Julia Pekala
Over the last few weeks, students across the United States have made encampments, occupied buildings, and led protests to push colleges and universities to disclose and divest from their endowments from companies that benefit from the Israel-Hamas war. These protests are not the first time protestors have asked colleges to cut financial ties with certain corporations. Over the last decade, protestors have tried to stop universities from holding relations with fossil fuel producers, tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers, and prison firms. These past calls have often been done in cooperation with students in the Divestment and Sanctions movement, which wants to cut ties with Israel and companies that support it. Recently, some protests have successfully received information on how much university endowment money is being invested into these companies. For example, the University of Minnesota revealed that $5 million of its $2.27 billion endowment investments are tied to U.S. defense contractors or Israeli companies. For many, disclosure is only the first step, which hopefully will lead to divesting.
Endowment experts and Jewish leaders raise concerns, as they believe transparency has its pros and cons. Kevin Maloney, a former investment manager and current chair of the finance department at Bryant University in Rhode Island claims that “the broader trend towards transparency is probably healthy. In response to a very charged situation, [he] think[s] people get nervous about it. Once the information is there, what’s done with that information?” Maloney claims that the portfolio managers may not want to release any information or divest any endowments due to the risk of all the attention.
Additionally, most colleges have not made any changes, as they claim that their investments provide financial aid for future generations and should not be affected by politics. Officials at the University of Michigan claim that the lack of transparency around endowments “is to shield the endowment from political pressures and to base our investment decisions solely on financial factors such as risk and return.” Furthermore, there are many complexities around divestment, since many endowments are held in investment funds that are a bundle of several assets together. It can be tough to detect exactly where the money goes, and universities can not pick and choose from the fund’s investments.
Still, some schools are attempting to go the divesting route, while most are disclosing their financials. For example, the Union Theological Seminary in New York City has announced that they will attempt divestment. Other schools which have gone for the disclosure route are Northwestern University, University of California, and the University of Minnesota. Students at the University of Minneapolis, including Donia Abu, claim that “the companies that [they] are demanding the university divest from profit from genocide,” and that “these companies indiscriminately terrorize and massacre [his] people and communities.”