US Universities Say ‘No’ to BDS

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Chapman University trustee: ‘We have a fiduciary responsibility to preserve and grow the endowment, which directly supports the mission of the university.’

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

American universities are largely rejecting demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering further blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement, which students and faculty pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations to coerce officials into enacting the policy.

“We have a fiduciary responsibility to preserve and grow the endowment, which directly supports the mission of the university,” Chapman University trustee Jim Burra said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “It is important that we make financial decisions based on risk and return.”

Late last month, the University of Minnesota provided similar reasons for not divesting from Israel, citing “fiduciary duty” and the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes the campus community. However, the university adopted a new policy for its investments, a so-called “position of neutrality” which insulates official business from the daily caprices of political opinion.

“For the past several months, we have sought expert analysis and a variety of perspectives on how the university invests its Consolidated Endowment Fund,” Board of Regents chair Janie Mayeron said in a statement. “We have reviewed how this fund operates, how it supports affordable education for students, groundbreaking research, and community engagement, and the possible financial challenges of divestment … In the end, it is clear our community is divided on the topic. After careful consideration of all this input, we believe today’s action honors our fiduciary duty and the long term needs of the university.”

Several weeks earlier, Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees voted against divestment after reviewing a proposal submitted by “Students for a Free Palestine,” a spin-off of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations.

“Accepting this proposal could substantially limit our ability to deliver on Oberlin’s mission, namely, by reducing our financial resources and restricting critical discourse, as described below,” the college said in a statement. “The burden it would impose on Oberlin could be substantial and out of proportion with the direct and indirect impact of divesting.”

Oberlin also explained that divestment would undermine its mission to create a space in which students “express contested views,” adding that adopting the divestment proposal “would be taking a clear institutional stand on one side of a fraught and contested issue that divides the Oberlin community.” It continued, “The board believes that doing so could constrain critical thinking, discourse, and debate on the subject, which would jeopardize the college’s mission.”

These colleges and universities are not the first to reject divestment from Israel, a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate the Jewish state from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.

Williams College’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) rejected a proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers that sell their products to Israel in May, handing an early and substantial loss to the anti-Zionist movement in the final days of an academic year convulsed by pro-Hamas demonstrations. In addition to ruling out divestment as a possibility, ASCR declined to make itself a permanent standing committee or to recommend adopting controversial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles which have been pushed by far-left groups aiming to use the market as an accelerator of social change.

ASCR cited a number of reasons why the move would be disadvantageous to the college, including that some of its funds are potentially “commingled.” Divesting from them, it explained, “could have a negative impact on investment performance out of proportion to the negligible impact on the targeted company.” It also said that the anti-Israel activists’ demands were “broad” and target companies such as Boeing, which “not only builds missiles, but also satellite systems and commercial aircraft.”

ASCR added that there is no “shared understanding” among scholars and experts, nor among its own community, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would make divestment from Israel as morally cogent as divesting from South Africa in the 1980s or, more recently, fossil fuels.

Some colleges have embraced divestment or other policies approximating it, Inside Higher Ed reported earlier this month, noting that California State University-Sacramento has said it will not invest in companies which “profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights,” an ambiguous turn of phrase that does not specifically mention Israel. Additionally, the outlet added, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York has committed to implementing “socially responsible investment screens” that prevent investments in companies “substantially and intractably benefiting from the war in Palestine.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Brown University’s Corporation of trustees will soon vote on a divestment proposal submitted by a group which calls itself the Brown Divest Coalition (BDC). According to The Brown Daily Herald, Brown president Christina Paxson initially only promised the protesters a meeting with members of the Brown Corporation, but the students pushed for more concessions and ultimately coaxed her into making divestment a real possibility. If it becomes university policy, Paxson will expose Brown to “immediate and profound legal consequences,” two dozen US attorneys general warned in a letter late last month.

“It may trigger the application of laws in nearly three-fourths of states prohibiting states and their instrumentalities from contracting with, investing in, or otherwise doing business with entities that discriminate against Israel, Israelis, or those who do business with either,” the missive, written principally by Arkansas state attorney Tim Griffin, explained. “Adopting that proposal may require our states — and others — to terminate any existing relationships with Brown and those associated with it, divest from any university debt held by state pension plans and other investment vehicles, and otherwise refrain from engaging with Brown and those associated with. We therefore urge you to reject this antisemitic and unlawful proposal.”

Thirty-five states in the US have anti-BDS laws on their books, including New York, Texas, Nevada, Illinois, and California. Tennessee passed one in April 2023, and in the same year, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) issued an executive order banning agencies from awarding contracts with companies participating in the BDS movement. The justice system has repeatedly upheld the legality of such measures. In February 2023, the US Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Arkansas’ anti-BDS law, which argued that requiring contractors to confirm that they are not boycotting Israel before doing business with the University of Arkansas is unconstitutional. Several months later, a federal appeals court dismissed a challenge to Texas’ anti-BDS law, ruling that the plaintiff who brought it lacked standing.