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What do pro-Palestinian protesters want on college campuses?
College campuses across America have been rocked by unrest that has resulted in clashes with police, closed classrooms and drawn national attention.
While much of the initial focus has been on antisemitic incidents and how university officials and police responded to the demonstrations, all of this raises a fundamental question: What exactly do pro-Palestinian protesters want?
The specific demands of the protesters varied somewhat from school to school but the main demand was for the university to divest itself of companies linked to Israel or businesses that profit from its war with Hamas. Universities have largely refused to budge on these requests, and experts say divestitures may not have a significant impact on the companies themselves.
Other common points include demanding that universities disclose their investments, severing academic ties with Israeli universities and supporting a cease-fire in Gaza.
“We’re not going anywhere until our demands are met,” Khymani James, a student at Columbia University, said during a news briefing Wednesday.
Protest movements at several universities also called on school officials to protect free speech and prevent students from being punished for participating in protests.
At the University of Southern California, where dozens of people were arrested on Wednesday, protesters demanded “full amnesty” for those arrested and “no policing on campus.”
At Princeton University, protesters demanded, among other things, that the Ivy League school end research on weapons of war “used to enable genocide,” according to flyers at a campus demonstration on Thursday.
Some requests are local.
At Columbia University, where the pro-Palestinian movement began last week, protesters demanded support for low-income Harlem residents, including housing and reparations, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student group responsible for organizing the encampment.
Columbia protesters also called on the university to “disclose and sever all ties” with the New York Police Department.
Students also called for an academic boycott of Israeli universities. For example, the Columbia protesters want the university to sever ties with the school center in Tel Aviv and the dual degree program with Tel Aviv University. New York University protesters used the school’s Tel Aviv center as a rallying point as well.
Is it possible to divest?
However, disposal was at the top of the list of demands from the protesters and the one they mentioned most often.
As Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed students in Columbia on Wednesday, students chanted: “Unleash, unleash, we will not stop we will not rest.”
Like most major universities, Columbia has a large endowment. It will be worth $13.6 billion, by mid-2023.
And there is a history of student activists targeting waqf during demonstrations. In the 1980s, students successfully persuaded Columbia to break away from apartheid South Africa.
Recently, Columbia and other universities have divested themselves of fossil fuels and private prisons.
Charlie Eaton, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced and author of “Bankers in the Ivory Tower,” said Columbia could “absolutely” make a choice to divest itself of Israel-related investments.
“It is not an unreasonable practice for schools to make decisions about how they invest based not only on maximizing return on investment, but also around the principle of equity and fairness in what they invest in,” he said.
But Mark Yudof, chairman of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes campus antisemitism, said it’s not an easy solution to implement.
“The truth is sometimes it’s hard to know who is doing business in Israel and what they have to do with the war,” Yudof said.
Yudof, the former president of the University of California, said he was not aware of a single university that had divested itself from Israel despite years of pressure to do so.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said.
‘Hostile and threatening’
However, no university has announced plans to divest from Israel-related investments and some experts say they would be very reluctant to accept this request.
“An important obstacle to divestment is that any university that supports divestment will send a clear signal that they will either: (a) acquiesce; or (b) supports the destruction of the State of Israel and its people,” said Jonathan Macey, a professor at Yale Law School.
Macey said that while such a move might be supported by protesters, it would be “viewed as hostile and threatening to many students, faculty and staff.”
Lauren Post, an analyst at the Anti-Defamation League, said the push for divestment is related to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
While Post acknowledged that some individuals may push for divestment as a way to hold Israel accountable, he said the ADL sees the goals of BDS as antisemitic.
“The goal – ultimately dismantling the state of Israel, is antisemitic,” Post said.
Yudof, a former president of the University of California, said he also felt it was antisemitic.
“It is characterized by a double standard. Why only Israel?” He criticized the protesting college students for focusing on Israel instead of undemocratic regimes around the world, including Iran and Russia.
It’s worth noting, however, that the student protests did not directly say they were affiliated with BDS.
The university does not own that much stock
There is also debate about the effectiveness of disposal campaigns.
One issue is that selling shares in a company means that the university will give up its influence over the company.
“Be careful what you ask for. If you sell your stock, other people will buy it and they may care less about the issues you care about,” said Cary Krosinsky, a lecturer at Yale who has advised university endowments.
Another issue is that while university endowments are large, public companies are much larger. If the university releases, many companies will not notice it.
University endowments own about 0.1% of public companies, according to research by Kroskinsky.
“The 0.1% won’t move the needle very much. Someone else will buy the stock and life will go on,” he said.
Most university funds are invested with private equity funds and hedge funds, rather than mutual funds or broad indexes.
Of course, the divestment drive is about more than directly punishing the company. It’s about wanting to send a message and raise awareness.
More than wanting to bring down defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, protesters will see the divestment as a symbolic victory for justice and equality.
Students are “complicit with what this institution is doing,” graduate student Basil Rodriguez told CNN Wednesday, noting that students pay tuition.
Rodriguez himself is Palestinian, and says his family members have been “killed and killed” and displaced.
Student protesters say demands to disclose and release are intertwined.
Protesters argue that many of the university’s financial interests are opaque and that ties to Israel may be greater than officials realize.
“At the same time, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Rodriguez said. “We demand full financial transparency.”
