Anti-Israel activist groups plan to pressure Brown University to divest from companies they accuse of being “complicit in human rights violations” against Palestinians.
Far-left student activists are calling on the university’s board of trustees, chaired by Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, to cut ties with companies they say are “profiting from the carnage in Gaza.”
Students want Brown’s $6 billion endowment to divest from positions at as many as 10 companies, including Airbus, Volvo and Boeing, and to end the university’s alleged “complicity in the oppression of Palestinians.”
They also call for comprehensive vetting procedures for future investments.
“The issue of divestment has brought strong and contrasting views to the fore, and the vote this fall will provide a clear answer to an issue that is of continuing concern to many members of our community,” Brown University spokesman Brian Clark said. “We cannot speculate on the outcome.”
The Washington Post also reached out to Jane Dietze, Brown’s chief investment officer, who has helped increase the fund’s value by 70% since taking the job in 2018.
The Brown University Divestment Coalition reached an agreement with university officials to hold a vote this October in return for an end to months of pro-Hamas protests that have gripped the Rhode Island campus.
The agreement infuriated billionaire real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht, who suspended his donations to his alma mater.
“If the vote fails, students will denounce the pressure on alumni and the board of trustees,” Sternlicht told Bloomberg. “And if the vote succeeds, it will create a huge inequity.”
The CEO of Starwood Capital Group, whose father fled Poland before the Holocaust, blasted Brown University President Christina Paxton for pulling out, calling the protesters “ignorant.”
“It will set off a chain reaction,” Arman Deander, a spokesman for the Brown University Divestment Coalition, told Bloomberg. “Divestment from Brown, a highly influential private Ivy League university, will set a societal precedent.”
Rhode Island’s 2016 anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) law does not apply to private institutions such as Brown University.
In an interview on the school’s website, Dietze said that “Brown invests only 4 percent of the endowment directly,” with the rest being managed by third-party managers such as hedge funds and private equity firms.
Anti-Israel protesters say the Ivy League university should emulate South Africa’s approach to the apartheid regime in the 1980s.
“Given today’s realities, it is not possible to carry out divestment in the way that Brown did in South Africa,” she said.
“In the 1980s, endowment funds typically owned shares directly, so if they wanted to sell their Coca-Cola shares, for example, to convey their wish for Coca-Cola to cease operations in South Africa, it was a simple process.
“Funds today overwhelmingly invest through external managers,” Dietze added.
The complexities of modern endowment investments mean Brown won’t be able to withdraw cash from any particular fund for several years.
Endowments are also an important source of funding for major universities, helping to fund university programs and scholarships.
Since the Oct. 7 massacre, protests have taken place at other top universities across the US, with pro-Palestinian activists pressuring university leadership to sever all ties with Israel.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz McGill and Harvard President Claudine Gay were forced to resign after giving distressing testimony before Congress in December in which they refused to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ rules.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, a non-elected member of the British House of Lords, resigned about two weeks ago following criticism over his handling of campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Shafik, who cited the impact the campus unrest had on his family, has landed a job advising British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on international development.
