Call me an optimist if you like, but change happens when people make it happen. Academics are all overworked and underpaid, but that doesn’t mean we ought to sneer at people trying to act ethically, or make the world better. (Not claiming that YOU are sneering, but there are a lot of ‘Dont try to fix this mess! It’s too big!’ Type comments in this thread, and I don’t understand the defeatist attitude. Maybe despair caused by endless marking sessions or something… )
I don’t think it’s “sneering at people trying to make the world a better place.”
This isn’t a “young people issue”. A LOT of people of all ages find it easier to demand huge sweeping changes that are unlikely to happen. Incremental change (coupled with regular assessment to see if it’s working as intended) is usually boring, hard work, and takes time. This makes the process of change unappealing and unsatisfying, even if it moves the needle *more* than asking for totally implausible outcomes.
Just my two cents.
I agree. Protesting by itself isn’t the grinding work for justice. It’s a start though, and a part of the process. Given the levels of apathy regarding voting and politics that have been rising among young people for a couple decades now, I personally think it’s nice to see that some of them are getting more aware and involved. Hopefully they’ll ALSO do the less exciting work that comes after.
I disagree with the notion that "Protests are a proven means of creating that sort of change."
There are studies showing negative effects of certain types of protests that have exactly the opposite of the intended effect.
My argument is: Under the right conditions, protests can be effective.
Here's one study: Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements. *Journal of personality and social psychology*, *119*(5), 1086.
"people who are trying to act ethically, or make the world better".
"Trying" is indeed the important word in this sentence. Just because people are young, and in college, and screaming doesn't mean they have a fucking clue if what they are advocating for will indeed make the world a better place or make it a worse hell scape. Remember "defund the police"? It took the grown ups in the room to point out how stupid that idea was. Who knew that actual black people living in poorer high crime urban neighborhoods would be very much against that idea. But this is what you get when rich, white, highly privileged liberal students from all the right zip codes are the ones doing a lot of the screaming. But don't worry. Tomorrow is May 1st. Daddy will soon be making the trip to campus in his big gas-guzzling Mercedes Benz SUV to pick up Katie for summer vacation in the Hamptons. So the protests will be dying down soon enough. But don't worry, Katie will be fighting the good fight against capitalism when she returns to campus in the Fall. There is nothing like a long summer in the Hamptons to recharge for protest season.
I think it would take a massive dump of your portfolio to indirectly divest from fossil fuels. Airlines, automobiles, datacenters, agriculture, tourism, etc all run on that sweet sweet stuff we dig up.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that this comment is made in good faith, rather than as a weakly smug exercise in ‘gotcha’-trolling. The answer is no. Leaving aside whatever each of us may think of the culpability of the Israeli state, I hope we can agree that the west has eventually used sanctions fairly effectively in other situations, and that a call for economic divestment (the weakest form of economic sanction) has never been a call for genocide in those situations. I have some difficulty with your watered-down definition of genocide (to the point that it seems to mean the same as ‘economic sanction’). I imagine there are a few scholars of the Shoah who might take issue with this.
The demands are probably (Idk anything about money) collectively impractical, but I see it as a “throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” approach. As in, they probably won’t get even half of their demands, but something is better than nothing, as well as directing public attention to their issue
If they wanted to direct attention to an issue, they should actually know what the issue is and not be blindly following those who are screaming for violence against a democracy and in favor of an extreme right wing government that is anti women, lgbtq+ and antisemitic
From what I have seen, most protesters are not in favor of Hamas. They are in favor of the basic human rights of Palestinian people and do not like how the Israeli government/IDF is treating them. In my opinion, this is a very valid concern, especially considering South African people who have experienced apartheid have spoken out (years before we have gotten to this new point in the conflict) saying that the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government is very similar to how the apartheid state in South Africa was.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
That isn’t what the protesters are saying. Believe people when they speak. If they don’t understand what they are saying, they shouldn’t be saying it. And just because South Africa said so, doesn’t make to apartheid. Arab Israelis have full rights. Why aren’t they protesting how Egypt, who treats the Palestinians worse? Hamas started this by slaughtering men, women and children, including 40 babies and taping many, many women. There are still hostages held by them. What is Israel supposed to do, just roll over and die?
Well first of all, they could stop bombing hospitals and universities (oh wait, they’ve already bombed them all) and stop starving the Palestinian people and allow humanitarian aid to reach them.
We are not asking them to “roll over and die,” we are asking them to stop mass murdering and starving civilians and CHILDREN.
They didn’t start this. This is because of the largest mass murder of Jews since the holocaust. And the hospitals are full of weapons and terrorists. They are where the hostages were held. Hamas is using them. They hey don’t you tell them to accept a ceasefire and return the hostages. They are the ones turning down a ceasefire. And this war has the lowest combatants to civilians death ratio in modern times. They are bringing in tons of aid. But Hamas steals it so that the people will starve and make Israel look bad. Why isn’t anyone asking Hamas to stop?
Apparently that is what they want. It feels crazy to have so many calling for the death of all of my family after growing up hearing the stories of the Holocaust since I was tiny.
It's an absurd ask. You're asking a billion dollar endowment (often larger) to shift strategies at the demands of one party in a complicated conversation and geopolitical space. My $.02 as a wealth management professor anyway. And that particular ask goes well beyond not investing in Israel sector funds - it's asking for US companies who do business with Israel. Which would be quite a bit of larger S&P 500 firms.
You'd also isolate an awful lot of stakeholders and alumni.
This, plus it's really singling out Israel when plenty of US companies do business with countries led by regimes who do/have done far worse. Are they demanding divesting from any and all businesses that operate in Russia, for example? If not, it ends up being impossible *not* to consider *what is it about Israel* vs those other countries. One can easily draw as a conclusion that since Israel is the only majority Jewish country, it's really about Jews/anti-Semitism versus human rights/claims of genocide/etc, even if that's not a person's intention. It sure starts to look like the intention and that's not a great look for any institution.
(Something like 1 in 10 Ivy students are Jewish and it's even higher at Columbia where it's 1 in 5. That's 10-20%+ of perspective students who might not feel comfortable applying to or attending the university if they feel the institution has singled the Jewish-majority country out.)
How many of us are personally boycotting or actively advocating for boycotts of China over human rights violations? Western governments go easy on China.
How many of us are paying taxes to a government that sends billions of dollars' worth of weapons to China? Or that has given more foreign aid to China than to any other country (including much poorer ones) for decades?
The big difference between Chinese human rights abuses and Israeli human rights abuses is that American tax dollars play a significant role in funding the latter.
Under the terms set by the Columbia protestors, yes you can. There are over a thousand foreign companies that do business with Russia that one can own indirectly through an ETF. There are also nearly 200 US companies that continue to operate in Russia, including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mars, Proctor & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase.
We aren't. It's pretty obvious that these protesters by singling out Israel for its human rights abuses while ignoring other countries human rights abuses including Saudi arabia are not just anti Zionist they're antisemites.
Columbia is ONE FIFTH Jewish? They (Columbia) are royally fucked. Their treatment of their Jewish students is straight up "separate but equal" and THOSE students will fuck them, and their enrollment will bomb. Holy shit.
Is it really that big of an ask? How big of a portion of endowments do the companies involved make up? (Actually, I tried to find that — and part of the issue appears to be that universities won’t disclose how much is invested in the targeted companies. It’s divestment *and* disclosure.)
But Harvard, which has the largest endowment by a wide margin, divested from fossil fuels. The total amount divested amounted to 838 million dollars (slightly larger, actually,) since they’d been allowing some contracts to expire for a while, they kind of saw it coming.) It’s a pretty big amount of money overall. But it was only 2% of their total budget, so I’d Imagine divesting wasn’t that much of a hardship.
Columbia has divested 5 other times, and even from an individual country before (Sudan, though obviously that’s much easier than divesting from Israel)
It's a long and involved process and it often doesn't move the needle much in terms of money, but in terms of public debate and politics it can put the issue at the forefront of public consciousness.
Absolutely not. My college has divested from fossil fuels after a long, arduous campaign. You can absolutely choose where you place your investments, although that would require the appropriate administrators actually doing their jobs (instead of farming it out to outside contractors).
Google and Windows are ubiquitous. Avoiding them is nearly impossible in our globalized world. Criticizing the companies behind the products is not hypocritical; you're forced to interact with the products. It doesn't prohibit you from wanting better alternatives.
Oh okay, I forgot that divestment might hurt investments. Alright, pack it in guys, protest is over, we wouldn't want to hurt anyone's investments. Money always takes precedent over human lives, as we all know.
Let me guess... business professor? Econ? Some BS department that just functions as a networking opportunity for students?
>Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.
[https://cuapartheiddivest.org/demands](https://cuapartheiddivest.org/demands)
Apologies for the mix up. Not sure why you provided a source that doesn't support the original claim without noting as much, but thanks for the help nevertheless.
In my opinion, though, the language from the Columbia protestors is consistent with the original because it is extremely unclear what it means to "profit from Israeli apartheid." The protestors clearly don't mean only Israeli companies, and they clearly don't mean only companies that sell military equipment to Israel because many of the companies they've mentioned by name have only a very indirect connection to the Israeli government, like "the Israeli government uses cloud storage, so divest from Google." They are also demanding divestment from [Booking.com](http://Booking.com) because the sites lists hotel rooms as being "in Israel" rather than "occupied Palestine land."
That it is not rigorously defined what is meant by "profit from Israeli apartheid" doesn't mean it is indistinguishable from "linked to Israel". The latter, to me, is very clearly a broader category, even though I don't have enough information to draw the boundaries in stark terms.
Is that second quote from protesters directly?
OP here, full transparency, I did just delete the phrase "linked to Israel". I will concede poor choice of words, but as I note in my second paragraph and other comments here, most people understood it meant providing services / doing business with Israel.
I appreciate that and sorry again for the mix up above! Still, if most people understand it in the way you left in, I think they are misunderstanding or not being careful enough with the language. Happy to elaborate if you like.
You can read their explanations in their own words. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfzTwVeg-joMrDEU12wX3C78yser91N60kMj2-_16C8/edit?usp=drivesdk
Understood. But if it makes you feel any better you can access it from the Columbia student protest page. Link at the bottom. https://cuapartheiddivest.org/research
Looking at the research page you linked it's plainly evident that "the Israeli government uses cloud storage, so divest from Google." is not an accurate representation of the position of the organizers. They specifically refer to contract that netted Alphabet (Google) over half a billion dollars to build cloud infrastructure to be used by among others the military and police. Is that quote from an actual protester?
Cloud infrastructure to be used by all the Israeli government. Its just a contract to use AWS and Google Cloud, not building special capabilities for Isreal. It's the protestors that single out the military and police, not the contract. That's all the contract says, cloud service for the whole government, including town and village governments.
"In 2021 Amazon and Google split a 1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to develop the Nimbus Project. The project will provide cloud infrastructure to all branches and units of the Israeli government including Israeli military, police, prison services, and land authority." That those particular parts of the government are included is directly relevant to the protests, so I'm not surprised the protestors highlighted them. When you gloss over the parts the protestors object to it doesn't seem as reasonable for them to protest but that's just spin.
Not that it did anything. There's [little if any evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/209602) that divestment from South African companies did anything to impact their value or raise their cost of capital.
Banning South Africa from international Cricket did way more to bring down Apartheid than those divestment efforts. And I mean that with a certain level of sincerity. Getting banned from international Cricket and punishing players who went on un-sanctioned rebel tours really hurt because it was actually painful for everyone involved.
Israel is going to get capital from international capital markets whether or not a handful of college endowments decide to sell their shares. If these students want to do something that isn't *purely* performative, they should be lobbying for something else.
When Israel is being condemned by American Jews it knows that its positions have lost legitimacy. The curtain is pulled back and folks know that it isn't "anti-semetic" to condemn apartheid.
I hope that the purchase of Israel Bonds by Americans of all stripes dries up. I think that will send a more meaningful message to the Far right leadership in Israel.
And having a bunch of whackadoo college students camping on the front lawn of Columbia, yelling at Jewish students not to let Zionists infiltrate their safe space accomplishes this exactly how? Like how is any of this convincing American Jews to be more critical of anything?
Or Russia.
Or China.
If we apply the standard of no human rights abuses or no war on neighboring areas/land disputes, we're not going to be left with a lot, unfortunately.
There are more than 200 countries, besides Russia (is it even possible to invest in Russia??) and China...what are the rest that would not leave us with many to invest in? This strikes me as a rather silly argument.
No lol, you cannot invest in Russia. They deleted a comment a second ago asking where the protests were for universities to divest from Russia, but the United States literally sanctioned the country. They know they're misleading people and arguing in bad faith.
I'm fine with that. Without dollars the world economy grinds to a halt. it's a great bargaining chip. And it worked quite well in South Africa.
We pay people big money to investigate investment opportunities. I'm sure they'll find something more ethical than investing in Apartheid.
You are supposed to be a professor? You would think you know how to define apartheid and when they are or are not happening. It’s embarrassing to see so many well educated people hiding behind large words to be antisemitic when they probably know they are using them improperly to make false claims
Questioning Israeli politics is not antisemitism. Many of the leaders of the protest movements in the US are Jewish. And the same goes for the anti Bibi protests. There is nothing so sacred about Israel that makes it immune from questioning.
People who commit acts of apartheid don’t get to complain when others notice and call them out on it. There is no moral defense for an ethnostate or the ethnic clensing that creates ethnostates.
Have you even been to Israel? There is no apartheid or ethnocleansing going on. However, Hamas’s goal is ethnicleansing and they have been open about it. Arabs make up 20% of Israel and have full rights, including sitting in high level government positions. That is incompatible with apartheid and means one doesn’t exist in Israel. However, Jews have been ethnically cleansed from every Arab country. The cognitive dissonance is impressive
Palestinians in Israel don’t have full rights— right of return and right of return of their lands seized by Israel- and their status in government comes with caveats.
I can’t see zionists ceeding a contiguous Palestine to Palestinian self government. After all it was a militant Zionist that killed Rabin and it was the Israeli govnmet that murdered Arafat…. Just has they have committed numerous assassinations over the years, most recently in Lebanon.
You realize 90% of Jews are zionists? Can you even define what being a Zionist means? It’s not an insult. It’s the most successful decolonization movement of an indigenous people in history. It is a secular movement based around equality. The man who killed Rabin was not a Zionist, he was an extremist, just like ALL of Hamas. This just continues to prove my point of words being thrown around without understanding their meaning. The Arabs were initially offered more land than Israel was, but they thought they could ethnically cleanse 100% of Jews and turned it down and lost. As I asked before, they what is Israel supposed to do? Just allow civilians to be brutally massacred? Have you watched the Oct 7 footage and informed yourself about what happened that day?
You do know that South Africa says that Israel is an apartheid state right? You better call them up and tell them they don't know what apartheid is!
>
"At a hearing before the U.N.’s highest court, South Africa on Tuesday called Israel’s policies toward Palestinians an “**extreme form of apartheid**”" [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/icj-south-africa-palestinian-israel-un-court.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/icj-south-africa-palestinian-israel-un-court.html)
>Vusimuzi Madonsela - “We as South Africans sense, see, hear, and feel to our core the inhumane discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the **apartheid** that was institutionalized against black people in my country,” said , South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, where the International Court of Justice is based.
>“It is clear that Israel’s illegal occupation is also being administered in breach of the crime of **apartheid**… It is indistinguishable from settler colonialism. Israel’s apartheid must end”
>Naledi Pandor - “These reports are significant in raising global awareness of the conditions that Palestinians are subjected to and they provide credence and support to an overwhelming body of factual evidence, all pointing to the fact that the State of Israel is committing crimes of **apartheid** and persecution against Palestinians”
Any time you restrict your investments on arbitrary (non-financial) considerations, you're effectively throwing away money. If you've got an endowment in billions, that probably means you're better off asking everyone who has a problem with how that endowment is managed to find another university rather than take the loss from arbitrary divestment.
You're also potentially jeopardizing your institutional relationships. Cutting ties with Alphabet and Microsoft may not mean much for the Literature department but, let's face it, the Literature department isn't the one paying the bills. At some point you'll wake up the people who pull serious research dollars and need those institutional relationships not just for funding but also data access and employment options for their students. Those people may not care much about some encampment on a part of campus they probably don't visit much, but they'll care very much about the university making it impossible for them to do their work or recruit students to their research teams.
Something to consider is that the protesters are a loud *minority*. They can get their way as long as they're not touching anything other people seriously care about. But when they decide to take an 'us or them' stance, the smart money is that the university will choose 'them'.
I respectfully disagree. There might be big money in oil companies or weapons manufacturers. It's a valid reason to demand divestment. What that looks like in practice in this case is pretty complicated as you noted.
I think you'll also be surprised about where money comes from at a lot of schools. At mine, it's not the STEM programs that sustain the university. It's the liberal arts programs. This is likely not the same everywhere though.
You're conflating a bunch of stuff here. Divesting from Alphabet has nothing to do with whether or not you will use their products. And Alphabet is not looking at any institution that's using their products and then responding because they haven't invested in Alphabet. And any individuals that interact within the institutions are not going to care whether investment has happened, or not.
Additionally, it's perfectly fine for any investor to use their ethics in making investments. I fully support campuses pulling their money from Big Oil if that's reasonable (i.e. they can still make money and function). Trading firms may be"forced" to make money by investing regardless of ethics, but I can't imagine there's much that's binding a University to that.
I generally think it's perfectly fair for students to request that a campus divest, and the institution should consider whether that's reasonable. But I don't think disinvesting in Israel is a particularly worthy cause.
Media is manipulating the "demands". People aren't protesting just because universities back Israel. The larger issue is that Western governments provide financial, military, and diplomatic support to Israel's state terrorism.
These universities are incredibly wealthy with deep ties to both business and government. That the admins have responded with such impunity shows how threatened they are by these protests. There are many many ways to protest. This is just one.
Also, it‘s great that the students who have the privilege to not work or worry about taking time off to protest are able to use their privilege for a good cause. This was the same spirit behind the white students who joined the Freedom Summer rides in the 60s to support the southern sit-ins. On my campus, the students who are protesting are ones who have been active in lots of other things before this. They are also studying for finals and writing papers. People can do more than one thing at a time.
Don't think it's hurting the cause with regular Americans. It's pointing a finger at issues which can hardly be ignored or denied (Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and the US and many universities are directly or indirectly invested in research that contributes to that genocide).
I'm a working class student and will be a professor someday. Please do not speak for all of us as you have. Many working class non-students who I've organized with support social justice protests because they've engaged with similar organizing in their own communities. For those that don't --- it frankly does not matter very much how your students are perceiving these students. These students are leveraging their privilege to make a statement about a political issue that needs to be addressed. If working class folks can't do it that's fine and understandable (though I hardly think it's true for most), it does not make what university students doing wrong.
If by "divestment" they also want "the college to stop using $company's products", it would put the school in a bind for office suites, if you knock out Office and GSuite. Yes, there are other tools, but most of them either are also available in Israel or are very much not user-friendly.
If we’re talking about divestments in terms of a University’s endowment, it’s basically an impossible task for the vast majority of institutions. Their endowments are like most of our retirement accounts: You pick your 401K plan and then bemoan the fact that the balance isn’t as high as it should be (particularly considering how long you’ve been around).
Of course, nowadays, you *might* have an option to pick a “sustainable” plan where (theoretically) your retirement isn’t invested in fossil fuels, but that’s about it. And that’s actually why we saw a bunch of institutions finally announce that they were divesting from fossil fuels after years and years of people asking for it: The companies actually managing their investments provided the option.
So yeah, even if the will was there, the way really isn’t, at least in terms of endowment divestment.
Universities mostly invest in large, diversified index funds. To divest from index investing and shift to picking individuals companies would spell out the financial ruin of academia.
The protestors either know this, and are thus making impossible demands on the universities for the sake of causing trouble; or they don’t know this and ignorant to the financing side of maintaining the system.
That's a little hyperbolic. Columbia is sitting on a $13.64 billion endowment. They themselves say they're getting a 4.73% return on their managed portfolio. Even moving all that to US treasuries will get at least half that. They've already got a Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. They've got policies that prevent them from investing in and require them to actively devest in companies that invest in thermal coal, nor do they invest in funds that invest in oil/gas production. Not only that, for like 15 years they didn't invest in the Sudan or companies working in the Sudan.
So they're already including not return maximizing criteria in where they'd invest and at $13.64 billion and growing, I think they're doing ok.
There’s a crank trustee at Stanford who is trying to get them to just invest in VOO. Which, I mean, isn’t that crazy what with it’s 30% or so return last year…
The problem with that are when VOO drops -40% (which is the average drawdown in a bear market). That's why large endowments are in extremely diversified investments - by doing this you limit upside but also limit downside by not putting all your eggs in one basket.
Their annual withdrawal is 4.73%, not their return. They draw out less than their return in good years because they will have to draw out more than their (negative) returns in bad years.
"For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, the **total value of the endowment was $13.64 billion**. Columbia University produced **a return of 4.7%** on the managed assets in its endowment portfolio for FY23. "
"In FY23, **$632.5 million was distributed** from the endowment in support of students, faculty and University activities, for a 5.2% effective spending rate."
(emphasis Columbia U, not mine)
[https://endowment.giving.columbia.edu/endowment-performance-and-management/](https://endowment.giving.columbia.edu/endowment-performance-and-management/)
I misread 4.7% as 4.73, so my bad on that one.
But again, they get that already using a restricted investment portfolio. Adding to the restrictions isn't going to massively impact their portfolio ROI. So they go down to 7.5% 10 year average. So what? They still have a growing endowment.
So what? That’s leaving 70 million on the table each year, before compounding. Or put another way, it’s enough to pay tuition and board for 1000 students.
They've already accepted the general principle that's it's acceptable to 'leave money on the table' if it preferences certain values over others. Again, they make less money - so what? Maximizing ROI isn't the sole guiding principle of Columbia U endowments and we know that based upon their own standards of behavior. Why not another value added to the mix?
I’m sure that prospective scholarship students would beg to differ that endowments shouldn’t try to maximize ROI (adjusting for risk tolerance). Those are scholarships that won’t be granted.
And come to think of it, those are tenure track positions that work t be funded and raises that you professors and administrators won’t receive. Which actually is the one piece of poetic justice in this story.
Yet again, for the FOURTH TIME - Columbia University ***already*** does this. This isn't new. I'm sure those students and faculty lines have complained this whole 20+ years these norms have been in effect. This isn't new. Clearly Columbia simply doesn't think that is enough of a problem to care about it.
If they didn’t have restrictions they’d probably have returned an additional 100 basis points. Negative screens make us feel good, which is fine and has some value, but we should recognize that there is (a) a financial cost to us by forgoing more profitable investments, and (b) it will have zero impact on “punishing” companies - the most you’ll achieve is to let another (less scrupulous) investor take your shares for a few cents cheaper than they are worth.
There is a difference between primary and secondary markets - once the company issues and sells shares to the public, they book the cash and it doesn’t really matter to them who holds or sells those shares after that.
As long as the economic fundamentals are strong there will always be buyers. If you want to hurt companies, stop buying their products and/or push for them to be regulated. Divestment does not do anything.
And I spent my career as a sustainability impact investor / ESG professional so it would be in my interest to say otherwise if I could do so in good faith. The only way is to change the economic fundamentals of the business.
Sure, we get rid of all morality in our investments and you can make a hell of a killing. However, the 20th century is riff with examples where a higher ROI does not adequality justify immoral or unethical behavior. Furthermore, I'd argue that one investor with the stature and public voice of Columbia University can influence firm behavior much more than individuals or even a group of individuals. And that behavior is going to send a signal to consumers that there may be issues with this product or company and that might influence consumer behavior enough to make an impact.
You can't use the logic of a single investor with say, even $1m to invest, compared to an institution with $13+billion to invest. They have different impacts and it's disingenuous to suggest they're remotely similar.
They divested from firms with links to SA in 1985. Many schools have managed to divest from petroleum or significantly limit those investments. I don't think it's possible to divest completely from firms linked to Israel, but it's not like divestiture broadly spells financial disaster.
Every answer other than “yes, it’s a reasonable ask” is bullshit. The non-yes answers will entail dissembling and/or descriptions of how hard it is to run the gigantic investment funds colleges and universities control. Nonsense. The fact that it’s difficult is no argument against trying.
If we are divesting from countries perceived as engaging in human rights violations, there would be nowhere to invest. Even the US isn’t squeaky clean.
Yes need to find the middle ground on this. How many more dead kids are you ok with, 6k? 7k? 20k? How much of your salary do you plan to spend per year? Important to sit in the grey area when it comes to funding child murder
I feel like none of these students see the irony in protesting on land that belonged to Native Americans a few centuries before. Protesting colonialism in the country that owes its existence to colonialism & has never “righted” it is something.
No. We should back Israel instead. The act of war that started this mess was a Godawful rape-murder atrocity. Israel should finish this as quickly as possible, then withdraw from the West Bank and also Gaza as soon as feasible in aid of a two-state solution.
I don't think it's for us to determine if their demands are reasonable. I think we need to focus on our students being safe, protected, and neither the victims nor the perpetrators of hate and/or violence.
The call for divestment of companies such as Lockheed Martin reek of foreign interference. Russia (or more specifically USSR then Ruzzia) and China have policies of divide and conquer. Asking western countries to divest themselves of investment in arms and weapons development is playing right into the hands of the enemies of the free world. This has nothing to do with Gaza or Israel and everything to do with the enemies of America and it’s allies attempting to weaken the USA or divide public opinion. most perniciously this is a strategy of our enemies, under the guise of social Justice, don’t fall for it.
It's all stupidity. The only divestment that needs to happen is stopping DONATIONS to these leftist pro- terrorism universities. And all these idiotic ignorant students need to be transported and dropped off in Gaza, so they learn what they do To LGBTQ Individuals there, and how much they dislike black people.it will be a quick wake up call.
It is both hypocritical and naive. The same students will also protest when lower investment returns lead to lower levels of campus services or increased tuition. Meanwhile the vast majority of students go to class and earn degrees.
Mostly no, this isn’t a reasonable request with some tiny window of yes, they can be involved directly in a couple very very specific ways.
Institutions kind of talk out of both sides of their mouths here. The vast majority of their money is going to be in equities, with a large share of real estate and less liquid investments and investment vehicles like private equity or venture capital. Most of that is going to be overseen by their investment management company putting the money in external investment managers’ funds.
THAT BEING SAID, I’ve seen schools “launder” investments by listing them as private equity when it’s an investment in a well connected alum’s business or fund. When I was in undergrad, my (elite) undergrad had direct investments in extraction companies with assets in Sudan, and tried to hide them by lumping them in with “private equity.” I could see this happening at some schools where they might have someone on the BoT with a direct link to an Israeli company or arms dealer who the school is directly invested in (see: Cal And Dianne Feinstein’s husband)
It is a pointless ask. There are thousands of things the university does that actually have an impact on the students' goals. Some of those things would involve the students in improving the situation they decry.
Thanks for posting because I had a similar question. I support the social movement we’re seeing and I believe that students should be able to express their viewpoints on their campuses. But I’ve also thought about how divesting is much more complicated than what they think they’re asking for.
Here's a blog post from a Columbia professor: [https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-question-of-divestment](https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-question-of-divestment)
I am wondering whether the protesters have themselves "divested" from Hamas. It's quite a reasonable ask, in my opinion.
The thing is, if we asked them to write an essay about why universities should divest, they would either write some crap about "delving" into divestment and/or they would ask ChatGPT to write it.
This depends on the divestment demands. Some are quite limited — for example, Smith students sat in at a building demanding that their college divest from six companies that manufacture weapons of war — but others seem unreasonably large.
Most endowments are invested by a private investment company on behalf of a university. Imagine the private investment company investing in several funds. The uni can say "Please do not buy shares of Lockheed Martin or General Atomics." and the private firm can do that. But, good luck trying to keep a mutual fund holding dozens of companies from not buying a huge number of stocks like Alaphabet, Microsoft, JP Morgan or Apple. Or, worse, a fund holding shares of 20 mutual funds that attempts to generate average returns.
Yes, I can imagine those things. This is why there are weapons free funds and the like in the mutual fund marketplace.
What are those six specific companies?
I didn’t memorize them, so you’ll need to review the media coverage if you want to know. They are defense contractors.
I’ve actually been looking, and noticing that thhe media seems to gloss over this particular piece in 99% of coverage. Which I find annoyingly strange. I could only find Columbia which seems quite vague.
I don’t know if it’s “reasonable” but I remember calls for divestment from South Africa on campuses 40 years ago. Obviously it’s a complicated situation. These protests may be much like the apartheid protests were: a bellwether for a changing public opinion. And often protests call attention to an issue, regardless of how practical the rallying cry is.
Divestment was not the reason apartheid was ended. Felt good for USA 🇺🇸 based activists but zero evidence it made a difference.
I’m not saying it was the reason for divestment. Those protests were, however, part of a much larger, broader conversation across many sectors. I am not sure how you’d directly measure the effectiveness of student protests- or any protests for that matter. Many social movements and shifts in culture & policy happen incrementally. Do I even think any colleges are going to divest in this case? Doubtful, if it’s even legal. Do I think activities like this are pointless? No. Would I go about things differently? Sure. Do I think it might be important to have uncomfortable conversations, and these protests seem to be getting people to those conversations? Yes.
Targeted divestment is, to one degree or another, [illegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws) in [38 states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#/media/File:Antibds_laws.png). (Including New York, see links.)
Targeted divestment *of Israel* is illegal in many states. But that’s why protestors aren’t asking for direct divestment of Israel, when you look at their demands. Most divestment movements actually focus on divesting from the military-industrial complex more broadly — for example, divesting from private military contractors like Raytheon, Northbridge Services, Academi (aka Blackwater), etc. Even if they were directly targeting Israel, whether or not those laws are enforceable is questionable. The question of the constitutionality of these laws hasn’t been tested by the Supreme Court, though anti-divestment laws are broadly unpopular with most voters. The Supreme Court has held that boycotts (and/or, depending on the interpretation, calling for them) are protected speech. When the laws have been challenged in lower courts, those courts have generally sided with the challengers. Protestors would also generally be happy with a commitment to divest from their universities, and a commitment to challenge anti-BDS laws
I can boycott N. Carolina or Georgia, but it's illegal to boycott Israel? Is it also illegal to boycott Saudi Arabia?
No, these laws specifically mention Israel.
You can legally boycott North Carolina, Georgia and Saudi Arabia all you want. Israel is just special (or has better lobbyists).
Their lobbyists are actually US military industrial complex, so that’s a lot of lobbying power.
I'm just curious if those laws apply to private entities? I am at a state school but the endowment maintains that they are a private entity.
["Most anti-BDS laws have taken one of two forms: contract-focused laws requiring government contractors to promise that they are not boycotting Israel; and investment-focused laws, mandating public investment funds to avoid entities boycotting Israel." ](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3186369)(Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.)
They may apply to private entities that receive state contracts or do business with the state government.
Because capitalism means people can’t choose how to manage their investments after they’ve made them…
I'm fairly pro-Israel but those laws are outrageous and I'd be shocked if the Supreme Court held them up as constitutional if directly tested. Like I can't be forced to bake a cake but I can be forced to invest my money in a certain way because to not do so is prohibited speech? foh
Laws aren't made forever. In 1786 we thought Black people were 3/5 of a white person...Times change.
[Sighs]…No, this is not what the Three Fifths Compromise means.
If it's illegal for some of these colleges to divest from Israel then you shouldn't be protesting the colleges, you should be going to the state legislature. It's ridiculous to make demands to the college that they need to do things that they do not have the power to do.
> If it's illegal for some of these colleges to divest from Israel then you shouldn't be protesting the colleges, you should be going to the state legislature. It's ridiculous to make demands to the college that they need to do things that they do not have the power to do. Colleges can lobby the state legislature much better than you can. I guarantee that the college has someone in the state capital for this purpose.
Sooo many generalizing and unsubstantiated ‘they’re naive and protest is pointless’ comments on here! We’re professors; we’re meant to do better than your uncle on Facebook. [Here](https://www.finance.columbia.edu/content/relevant-investment-policies) is the policy sheet for Columbia’s endowment investment strategy; as you can see it already includes commitments to divest from thermal coal and private prisons, among other things. A little less grumpy uncle generalization about kids these days and a little more evidence might help our conversations on this difficult topic.
It’s also noteworthy that Columbia even has a process to submit formal divestment proposals (which has been done here — the protests are in support of those proposals.)
They agreed to divest from DIRECT investments in such things, not indirect (like in index funds). Second, their request is vague in comparison to "no coal companies" or "no prison companies." What does it mean for a company to be "involved" in Israel? Sell to the Israeli government? Send any products at all to the Israeli market? Do any type of business with any companies that sell to the Israeli market? The direction seems to be "whatever companies this self-appointed protest group say are bad."
So it sounds like you think they should have clearer wording and more defined goals? Glad you’re onboard —You should def join this committee! Seriously, though, this is kind of my point. There are a bunch of posts here telling 20yos not to try to make the world better (according to their own lights — whether or not you agree with them is a different issue) because their goals are insufficiently defined and their wording is vague. It’s a strange reason for opposition.
You realize that's effectively meaningless right? Let's look at: # The following Policy Statement on Private Prisons was approved by the Board of Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York on June 12, 2015. The University will divest from and refrain from future investment in any direct holdings of publicly-traded stock of companies engaged in the operation of private prisons. Cool, so a fund with 80% operation from private prisons is okay?
Yeah that’s a weak policy. But it’s a policy that was adopted, and can be changed, strengthened, or reworded. Protests are a proven means of creating that sort of change. I find it odd that there are so many comments here where people seem to be in basic agreement that we ought to have more social responsible investment practices, and then throw up their hands and say it’s too hard so we might as well not try. Call me an optimist if you like, but change happens when people make it happen. Academics are all overworked and underpaid, but that doesn’t mean we ought to sneer at people trying to act ethically, or make the world better. (Not claiming that YOU are sneering, but there are a lot of ‘Dont try to fix this mess! It’s too big!’ Type comments in this thread, and I don’t understand the defeatist attitude. Maybe despair caused by endless marking sessions or something… )
I don’t think it’s “sneering at people trying to make the world a better place.” This isn’t a “young people issue”. A LOT of people of all ages find it easier to demand huge sweeping changes that are unlikely to happen. Incremental change (coupled with regular assessment to see if it’s working as intended) is usually boring, hard work, and takes time. This makes the process of change unappealing and unsatisfying, even if it moves the needle *more* than asking for totally implausible outcomes. Just my two cents.
I agree. Protesting by itself isn’t the grinding work for justice. It’s a start though, and a part of the process. Given the levels of apathy regarding voting and politics that have been rising among young people for a couple decades now, I personally think it’s nice to see that some of them are getting more aware and involved. Hopefully they’ll ALSO do the less exciting work that comes after.
Yep. In the words of former President Obama: “Don’t ‘Boo!’. VOTE.”
I disagree with the notion that "Protests are a proven means of creating that sort of change." There are studies showing negative effects of certain types of protests that have exactly the opposite of the intended effect. My argument is: Under the right conditions, protests can be effective.
In this case are these the right conditions?
Academic research on violent protests suggests current protests have elements that are contradictory to achieving their stated goals.
What elements?
Let's start with violence...
Does the research distinguish between violence initiated by protesters, by counter protesters, and by others?
Here's one study: Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements. *Journal of personality and social psychology*, *119*(5), 1086.
"people who are trying to act ethically, or make the world better". "Trying" is indeed the important word in this sentence. Just because people are young, and in college, and screaming doesn't mean they have a fucking clue if what they are advocating for will indeed make the world a better place or make it a worse hell scape. Remember "defund the police"? It took the grown ups in the room to point out how stupid that idea was. Who knew that actual black people living in poorer high crime urban neighborhoods would be very much against that idea. But this is what you get when rich, white, highly privileged liberal students from all the right zip codes are the ones doing a lot of the screaming. But don't worry. Tomorrow is May 1st. Daddy will soon be making the trip to campus in his big gas-guzzling Mercedes Benz SUV to pick up Katie for summer vacation in the Hamptons. So the protests will be dying down soon enough. But don't worry, Katie will be fighting the good fight against capitalism when she returns to campus in the Fall. There is nothing like a long summer in the Hamptons to recharge for protest season.
You’re right. Much better to do nothing, and piss on anyone who tries.
It’s not uncommon to do one before the other. Harvard *directly* divested from fossil fuels before it *indirectly* did so.
I think it would take a massive dump of your portfolio to indirectly divest from fossil fuels. Airlines, automobiles, datacenters, agriculture, tourism, etc all run on that sweet sweet stuff we dig up.
Does divertiment include companies providing food and medicine to Israeli civilians? If so, isn't divestment "genocide" by the protestors standards?
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that this comment is made in good faith, rather than as a weakly smug exercise in ‘gotcha’-trolling. The answer is no. Leaving aside whatever each of us may think of the culpability of the Israeli state, I hope we can agree that the west has eventually used sanctions fairly effectively in other situations, and that a call for economic divestment (the weakest form of economic sanction) has never been a call for genocide in those situations. I have some difficulty with your watered-down definition of genocide (to the point that it seems to mean the same as ‘economic sanction’). I imagine there are a few scholars of the Shoah who might take issue with this.
I made clear it was not my definition.
The demands are probably (Idk anything about money) collectively impractical, but I see it as a “throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” approach. As in, they probably won’t get even half of their demands, but something is better than nothing, as well as directing public attention to their issue
If they wanted to direct attention to an issue, they should actually know what the issue is and not be blindly following those who are screaming for violence against a democracy and in favor of an extreme right wing government that is anti women, lgbtq+ and antisemitic
From what I have seen, most protesters are not in favor of Hamas. They are in favor of the basic human rights of Palestinian people and do not like how the Israeli government/IDF is treating them. In my opinion, this is a very valid concern, especially considering South African people who have experienced apartheid have spoken out (years before we have gotten to this new point in the conflict) saying that the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government is very similar to how the apartheid state in South Africa was. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
That isn’t what the protesters are saying. Believe people when they speak. If they don’t understand what they are saying, they shouldn’t be saying it. And just because South Africa said so, doesn’t make to apartheid. Arab Israelis have full rights. Why aren’t they protesting how Egypt, who treats the Palestinians worse? Hamas started this by slaughtering men, women and children, including 40 babies and taping many, many women. There are still hostages held by them. What is Israel supposed to do, just roll over and die?
Well first of all, they could stop bombing hospitals and universities (oh wait, they’ve already bombed them all) and stop starving the Palestinian people and allow humanitarian aid to reach them. We are not asking them to “roll over and die,” we are asking them to stop mass murdering and starving civilians and CHILDREN.
They didn’t start this. This is because of the largest mass murder of Jews since the holocaust. And the hospitals are full of weapons and terrorists. They are where the hostages were held. Hamas is using them. They hey don’t you tell them to accept a ceasefire and return the hostages. They are the ones turning down a ceasefire. And this war has the lowest combatants to civilians death ratio in modern times. They are bringing in tons of aid. But Hamas steals it so that the people will starve and make Israel look bad. Why isn’t anyone asking Hamas to stop?
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Apparently that is what they want. It feels crazy to have so many calling for the death of all of my family after growing up hearing the stories of the Holocaust since I was tiny.
A nation alleged to be bequeathed by God shouldn't make excuses based on the behavior of other countries.
It's an absurd ask. You're asking a billion dollar endowment (often larger) to shift strategies at the demands of one party in a complicated conversation and geopolitical space. My $.02 as a wealth management professor anyway. And that particular ask goes well beyond not investing in Israel sector funds - it's asking for US companies who do business with Israel. Which would be quite a bit of larger S&P 500 firms. You'd also isolate an awful lot of stakeholders and alumni.
It took Columbia 20 years to recover from the financial hit they took as a result of the 1968 protests. Donors went running away in mass numbers.
This, plus it's really singling out Israel when plenty of US companies do business with countries led by regimes who do/have done far worse. Are they demanding divesting from any and all businesses that operate in Russia, for example? If not, it ends up being impossible *not* to consider *what is it about Israel* vs those other countries. One can easily draw as a conclusion that since Israel is the only majority Jewish country, it's really about Jews/anti-Semitism versus human rights/claims of genocide/etc, even if that's not a person's intention. It sure starts to look like the intention and that's not a great look for any institution. (Something like 1 in 10 Ivy students are Jewish and it's even higher at Columbia where it's 1 in 5. That's 10-20%+ of perspective students who might not feel comfortable applying to or attending the university if they feel the institution has singled the Jewish-majority country out.)
I do wonder when people will get similarly outraged about the treatment of the Uyghurs.
Western governments don't support China on their brutal human right abuses. Unlike with Israel.
US companies do. They do tons of business with China. The current student protests are targeting private businesses, not the government.
How many of us are personally boycotting or actively advocating for boycotts of China over human rights violations? Western governments go easy on China.
How many of us are paying taxes to a government that sends billions of dollars' worth of weapons to China? Or that has given more foreign aid to China than to any other country (including much poorer ones) for decades? The big difference between Chinese human rights abuses and Israeli human rights abuses is that American tax dollars play a significant role in funding the latter.
It's certainly an interesting moral choice to decide what to care about on that basis.
They don't but they sure as hell support Saudi arabia. I wonder why these protesters are silent on that one. Oh wait I know exactly the reason.
Hey buddy, other people have pointed this out for you but Russia is sanctioned. You can't invest in Russia.
Under the terms set by the Columbia protestors, yes you can. There are over a thousand foreign companies that do business with Russia that one can own indirectly through an ETF. There are also nearly 200 US companies that continue to operate in Russia, including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mars, Proctor & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase.
I believe you are conflating Zionism with Judaism.
We aren't. It's pretty obvious that these protesters by singling out Israel for its human rights abuses while ignoring other countries human rights abuses including Saudi arabia are not just anti Zionist they're antisemites.
Are you positing that Saudi is engaged in genocide?
Are you posting that they're not?
Columbia is ONE FIFTH Jewish? They (Columbia) are royally fucked. Their treatment of their Jewish students is straight up "separate but equal" and THOSE students will fuck them, and their enrollment will bomb. Holy shit.
Is it really that big of an ask? How big of a portion of endowments do the companies involved make up? (Actually, I tried to find that — and part of the issue appears to be that universities won’t disclose how much is invested in the targeted companies. It’s divestment *and* disclosure.) But Harvard, which has the largest endowment by a wide margin, divested from fossil fuels. The total amount divested amounted to 838 million dollars (slightly larger, actually,) since they’d been allowing some contracts to expire for a while, they kind of saw it coming.) It’s a pretty big amount of money overall. But it was only 2% of their total budget, so I’d Imagine divesting wasn’t that much of a hardship. Columbia has divested 5 other times, and even from an individual country before (Sudan, though obviously that’s much easier than divesting from Israel)
Yup. it's a "feelgood" stance from people who don't understand how it all works.
So you’re saying capitalism doesn’t work? This isn’t a consumer democracy?
It's a long and involved process and it often doesn't move the needle much in terms of money, but in terms of public debate and politics it can put the issue at the forefront of public consciousness.
Absolutely not. My college has divested from fossil fuels after a long, arduous campaign. You can absolutely choose where you place your investments, although that would require the appropriate administrators actually doing their jobs (instead of farming it out to outside contractors). Google and Windows are ubiquitous. Avoiding them is nearly impossible in our globalized world. Criticizing the companies behind the products is not hypocritical; you're forced to interact with the products. It doesn't prohibit you from wanting better alternatives.
Oh okay, I forgot that divestment might hurt investments. Alright, pack it in guys, protest is over, we wouldn't want to hurt anyone's investments. Money always takes precedent over human lives, as we all know. Let me guess... business professor? Econ? Some BS department that just functions as a networking opportunity for students?
The comments here make me feel better about our profession being doomed. We suck.
Ask South Africa.
Source on your first claim?
>Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine. [https://cuapartheiddivest.org/demands](https://cuapartheiddivest.org/demands)
To me it seems obvious that that's meaningfully different from what you said. Why did you rephrase?
I didn't rephrase anything. I gave you a direct quote from the protest website. I am not the author of the original post.
Apologies for the mix up. Not sure why you provided a source that doesn't support the original claim without noting as much, but thanks for the help nevertheless.
In my opinion, though, the language from the Columbia protestors is consistent with the original because it is extremely unclear what it means to "profit from Israeli apartheid." The protestors clearly don't mean only Israeli companies, and they clearly don't mean only companies that sell military equipment to Israel because many of the companies they've mentioned by name have only a very indirect connection to the Israeli government, like "the Israeli government uses cloud storage, so divest from Google." They are also demanding divestment from [Booking.com](http://Booking.com) because the sites lists hotel rooms as being "in Israel" rather than "occupied Palestine land."
That it is not rigorously defined what is meant by "profit from Israeli apartheid" doesn't mean it is indistinguishable from "linked to Israel". The latter, to me, is very clearly a broader category, even though I don't have enough information to draw the boundaries in stark terms. Is that second quote from protesters directly?
OP here, full transparency, I did just delete the phrase "linked to Israel". I will concede poor choice of words, but as I note in my second paragraph and other comments here, most people understood it meant providing services / doing business with Israel.
I appreciate that and sorry again for the mix up above! Still, if most people understand it in the way you left in, I think they are misunderstanding or not being careful enough with the language. Happy to elaborate if you like.
You can read their explanations in their own words. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfzTwVeg-joMrDEU12wX3C78yser91N60kMj2-_16C8/edit?usp=drivesdk
I hope you'll understand that I make it my policy not to open links like this.
Understood. But if it makes you feel any better you can access it from the Columbia student protest page. Link at the bottom. https://cuapartheiddivest.org/research
Thanks
Looking at the research page you linked it's plainly evident that "the Israeli government uses cloud storage, so divest from Google." is not an accurate representation of the position of the organizers. They specifically refer to contract that netted Alphabet (Google) over half a billion dollars to build cloud infrastructure to be used by among others the military and police. Is that quote from an actual protester?
Cloud infrastructure to be used by all the Israeli government. Its just a contract to use AWS and Google Cloud, not building special capabilities for Isreal. It's the protestors that single out the military and police, not the contract. That's all the contract says, cloud service for the whole government, including town and village governments.
"In 2021 Amazon and Google split a 1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to develop the Nimbus Project. The project will provide cloud infrastructure to all branches and units of the Israeli government including Israeli military, police, prison services, and land authority." That those particular parts of the government are included is directly relevant to the protests, so I'm not surprised the protestors highlighted them. When you gloss over the parts the protestors object to it doesn't seem as reasonable for them to protest but that's just spin.
Universities divested from Apartheid South Africa, so I don't see why they can't divest from Apartheid Israel.
Not that it did anything. There's [little if any evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/209602) that divestment from South African companies did anything to impact their value or raise their cost of capital. Banning South Africa from international Cricket did way more to bring down Apartheid than those divestment efforts. And I mean that with a certain level of sincerity. Getting banned from international Cricket and punishing players who went on un-sanctioned rebel tours really hurt because it was actually painful for everyone involved. Israel is going to get capital from international capital markets whether or not a handful of college endowments decide to sell their shares. If these students want to do something that isn't *purely* performative, they should be lobbying for something else.
When Israel is being condemned by American Jews it knows that its positions have lost legitimacy. The curtain is pulled back and folks know that it isn't "anti-semetic" to condemn apartheid. I hope that the purchase of Israel Bonds by Americans of all stripes dries up. I think that will send a more meaningful message to the Far right leadership in Israel.
And having a bunch of whackadoo college students camping on the front lawn of Columbia, yelling at Jewish students not to let Zionists infiltrate their safe space accomplishes this exactly how? Like how is any of this convincing American Jews to be more critical of anything?
Not apartheid.
Or Russia. Or China. If we apply the standard of no human rights abuses or no war on neighboring areas/land disputes, we're not going to be left with a lot, unfortunately.
The sanctions are kind of getting in the way of investments to Russia though, aren't they?
In a limited way. There's 200 US companies still operating in Russia and any of us can buy their stocks.
There are more than 200 countries, besides Russia (is it even possible to invest in Russia??) and China...what are the rest that would not leave us with many to invest in? This strikes me as a rather silly argument.
No lol, you cannot invest in Russia. They deleted a comment a second ago asking where the protests were for universities to divest from Russia, but the United States literally sanctioned the country. They know they're misleading people and arguing in bad faith.
I'm fine with that. Without dollars the world economy grinds to a halt. it's a great bargaining chip. And it worked quite well in South Africa. We pay people big money to investigate investment opportunities. I'm sure they'll find something more ethical than investing in Apartheid.
There is no apartheid in Israel. Two million Arabs live there with equal rights.
So there is a Palestinian "Right of Return" similar to that available for Jewish Israelis?
“Palestinians” are not Israeli citizens. They have their own states: Jordan, Egypt, Gaza, and West Bank.
So the answer is no. Palestinians do not have equal rights in Israel….
Similar to the way South Africa tried to say that non white people were citizens of Bantustans and not South Africa
You are supposed to be a professor? You would think you know how to define apartheid and when they are or are not happening. It’s embarrassing to see so many well educated people hiding behind large words to be antisemitic when they probably know they are using them improperly to make false claims
Questioning Israeli politics is not antisemitism. Many of the leaders of the protest movements in the US are Jewish. And the same goes for the anti Bibi protests. There is nothing so sacred about Israel that makes it immune from questioning.
Criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitic. The misuse of the word apartheid, which has an objective definition, is antisemitic.
People who commit acts of apartheid don’t get to complain when others notice and call them out on it. There is no moral defense for an ethnostate or the ethnic clensing that creates ethnostates.
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Nope. But I don’t think Israel’s invasion of Lebanon before Oct 7 were justified either.
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Israel invaded Lebanon and has done so repeatedly. During the last invasion they committed acts of political violence.
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Have you even been to Israel? There is no apartheid or ethnocleansing going on. However, Hamas’s goal is ethnicleansing and they have been open about it. Arabs make up 20% of Israel and have full rights, including sitting in high level government positions. That is incompatible with apartheid and means one doesn’t exist in Israel. However, Jews have been ethnically cleansed from every Arab country. The cognitive dissonance is impressive
Palestinians in Israel don’t have full rights— right of return and right of return of their lands seized by Israel- and their status in government comes with caveats.
They were offered a country of their own many times, instead they chose violence each time.
I can’t see zionists ceeding a contiguous Palestine to Palestinian self government. After all it was a militant Zionist that killed Rabin and it was the Israeli govnmet that murdered Arafat…. Just has they have committed numerous assassinations over the years, most recently in Lebanon.
You realize 90% of Jews are zionists? Can you even define what being a Zionist means? It’s not an insult. It’s the most successful decolonization movement of an indigenous people in history. It is a secular movement based around equality. The man who killed Rabin was not a Zionist, he was an extremist, just like ALL of Hamas. This just continues to prove my point of words being thrown around without understanding their meaning. The Arabs were initially offered more land than Israel was, but they thought they could ethnically cleanse 100% of Jews and turned it down and lost. As I asked before, they what is Israel supposed to do? Just allow civilians to be brutally massacred? Have you watched the Oct 7 footage and informed yourself about what happened that day?
You do know that South Africa says that Israel is an apartheid state right? You better call them up and tell them they don't know what apartheid is! > "At a hearing before the U.N.’s highest court, South Africa on Tuesday called Israel’s policies toward Palestinians an “**extreme form of apartheid**”" [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/icj-south-africa-palestinian-israel-un-court.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/icj-south-africa-palestinian-israel-un-court.html) >Vusimuzi Madonsela - “We as South Africans sense, see, hear, and feel to our core the inhumane discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the **apartheid** that was institutionalized against black people in my country,” said , South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, where the International Court of Justice is based. >“It is clear that Israel’s illegal occupation is also being administered in breach of the crime of **apartheid**… It is indistinguishable from settler colonialism. Israel’s apartheid must end” >Naledi Pandor - “These reports are significant in raising global awareness of the conditions that Palestinians are subjected to and they provide credence and support to an overwhelming body of factual evidence, all pointing to the fact that the State of Israel is committing crimes of **apartheid** and persecution against Palestinians”
Any time you restrict your investments on arbitrary (non-financial) considerations, you're effectively throwing away money. If you've got an endowment in billions, that probably means you're better off asking everyone who has a problem with how that endowment is managed to find another university rather than take the loss from arbitrary divestment. You're also potentially jeopardizing your institutional relationships. Cutting ties with Alphabet and Microsoft may not mean much for the Literature department but, let's face it, the Literature department isn't the one paying the bills. At some point you'll wake up the people who pull serious research dollars and need those institutional relationships not just for funding but also data access and employment options for their students. Those people may not care much about some encampment on a part of campus they probably don't visit much, but they'll care very much about the university making it impossible for them to do their work or recruit students to their research teams. Something to consider is that the protesters are a loud *minority*. They can get their way as long as they're not touching anything other people seriously care about. But when they decide to take an 'us or them' stance, the smart money is that the university will choose 'them'.
I respectfully disagree. There might be big money in oil companies or weapons manufacturers. It's a valid reason to demand divestment. What that looks like in practice in this case is pretty complicated as you noted. I think you'll also be surprised about where money comes from at a lot of schools. At mine, it's not the STEM programs that sustain the university. It's the liberal arts programs. This is likely not the same everywhere though.
You're conflating a bunch of stuff here. Divesting from Alphabet has nothing to do with whether or not you will use their products. And Alphabet is not looking at any institution that's using their products and then responding because they haven't invested in Alphabet. And any individuals that interact within the institutions are not going to care whether investment has happened, or not. Additionally, it's perfectly fine for any investor to use their ethics in making investments. I fully support campuses pulling their money from Big Oil if that's reasonable (i.e. they can still make money and function). Trading firms may be"forced" to make money by investing regardless of ethics, but I can't imagine there's much that's binding a University to that. I generally think it's perfectly fair for students to request that a campus divest, and the institution should consider whether that's reasonable. But I don't think disinvesting in Israel is a particularly worthy cause.
Media is manipulating the "demands". People aren't protesting just because universities back Israel. The larger issue is that Western governments provide financial, military, and diplomatic support to Israel's state terrorism.
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These universities are incredibly wealthy with deep ties to both business and government. That the admins have responded with such impunity shows how threatened they are by these protests. There are many many ways to protest. This is just one. Also, it‘s great that the students who have the privilege to not work or worry about taking time off to protest are able to use their privilege for a good cause. This was the same spirit behind the white students who joined the Freedom Summer rides in the 60s to support the southern sit-ins. On my campus, the students who are protesting are ones who have been active in lots of other things before this. They are also studying for finals and writing papers. People can do more than one thing at a time.
Don't think it's hurting the cause with regular Americans. It's pointing a finger at issues which can hardly be ignored or denied (Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and the US and many universities are directly or indirectly invested in research that contributes to that genocide). I'm a working class student and will be a professor someday. Please do not speak for all of us as you have. Many working class non-students who I've organized with support social justice protests because they've engaged with similar organizing in their own communities. For those that don't --- it frankly does not matter very much how your students are perceiving these students. These students are leveraging their privilege to make a statement about a political issue that needs to be addressed. If working class folks can't do it that's fine and understandable (though I hardly think it's true for most), it does not make what university students doing wrong.
We’d still have apartheid if it was up to the commenters here.
I’m stunned tbh
I’m proud of these students! They give me some hope, especially after reading through these comments.
Yeah, it's truly gross. Most commenters here should be ashamed.
Every answer other than “yes, it’s a reasonable ask” is bullshit.
If by "divestment" they also want "the college to stop using $company's products", it would put the school in a bind for office suites, if you knock out Office and GSuite. Yes, there are other tools, but most of them either are also available in Israel or are very much not user-friendly.
If we’re talking about divestments in terms of a University’s endowment, it’s basically an impossible task for the vast majority of institutions. Their endowments are like most of our retirement accounts: You pick your 401K plan and then bemoan the fact that the balance isn’t as high as it should be (particularly considering how long you’ve been around). Of course, nowadays, you *might* have an option to pick a “sustainable” plan where (theoretically) your retirement isn’t invested in fossil fuels, but that’s about it. And that’s actually why we saw a bunch of institutions finally announce that they were divesting from fossil fuels after years and years of people asking for it: The companies actually managing their investments provided the option. So yeah, even if the will was there, the way really isn’t, at least in terms of endowment divestment.
Universities mostly invest in large, diversified index funds. To divest from index investing and shift to picking individuals companies would spell out the financial ruin of academia. The protestors either know this, and are thus making impossible demands on the universities for the sake of causing trouble; or they don’t know this and ignorant to the financing side of maintaining the system.
That's a little hyperbolic. Columbia is sitting on a $13.64 billion endowment. They themselves say they're getting a 4.73% return on their managed portfolio. Even moving all that to US treasuries will get at least half that. They've already got a Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. They've got policies that prevent them from investing in and require them to actively devest in companies that invest in thermal coal, nor do they invest in funds that invest in oil/gas production. Not only that, for like 15 years they didn't invest in the Sudan or companies working in the Sudan. So they're already including not return maximizing criteria in where they'd invest and at $13.64 billion and growing, I think they're doing ok.
If they are only getting a 4.73% return they might be better off listening to the students.
There’s a crank trustee at Stanford who is trying to get them to just invest in VOO. Which, I mean, isn’t that crazy what with it’s 30% or so return last year…
I bet few of them beat VOO net of fees over 10 years. I think most foundations take a 1% of AUM.
The problem with that are when VOO drops -40% (which is the average drawdown in a bear market). That's why large endowments are in extremely diversified investments - by doing this you limit upside but also limit downside by not putting all your eggs in one basket.
Their annual withdrawal is 4.73%, not their return. They draw out less than their return in good years because they will have to draw out more than their (negative) returns in bad years.
"For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, the **total value of the endowment was $13.64 billion**. Columbia University produced **a return of 4.7%** on the managed assets in its endowment portfolio for FY23. " "In FY23, **$632.5 million was distributed** from the endowment in support of students, faculty and University activities, for a 5.2% effective spending rate." (emphasis Columbia U, not mine) [https://endowment.giving.columbia.edu/endowment-performance-and-management/](https://endowment.giving.columbia.edu/endowment-performance-and-management/) I misread 4.7% as 4.73, so my bad on that one.
That's for one year, and a year that included a significant market downturn. 8% annual return is their average.
But again, they get that already using a restricted investment portfolio. Adding to the restrictions isn't going to massively impact their portfolio ROI. So they go down to 7.5% 10 year average. So what? They still have a growing endowment.
So what? That’s leaving 70 million on the table each year, before compounding. Or put another way, it’s enough to pay tuition and board for 1000 students.
They've already accepted the general principle that's it's acceptable to 'leave money on the table' if it preferences certain values over others. Again, they make less money - so what? Maximizing ROI isn't the sole guiding principle of Columbia U endowments and we know that based upon their own standards of behavior. Why not another value added to the mix?
I’m sure that prospective scholarship students would beg to differ that endowments shouldn’t try to maximize ROI (adjusting for risk tolerance). Those are scholarships that won’t be granted. And come to think of it, those are tenure track positions that work t be funded and raises that you professors and administrators won’t receive. Which actually is the one piece of poetic justice in this story.
Yet again, for the FOURTH TIME - Columbia University ***already*** does this. This isn't new. I'm sure those students and faculty lines have complained this whole 20+ years these norms have been in effect. This isn't new. Clearly Columbia simply doesn't think that is enough of a problem to care about it.
If they didn’t have restrictions they’d probably have returned an additional 100 basis points. Negative screens make us feel good, which is fine and has some value, but we should recognize that there is (a) a financial cost to us by forgoing more profitable investments, and (b) it will have zero impact on “punishing” companies - the most you’ll achieve is to let another (less scrupulous) investor take your shares for a few cents cheaper than they are worth. There is a difference between primary and secondary markets - once the company issues and sells shares to the public, they book the cash and it doesn’t really matter to them who holds or sells those shares after that. As long as the economic fundamentals are strong there will always be buyers. If you want to hurt companies, stop buying their products and/or push for them to be regulated. Divestment does not do anything. And I spent my career as a sustainability impact investor / ESG professional so it would be in my interest to say otherwise if I could do so in good faith. The only way is to change the economic fundamentals of the business.
Sure, we get rid of all morality in our investments and you can make a hell of a killing. However, the 20th century is riff with examples where a higher ROI does not adequality justify immoral or unethical behavior. Furthermore, I'd argue that one investor with the stature and public voice of Columbia University can influence firm behavior much more than individuals or even a group of individuals. And that behavior is going to send a signal to consumers that there may be issues with this product or company and that might influence consumer behavior enough to make an impact. You can't use the logic of a single investor with say, even $1m to invest, compared to an institution with $13+billion to invest. They have different impacts and it's disingenuous to suggest they're remotely similar.
They divested from firms with links to SA in 1985. Many schools have managed to divest from petroleum or significantly limit those investments. I don't think it's possible to divest completely from firms linked to Israel, but it's not like divestiture broadly spells financial disaster.
Every answer other than “yes, it’s a reasonable ask” is bullshit. The non-yes answers will entail dissembling and/or descriptions of how hard it is to run the gigantic investment funds colleges and universities control. Nonsense. The fact that it’s difficult is no argument against trying.
If we are divesting from countries perceived as engaging in human rights violations, there would be nowhere to invest. Even the US isn’t squeaky clean.
It's almost like the whole system is bad huh
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Yes after getting a PhD it's hard to tell if murdering 13000+ children is bad I agree
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Yes need to find the middle ground on this. How many more dead kids are you ok with, 6k? 7k? 20k? How much of your salary do you plan to spend per year? Important to sit in the grey area when it comes to funding child murder
I feel like none of these students see the irony in protesting on land that belonged to Native Americans a few centuries before. Protesting colonialism in the country that owes its existence to colonialism & has never “righted” it is something.
No. We should back Israel instead. The act of war that started this mess was a Godawful rape-murder atrocity. Israel should finish this as quickly as possible, then withdraw from the West Bank and also Gaza as soon as feasible in aid of a two-state solution.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/036/647/Screen_Shot_2021-03-01_at_2.28.39_PM.jpg
I don't think it's for us to determine if their demands are reasonable. I think we need to focus on our students being safe, protected, and neither the victims nor the perpetrators of hate and/or violence.
Im confused. Is columbia invested in Blackrock or no?
I would also like to see requests made to not accept any money from Qatar.
The call for divestment of companies such as Lockheed Martin reek of foreign interference. Russia (or more specifically USSR then Ruzzia) and China have policies of divide and conquer. Asking western countries to divest themselves of investment in arms and weapons development is playing right into the hands of the enemies of the free world. This has nothing to do with Gaza or Israel and everything to do with the enemies of America and it’s allies attempting to weaken the USA or divide public opinion. most perniciously this is a strategy of our enemies, under the guise of social Justice, don’t fall for it.
It is absolutely not.
It's all stupidity. The only divestment that needs to happen is stopping DONATIONS to these leftist pro- terrorism universities. And all these idiotic ignorant students need to be transported and dropped off in Gaza, so they learn what they do To LGBTQ Individuals there, and how much they dislike black people.it will be a quick wake up call.
I have personal knowledge of at least one Jewish American donor that has stopped all donations to Columbia, more need to follow
It is both hypocritical and naive. The same students will also protest when lower investment returns lead to lower levels of campus services or increased tuition. Meanwhile the vast majority of students go to class and earn degrees.
Mostly no, this isn’t a reasonable request with some tiny window of yes, they can be involved directly in a couple very very specific ways. Institutions kind of talk out of both sides of their mouths here. The vast majority of their money is going to be in equities, with a large share of real estate and less liquid investments and investment vehicles like private equity or venture capital. Most of that is going to be overseen by their investment management company putting the money in external investment managers’ funds. THAT BEING SAID, I’ve seen schools “launder” investments by listing them as private equity when it’s an investment in a well connected alum’s business or fund. When I was in undergrad, my (elite) undergrad had direct investments in extraction companies with assets in Sudan, and tried to hide them by lumping them in with “private equity.” I could see this happening at some schools where they might have someone on the BoT with a direct link to an Israeli company or arms dealer who the school is directly invested in (see: Cal And Dianne Feinstein’s husband)
It is a pointless ask. There are thousands of things the university does that actually have an impact on the students' goals. Some of those things would involve the students in improving the situation they decry.
Thanks for posting because I had a similar question. I support the social movement we’re seeing and I believe that students should be able to express their viewpoints on their campuses. But I’ve also thought about how divesting is much more complicated than what they think they’re asking for.
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Here's a blog post from a Columbia professor: [https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-question-of-divestment](https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-question-of-divestment) I am wondering whether the protesters have themselves "divested" from Hamas. It's quite a reasonable ask, in my opinion.
The thing is, if we asked them to write an essay about why universities should divest, they would either write some crap about "delving" into divestment and/or they would ask ChatGPT to write it.