‘DIVEST’: College endowments turn into flash point of student protests

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Many student groups are pushing schools to exert financial pressure on Israel. Experts say that won’t be so easy.

A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. Early Tuesday, dozens of protesters took over Hamilton Hall, locking arms and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building. Columbia responded by restricting access to campus.

The signs and rallying cries calling for universities to “divest” are taking a few forms. At Yale, for example, student groups are urging divestment from military weapons manufacturers that aid Israel’s offensive. Columbia students have focused on companies such as Google, which has a cloud computing deal with the government of Israel, among other countries, including the United States.

“In practical terms, could they do it? It would be really hard because of the ways they invest,” said Sandy Baum, an expert on education finance at the Urban Institute. “It’s not like they’re buying 50 individual stocks, which is maybe the vision people have.” For decades, university endowments drew little outside interest or attention, and often stuck to a fairly conventional approach to holding stocks and bonds. But that changed significantly when Yale forged a new model in the 1980s and 1990s under the now-famous directioninvest large portions of their endowments in private equity and hedge funds.

Eaton said schools often don’t suffer material financial losses from those sales. That, he argues, shows there are ways for schools to grow their endowments in ways that also align with their values. Israel’s economy has slumped since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault and the invasion of Gaza that followed, as thousands of workers have been called to military service, government defense spending has soared, and many industries have been disrupted by rocket fire along the country’s borders. But Bahar doubted today’s campus movement

 

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