Columbia University has faced demands for divestment by pro-Palestinian students over the past week, with the request including withdrawing investment funds from companies profiting from Israel’s military action in Gaza. The university’s endowment is worth $13.6bn and managed by a Columbia-owned investment firm; requests have been made to divest endowment funds from weapons manufacturers and tech firms doing business with the Israeli government, which students describe as profiting “from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and military occupation of Palestine”.
This is not the first time such demands have been put forward. Columbia has a history of student activism over social issues including the famous 1968 protest against the Vietnam War and hunger strikes regarding campus expansion in Upper Manhattan. In 2000, an advisory committee on socially responsible investing was established to provide feedback to managers of endowment investments; this group has a formal process for submitting divestment proposals, with student activists putting forward demands to cut financial ties with companies linked to Israel’s military action in Gaza.
Columbia College students voted last week in favour of supporting the proposal put before them by Columbia University Apartheid Divest; these demonstrations follow similar calls at other US universities such as UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and UNC Chapel Hill which resulted from activist campaigns during 2014-15.
Columbia’s history of divestment goes back even further – a campaign targeting businesses active in apartheid South Africa took shape across Columbia campuses throughout the early ’80s, with students eventually persuading trustees to sell shares worth $39m held by American companies operating there (including firms such as Amex and Ford). The university’s student Senate approved divestment from these enterprises during 1983; however, this proposal was not initially adopted.
In April 1985, students staged a three-week protest against Columbia’s investments in South Africa which involved around 150 demonstrators blocking access to the entrance of one campus building. Trustees eventually voted for divestment from American companies operating there during late ’85; this decision was followed by similar moves at various Ivy League universities as well as others, such as Berkeley and Chapel Hill.
Since then, student activists have successfully pushed Columbia to withdraw funds from private prison firms in 2015 over concerns about human rights abuses, while a group of students affiliated with climate action organisation Extinction Rebellion staged a week-long hunger strike at the university’s library during 2019. This campaign resulted in formal divestment proposals being presented to Columbia’s socially responsible investing committee; despite pushback from senior officials, this move was eventually approved by the Board of Trustees early last year with an announcement that it would refrain from purchasing shares held primarily by fossil fuel companies.
As Savannah Pearson – a former undergraduate student at Columbia who participated in 2019’s hunger strike – explained: “People have criticised (these movements) for using the goal of divestment because it’s a symbolic goal and if the university divests then someone else will just buy those same shares. But symbols have a lot of power … And it can inspire other schools to do the same thing.”
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