Chuck DarwinStudent protesters are demanding universities divest from Israel.
What does that mean?
Student protesters calling for divestment from the war in Gaza have chosen divergent targets.
At Columbia, students are demanding the university drop its direct investments in companies doing business in or with Israel, including Amazon and Google, which are part of a $1.2bn cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government; Microsoft, whose services are used by Israel’s ministry of defense and Israeli civil administration; and defense contractors profiting from the war such as Lockheed Martin, which on Tuesday reported its earnings were up 14%.
Students at the University of California, Berkeley, have similarly called for divestment of Israel across the board, as have student groups at New York University.
Other groups, such as Yale University’s Endowment Justice Coalition and student groups at Cornell University, are pushing administrators to drop investments in weapons manufacturers specifically.
Some campus organizers are fusing the demands for fossil fuel divestment, which has become a popular target of campus activism over the past decade, and divestment from the war in Gaza. On Monday, Sunrise’s Columbia chapter held a Reclaim Earth Day event at the Columbia encampment to call attention to the relationship between the climate crisis and the war in Gaza. That includes the emissions from the aircraft and tanks Israel is using for the war as well as those generated by making and launching bombs, artillery and rockets, not to mention the environmental devastation.
Yale’s Endowment Justice Coalition, which is leading the push for divestment from weapons manufacturers, is also calling for fossil fuel divestment.
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