The Campus Green where Brown University protesters stayed for a week is seen shortly after the students’ departure on April 30, 2024, from inside the first floor of Sayles Hall. The protest’s conclusion came after student leaders came to an agreement with Brown University President Christina Paxson, who vowed the school would examine and potentially discontinue any investments it holds with companies associated with Israel. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Brown University’s highest-ranking governing body has rebuffed a student-led proposal seeking to sever business ties between the school’s endowment and Israel-associated companies, the university announced Wednesday.
The majority of the Corporation of Brown University’s 42 trustees and 12 fellows affirmed Tuesday an advisory committee’s rejection of a divestment proposal submitted by pro-Palestinian student activists. Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM), a consultory group to the school’s president that was tasked with investigating the best course of action for the endowment which would be affected by divestment, offered their recommendations in a Sept. 30 report.
Brown student protesters decamp from College Green
“In particular, Corporation members noted ACURM’s finding that Brown’s exposure to the 10 companies identified in the divestment proposal is de minimis, that 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, as defined in ACURM’s charge,” wrote Brown University President Christina Paxson and Brian Moynihan, the corporation’s chancellor and Bank of America’s CEO, in a letter on Wednesday to the Brown community.
The divestment vote technically satisfies Paxson’s end of the bargain made with student protesters last April, who had camped for a week on the College Green. Paxson promised that divestment discussions would continue at the beginning of the next academic year if students evacuated the green. On April 30, students packed up and left within a few hours of the deal being made, about three weeks ahead of commencement.
But there was no guarantee the university would divest from the companies in question, and in Paxson and Moynihan’s letter, the two university leaders suggested it was not Brown’s place to tussle with geopolitical conflict anyway.
“Brown’s mission doesn’t encompass influencing 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.”
Student divestment proponents argued their case to the Advisory Committee on Sept. 4, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
A spokesperson for the Brown Divest Coalition did not return a request for comment Wednesday. But an Instagram post by Brown Divest Coalition Wednesday afternoon included a screenshot of the Oct. 9 letter with expletives scrawled in red across its surface. The all-caps post caption called the Corporation a “board of cowards” who “voted in secret.”
The divestment vote fell within what National Students for Justice in Palestine designated as a “Week of Rage,” meant to continue organizing and protest efforts for the people of Gaza after a year of escalating tensions between Hamas and Israel. On Monday, Rhode Island School of Design students organized a walkout in Providence.
‘Kicking the can’
The Advisory Committee’s 8-2 vote with one abstention meant it ultimately urged the Corporation to refuse divestment, as “the investment of Brown University resources in the ten companies does not directly contribute to this harm,” the report said.
“It is indisputable that grave harm is occurring in the Palestinian territories and Israel as a result of this conflict,” the report noted. “There is additional harm on the University campus related to the ongoing debate. This was the central focus of most of the thousands of comments the Committee received from members of the Brown and broader communities.”
But the Advisory Committee raised further questions about the university’s official lack of stance in the current landscape of protest.
“There is a sense among some members of the Committee that the University is merely ‘kicking the can’ to another time and showing an unwillingness to grapple with the differences of opinion that exist on our campus,” the report stated. “One member of the Committee abstained from voting on this basis.”
The Corporation would resume discussions of similar discussions from the Advisory Committee report, Paxson and Moynihan stated. “But, for now, it is clear that the endowment should not and will not be used to take a stance on the contested geopolitical issues in the Middle East,” they wrote.
The process for exploring divestment has been in place since the 1970s, according to a university news release, and there have been three instances of successful divestment since. In February 1986, the Corporation approved partial divestment from companies associated with South African apartheid. September 2003 saw the adoption of a recommendation that the school stop investing in tobacco manufacturers. Sudanese government-affiliated companies were divested from in February 2006 after the genocide in Darfur.
The university did not disclose the Corporation’s vote. Not participating in it was former trustee Joseph Edelman, who resigned on Sept. 8 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling the holding of a divestment vote “morally reprehensible.”
“Israel, like all nations, has a moral duty to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks, and that is exactly what it has been doing,” Edelman wrote.
In August, a browbeating attempt by two dozen Attorneys General, mostly in red states, threatened litigation against Brown if the divestment measure passed. An affirmative vote would trigger anti-divestment laws in certain states, the AGs argued, preventing further business dealings with Brown in the affected states and potentially wounding the university’s endowment.
Brown endowment rose 11.3% in the last fiscal year, its market value up from $6.6 billion to $7.2 billion, the university reported.
What companies would have been divested?
The 10 companies in the student divestment proposal were selected for their role in providing products, services or facilities that contribute to the occupation of the West Bank, or otherwise “contribute to violent acts against either Israeli or Palestinian civilians,” according to the Advisory Committee report.
A Brown Divest Coalition report from July 2024 identified the following companies and the reasons for their inclusion in the divestment proposal:
Airbus, a defense company whose output includes helicopters and drones.
Boeing, a defense contractor that makes weapons and aircraft.
General Dynamics, a large aerospace and defense firm with a wide catalog of products including bombs, aircraft and tanks.
General Electric, whose engines and turbines are used in military equipment and vehicles.
Motorola Solutions, whose products include surveillance technologies.
Northrop Grumman, a weapons systems manufacturer whose portfolio includes fighter jets and missile ships.
RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, which is one of the largest aerospace manufacturers and producer of air-to-ground missiles and guided bombs.
Textron, a Providence-based and U.S. military-contracted supplier of bombs, aircraft and helicopters.
Safariland, which manufactures teargas canisters and munitions.
Volvo Group, or AB Volvo, which is separate from the auto manufacturer and whose machinery like wheel loaders and track excavators the Coalition said has been used in the Western Bank’s occupation.
The coalition argued that most of these companies’ products have been used or sold to the Israeli military. Two other firms originally included in the divestment package — DXC and Oaktree Capital — were removed after the Brown Divest Coalition noted both companies had sold its Israel-affiliated assets, according to the Coalition’s 58-page report.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.