Brown University Rejects Student-Led Israel Divestment Proposal

Brown University will not divest from companies with ties to Israel after the school’s highest governing body, the Corporation, voted against the student-led proposal on Tuesday. “The Corporation is stating its clear position opposing divestment, and accordingly, the University will not divest,” Brown’s chancellor, Brian Moynihan, and president, Christina Paxson, wrote in a school-wide email sent out on Wednesday. The decision follows the recommendation made last week by Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management, which voted 8-2 against endorsing divestment. If the measure had passed, the university would have had to dispose of its investments in Textron, Safariland, Volvo Group, Airbus, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola, and RTX Corporation because the companies do business with Israel. The committee, the chancellor and president wrote, found that Brown’s exposure to the ten companies identified in the divestment proposal “is so small that it could not be directly responsible for social harm.” According to analysis conducted by the committee, Brown’s investment in the ten companies represents only 0.009 percent of their “aggregate market value” as of June 2023. Further, the Corporation’s decision reflects the view that divestment would “greatly jeopardize” the university’s ability to “educate future leaders and produce scholarship” and contradict its principles of academic freedom, the university leaders wrote. If the Corporation chose to divest, they added, “it would signal to our students and scholars that there are ‘approved’ points of view to which members of the community are expected to conform.” Last spring, Ms. Paxson agreed to place the divestment proposal, known as Brown Divest Now, to a vote, as part of an arrangement with anti-Israel encampment organizers. In turn, the student protesters agreed to clear out their encampment on the university’s Main Green and not stage protests through commencement. The Corporation is run by 12 Fellows and 42 Trustees. The advisory committee consists of current and former students, faculty, and staff and is meant to consider “how ethical and moral standards are applied across all of Brown’s business and investment practices in a manner consistent with the University’s mission and values.”The decision comes as universities across the country have faced mounting pressure to reassess their policies on divestment at the demand of anti-Israel protesters who took hold of college campuses after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7. Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization which is currently facing a lawsuit for allegedly acting as the American campus arm of Hamas, was the group championing the divestment proposal at Brown. The organization used October 7 to reignite efforts to pressure universities to divest from Israel. The fact that the administration chose to hold a vote on the matter was controversial enough that one trustee, a prominent New York hedge fund manager, Joseph Edelman, resigned from his post, slamming the upcoming vote as “morally reprehensible.” His resignation letter, which he published in the Wall Street Journal, criticized the administration for choosing to “lend credence” to “antisemitic voices” and choosing to “reward, rather than punish, the activists for disrupting campus life, breaking school rules, and promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown.” The university faced further challenge when, in the weeks leading up to the vote, two dozen attorneys general issued a letter warning the administration that Brown would be subject to anti-boycott, divestment, and sanction laws in numerous states, should it choose to move forward with the proposal. “If adopted, the Brown Divest Now proposal will have immediate and profound legal consequences for Brown, its employees, and its student body because 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 coalition of attorneys general, headed by Arkansas’s attorney general, Tim Griffin, wrote in a letter issued at the end of August.

Brown University Rejects Student-Led Israel Divestment Proposal

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