Is Divestment a Reasonable Ask for Campus Protests?

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.

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.

Targeted divestment is, to one degree or another, illegal in 38 states. (Including New York, see links.)

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 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.

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

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'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?

Ask South Africa.

Source on your first claim?

Universities divested from Apartheid South Africa, so I don't see why they can't divest from Apartheid Israel.

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'.

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.

We’d still have apartheid if it was up to the commenters here.

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.

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.

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.

Here's a blog post from a Columbia professor: 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.