After months of protests and pressure, Brown University's governing body announced Wednesday that its governing body voted to reject a student proposal to disinvest from companies with ties to Israel. The vote is considered a defining event in the academic arena in the U.S. against the backdrop of pro-Palestinian campaigns that have spread on campuses throughout the country.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, pro-Palestinian student movements have demanded that universities across the U.S. disinvest from Israel or financially disassociate themselves from entities that have ties to Israeli defense industries.
These efforts have only rarely been successful, but the decision by the prestigious university in Rhode Island to even consider the proposal caused great concern in the U.S. Jewish community. Brown agreed to the move as part of an agreement to evacuate the protest camp set up by the students in April in the center of the campus. As part of the negotiations, the protesters promised to dismantle the encampment In exchange for a board of directors examination of the demand to stop investing in certain companies.
The decision led to the publicized resignation of hedge fund manager and trustee Jewish billionaire Joseph Edelman.
At the end of the vote that was held Wednesday night, university President Christina H. Paxson, and Chancellor Brian T. Moynihan, announced that the board rejected the proposal because "Brown has no direct investments in any of the companies targeted for divestment and that any indirect exposure for Brown in these companies is so small that it could not be directly responsible for social harm."
Among the companies targeted in the proposal were Boeing, General Electric, Motorola, Volvo and Airbus.
Brown’s mission doesn’t encompass resolving or adjudicating global conflict,” they wrote. “Our greatest contribution to the cause of peace for which so many members of the community have advocated is to continue to educate future leaders and produce scholarship that informs and supports their work. A decision to divest would greatly jeopardize our ability to continue to make this contribution. If the Corporation were to divest, 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. This would be wholly inconsistent with the principles of academic freedom and free inquiry, and would undermine our mission of serving the community, the nation and the world.”
Those around her justified the vote as an attempt to prevent the many conflicts recorded at other academic institutions, such as Columbia University and UCLA, where mass fights broke out between police and protesters, dozens of which were arrested. At Brown, on the other hand, one of the first pro-Palestinian protest centers in the U.S., relative quiet was maintained on campus.
The student organization "Brown Divest", which demanded the vote, described Wednesday night's decision as a moral failure of the university and said that the board "chose to remain complicit in genocide."
'It's a shame that the vote even took place'
Unlike past protests, the proposal to diest did not deal with cultural or academic isolation of Israel, but with giving instructions to the university to stop investing in 10 companies linked to the "Palestinian occupation." Among the arguments put forward by the opponents of the proposal was that it is a double standard, and that these measures endanger freedom of expression on campus.
Professor Hedy Wald,, a family medicine specialist at the Brown Faculty of Medicine, and one of the leaders of the fight against the vote, told Ynet that the board's decision is a victory for values and justice. "It's a shame that, due to the lack of a moral leadership example, this vote was even held in the first place," she said. "Kudos to the Students for Israel And to the Jewish Brown graduates for the great efforts they have invested during the last period. Calls to remove investments from military equipment manufacturers that contribute to Israel's ability to defend itself are antisemitic. In this spirit, there is no social harm in investing in companies related to Israel when it must defend itself against the annihilation intentions of terrorists."
Paxson and Moynihan called on the campus community to maintain respectful discourse even in times of disagreement, and emphasized that Brown continues to be an institution committed to academic freedom and freedom of opinion.
Unlike Brown, there are several institutions that have agreed to protesters' demands. San Francisco State (SFSU) earlier this month removed investments from three defense companies - Lockheed Martin, Leonardo, and Planetary Technologies, as well as Caterpillar, which do business with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. According to the institution's statement, the university's investment portfolio, estimated at $163 million, was updated "to conform to new human rights standards proposed by a working group of students and administrative staff." Pro-Palestinian organizations saw the unprecedented decision as a great victory. The revised policy will have a final approved in December, but its implementation has already begun in practice.
Before that, in May, the Columbia University Theological Seminary (UTS) announced the withdrawal of all its investments in Israel, in accordance with the demands of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus.
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