0:00

Columbia. University said today it's canceling

0:02

it's main commencement ceremony and is instead

0:05

going to hold smaller ceremonies for individual

0:07

schools the School of Social Work, the

0:09

journalism school, the law school, etc. The

0:11

came after a lot of pressure due

0:14

to some of the encampments on the

0:16

campus a question about how much they

0:18

could ensure peace. Students at Columbia and

0:20

another campuses have been demanding their universities

0:23

divest from Israel and today and today

0:25

explained. We're going to tell you what

0:27

that demand means and how it's been

0:29

done before. Now some colleges are

0:32

betting that when classes and the protests

0:34

will end and they might. As for

0:36

the war, Israel Today warned one hundred

0:38

thousand civilians in refer to get out

0:40

ahead of a planned invasion. even as

0:42

the A P reported that Hamas has

0:45

accepted a proposal for a ceasefire. We're

0:47

going to continue to follow all of

0:49

this as it develops, but coming up

0:51

the push to divest. Support

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Hey. it's know well before the show

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box dot There's also a link in the show notes. This

2:01

will really help the show out something. This is Stay Explained. My

2:20

name is Josh Moody. I'm a reporter

2:22

with Inside Higher Ed where I cover

2:25

money and management. I've

2:28

spent hours and hours and

2:30

hours at the encampment at

2:32

George Washington University and it's

2:34

been fascinating to follow. It's

2:37

been a lot of chanting

2:39

and teach-ins and ukulele

2:44

music and the demands are

2:47

heavily focused on disclosure

2:49

and divestment. Companies

2:54

want to know what is in the

2:57

endowment and they want to divest from

2:59

companies that are profiting off of the

3:01

war between Israel and Hamas and

3:04

or providing services to the

3:06

Israeli government. An

3:09

endowment is a collection of financial assets that

3:11

belong to the university. The

3:19

university often draws from these funds

3:21

to help support their operations and

3:24

they invest these funds to increase

3:26

the endowment. They can

3:28

range pretty wildly from around

3:30

50 billion with

3:33

a B at Harvard to

3:35

only a couple million at

3:37

the least wealthy institutions. The

3:40

median endowment though is around 210

3:43

million according to a study from

3:45

earlier this year. That's a lot of money,

3:47

Josh. Yeah, it is. But it's

3:49

heavily concentrated within a handful of

3:52

institutions. You don't see a lot

3:55

of institutions with endowments in

3:57

the multi-billion dollar range.

4:00

So you say the students are asking for

4:02

two things. They want disclosure on how that

4:05

money in the endowment is being invested and

4:07

they want divestment from certain companies. Which

4:10

companies are they targeting? Which companies

4:12

do they know to target if

4:15

the endowment's investments aren't fully

4:17

transparent? Yeah, that's a great question.

4:20

The endowment is not

4:22

transparent. So in some ways, it

4:24

is a bit of guesswork. We

4:29

came together to make demands on

4:31

the university to divest the endowment

4:33

from corporations that profit off of

4:35

Israeli genocide to disclose where our

4:37

money is invested in the first

4:39

place. They're targeting, though,

4:41

companies like Boeing, Raytheon,

4:44

Lockheed Martin, companies that

4:46

are weapons manufacturers or

4:49

have tentacles in that

4:51

world. At the heart

4:53

of this action, at the heart of

4:55

this encampment is the wish for a

4:57

complete divestment and boycott of institutions that

5:00

are complicit in Israel's genocide. And

5:02

the focus, though, is not limited to

5:04

those, but extends to companies

5:06

that do business with the

5:09

Israeli government. It includes companies

5:11

that are household names like

5:13

Google and Amazon, which provide

5:15

web services in Israel. Amazon

5:18

and Google, meanwhile, share a $1.2 billion

5:20

contract called Project Nimbus to

5:23

provide cloud computing services to the

5:25

Israeli military and government. There's

5:28

broad pressure from students for colleges

5:30

to divest from companies that do

5:32

business with Israel to bring pressure on the

5:34

government to end the war, even

5:37

as, ironically, I suspect many

5:39

of the protesters are customers of

5:41

those same companies who doesn't use

5:43

Google or Amazon these days. What

5:47

would it mean for schools to do what the protesters

5:49

are asking? If you were to walk this out step

5:51

by step, what would it look like? Disclosure

5:54

is the easy part. Chief financial

5:56

officers, endowment managers should

5:59

be able to

6:01

easily identify direct investments.

6:05

Indirect investments get a little more

6:07

murky packages of funds that they

6:09

would have to unpackage and figure

6:11

out what's in there. There's

6:13

profit and loss to consider. If you're

6:15

selling off funds you're possibly going to

6:18

take a hit. Most

6:20

endowments that are very wealthy

6:22

will be able to easily sustain

6:24

that blow. Not so

6:27

much at the colleges that

6:29

have endowments in the few million

6:31

dollar range. These

6:33

calls to divest from Israel you

6:36

know broadly these are not new right?

6:38

How long has this been going on on college

6:40

campuses? The boycott, divest

6:42

and sanctions movement has been around

6:45

since the early 2000s. Established

6:47

in 2005 it

6:49

calls for a boycott of

6:52

Israeli and international companies involved

6:54

in Israel's violations of Palestinian

6:56

rights. The argument that has fueled

6:58

that has been that Israel is an apartheid

7:01

state and that those outside

7:03

of Israel should hold it accountable by

7:05

essentially voting with their wallets. It not

7:08

only provides a list of products to avoid

7:14

but people are also downloading apps to

7:16

check if some businesses support Israeli

7:19

products. And there

7:22

is a argument that

7:24

suggests divestment from Israel

7:26

is tantamount to anti-Semitism.

7:28

While Iran publicly executes

7:31

its citizens, Turkey jails

7:33

its journalists, scores of

7:35

Arab nations punish homosexuality

7:37

with imprisonment and torture.

7:40

Why does BDS single

7:42

Israel out alone for

7:44

condemnation? When

7:46

there is such a double standard, when

7:49

the world treats everybody one way and the

7:52

Jew or the Jewish state another way, there's

7:54

only one word for it. Anti-Semitism.

7:58

Let us call out the BDS. movement

8:00

for what it is. Another

8:04

challenge for divestment,

8:06

particularly for public

8:08

institutions, is that more

8:10

than 30 states have

8:12

passed laws in recent years that

8:15

limit or prevent institutions from divesting

8:17

from Israel or doing business with

8:19

those that do. Back

8:21

in 2016, Ohio banned state agencies

8:23

from boycotting Israel or from entering

8:26

into contracts with companies who have

8:28

anti-Israel policy. And in 2022, the

8:30

law was edited to include universities,

8:32

but only public ones. So

8:34

that makes it illegally challenging

8:37

because some presidents have

8:39

argued that our hands are tied. Ohio

8:42

State, for example, has said based

8:44

on existing state laws, we cannot

8:47

divest from Israel even if they

8:49

were willing to. Have

8:52

any of the student protests succeeded at

8:54

all? I guess it depends

8:56

on how you define success or

8:58

how they define success. Some

9:02

are succeeding in forcing conversations.

9:07

A good example is Brown

9:09

University. My name is Ariella

9:11

Rosenzweig. I'm a senior at Brown University.

9:14

I've been organizing primarily in Jewish

9:16

movements for solidarity with Palestine since

9:18

I was Brown

9:22

students were, I think,

9:24

the second school after October

9:26

to have a rest. Myself

9:29

and 19 other Jewish

9:32

students were arrested on November.

9:35

During a sit-in in our university hall, calling

9:37

for Brown to materially subdue CSPIRE

9:39

by divesting from companies, profiting off

9:42

of and facilitating apartheid

9:44

and anti-pandemic calls. University

9:47

still refused to hear us, to heed our demands. Actually,

9:49

they refused even to meet with us. And so there

9:52

was another sit-in of 41 students. Those

9:54

students were also arrested with the same demand.

9:57

We still didn't really receive a response from

9:59

our university. And so in February, 19 of

10:02

us, myself included, went on a hunger strike, demanding

10:04

that Brown not even let it pass divestment,

10:06

but let it vote on divestment in a

10:08

federal corporation meeting. The answer

10:10

then was pretty unequivocally no. Their

10:14

governing board is hearing a divestment

10:17

presentation from students this month and

10:19

will vote on divestment in October.

10:22

For Brown administrators to come thought

10:24

out after a week of then-came

10:26

in and say that they would like to negotiate with

10:28

us and actually do so, willing to give

10:30

serious concessions was shocking to me and to others who

10:32

have been doing this not only this year, but

10:34

for years and have never seen any movement by

10:37

the administration. The deal is not

10:39

perfect. It's not a victory.

10:41

It is not the end of the

10:43

movement in any sense. It is a

10:45

pretty significant deal because it is the

10:47

first time after pushing for five years

10:49

that the Brown corporation has agreed, signed

10:51

basically a legally binding contract that they

10:53

will vote on divestment from Israel this

10:55

fall. And that was the deal

10:57

struck between protesters and Brown in

11:00

order to get them to take

11:02

down the encampment. So that

11:04

is a possible win for them, depending

11:06

on how you define success. That's

11:08

not to say that we have ceased all activism on

11:10

campus. That will never be the case. It will never

11:13

be the case until Brown is fully divested and

11:15

until a policy sign is free. At

11:20

Portland State University, the administration

11:22

agreed to pause connections with

11:24

Boeing, which, as I understand,

11:26

they don't do business with,

11:28

but they have taken donations

11:30

from. But with

11:32

that, it seems like about $28,000 in

11:36

annual scholarship money will be lost,

11:38

which basically comes at a

11:40

cost for some students. So you

11:43

have to question, how do you define

11:45

success? Love them, now

11:47

is not. Students at Michigan

11:49

State University joined the nationwide

11:52

demonstrations by setting up tent

11:54

encampments at MSU's People's Park.

11:56

Michigan State was an

11:59

interesting case. because you have

12:01

these encampments cropping up and

12:03

presidents for the most part

12:06

were not and

12:08

have not been engaging directly

12:10

with the protesters. Michigan

12:12

State's really interesting because the president goes

12:14

to the encampment, has a

12:17

conversation with the students, treats them

12:19

like adults, but also tells them

12:22

your encampment violates our

12:24

policies. Michigan State University released

12:27

a statement saying they're supporting free

12:29

speech, adding that officers peacefully spoke

12:31

with the group leaders and informed

12:33

them they were in violation of

12:35

the camping ordinance. But

12:37

then he helps guide them through

12:39

the permit process to keep the

12:42

encampment up. And they

12:44

get permission to keep the

12:46

encampment up. He sends a

12:49

communication out about, you

12:52

know, we don't have any direct

12:54

investments. We have nothing to divest.

13:00

As a result of, I think,

13:02

frankly, a pretty savvy way to

13:04

approach the situation, the protesters

13:07

packed up their encampment,

13:10

declared victory. And

13:12

that was that. And

13:17

that was Josh Moody from Inside Higher Ed.

13:20

Coming up, colleges have said it would be

13:22

really hard for them to divest their endowments

13:24

from Israel. How hard would

13:26

it be exactly? Today

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explains support today comes from Quince,

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It's today

17:20

Explained, I'm Noelle King with Charlie

17:22

Eaton. I'm an associate professor

17:24

of sociology at UC Merced

17:27

and I am the author of the

17:29

book Bankers in the Ivory Tower. It's

17:32

a book about the rise of

17:34

financiers in higher education and in

17:37

US society more largely and how

17:39

inequalities in higher ed and in our

17:42

larger economy are connected. What

17:44

do you mean by financiers? Financiers

17:46

are folks who manage private equity

17:49

and hedge funds. Who

17:51

have become very wealthy, make up a

17:53

disproportionate share of America's

17:55

billionaires. Can you explain for

17:58

us what a college endowment is? and

18:00

how everything works? Yeah, it's an

18:02

investment fund that universities often have

18:05

had for many

18:07

decades, if not longer. They

18:10

used to be invested in pretty conservative

18:12

things like bonds and savings

18:14

accounts. And then starting in the

18:17

70s and especially in the 80s, universities

18:20

started to invest, to

18:22

try to maximize investment returns.

18:25

And what are they used for? Well, any

18:27

range of things to support

18:29

employing faculty, paying

18:32

salaries on campus, funding research.

18:35

In recent years, the

18:37

wealthiest private universities have

18:40

reduced student loan borrowing among

18:42

their undergraduates. So at

18:44

Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, only about

18:46

7% of students have

18:49

student loans who are undergrads.

18:52

And that's in part because the endowments

18:54

have been used to subsidize financial aid.

18:57

But in recent years, there's

19:00

been increasing debate about

19:02

should schools invest

19:05

according to values and principles

19:07

other than just maximizing returns?

19:10

Should there also be

19:12

environmental sustainability criteria or

19:15

social or governance criteria? And

19:18

consistent with that, we've seen some big

19:20

shifts in endowment investment. U.C.! Fossil

19:23

Free! U.C.! Fossil Free! U.C.!

19:27

For example, my university system,

19:29

the University of California, we

19:32

have over $150 billion in assets under management across

19:36

our pension funds and our

19:38

endowments. And four years ago

19:40

in 2020, our

19:42

funds divested from fossil fuels. We

19:44

sold off over a billion dollars

19:46

in fossil fuel assets. After

19:49

five years of working our portfolio

19:51

and de-fossil fueling it, we

19:53

actually became the first university in the country

19:55

to go ex-fossil fuels. Which

19:58

certainly felt like an incredible accomplishment. There's

20:01

more than one way to

20:03

use your investments and

20:05

your investment holdings to advocate for

20:07

your values in a given company

20:09

or in the economy. You can

20:11

say, okay, we're going to divest,

20:14

but it is reasonable to say we

20:17

live in a world that is flush

20:19

with global capital. Others will invest in

20:21

what you divest from. Another

20:24

approach that others have used is to

20:26

say, okay, we're a shareholder, and we're

20:28

going to use our position as shareholders

20:30

in a company to

20:32

be activist investors and

20:34

to say we want this company to

20:36

adopt a given policy

20:39

or a given governance change.

20:41

That requires holding very large

20:43

concentrated shares and working with

20:45

other shareholders, and it's not

20:48

a sure path to changing a company's

20:50

behavior that you might want to do as well.

20:53

But those are both approaches that

20:56

people have taken to trying

20:58

to leverage their investment capital to

21:00

affect change in support of their

21:02

values. If these

21:04

schools were to divest from companies

21:07

that do business in Israel and

21:09

make a lot of money doing business in Israel,

21:12

do we know that that would hurt the

21:14

school's financial standing, hurt what the school

21:16

is able to do, hit the

21:18

endowment? It's hard to deal in

21:21

hypotheticals, but we can say that

21:23

the University of California investment funds

21:25

are still pretty healthy four years

21:27

after divesting from fossil fuels. We

21:29

can't say that Columbia's endowment is still

21:31

pretty healthy after

21:33

it divested from fossil fuels and

21:36

divested from private prisons.

21:39

So many of these universities are

21:41

thriving. There are folks, myself included,

21:43

who would like to see these universities do

21:45

more with their endowments. One

21:47

of the problems is endowments have

21:49

gone up at the wealthiest schools

21:51

over tenfold in the last 40

21:53

or 50 years, but

21:55

they tend to enroll just as

21:58

few students as they do. did

22:00

in the 70s and 80s

22:03

and those students remained from

22:05

overwhelmingly advantaged backgrounds.

22:08

So you know there's a question of

22:10

to what end are we trying to grow these

22:12

endowments and can we grow them without

22:16

investing in things that are not

22:18

just and that are you know

22:20

do we really want to have universities that are

22:22

wealthy at the expense of others? I think

22:25

those are the kinds of questions that people are

22:27

asking. I wonder if you can walk us through some

22:29

of the other divestment campaigns that we've

22:31

seen in the past. We

22:35

keep hearing students on college campuses mention

22:37

South Africa and apartheid. Yeah well

22:39

and I might reach back even

22:41

farther to the Vietnam War. There

22:59

are a lot of demands of universities to sever

23:01

their relationships

23:05

with defense contractors and

23:08

at that time endowments didn't play

23:11

a central role in universities so

23:14

a lot of the attention focused

23:16

more on research contracts and research

23:18

relationships. You get to the 1980s and South

23:22

Africa which had an apartheid

23:24

state in which a white

23:26

minority controlled the government. There

23:29

were demands for divestment

23:31

from apartheid South Africa

23:33

and endowments in the

23:35

1980s. Hundreds of colleges

23:38

divested and that

23:40

proceeded a transition to a

23:42

democratic government in South Africa in

23:44

the early 90s. In

23:47

1985 the Ivy League students

23:49

successfully pressured Columbia to divest

23:51

from a number of companies that

23:53

did business in apartheid South Africa.

23:56

Protests against apartheid started background

23:58

Are Forgetout brGen That

24:00

year, students wore white armbands

24:02

at graduation to signal their

24:04

objections. So it worked. Yeah,

24:07

I mean, it's hard to

24:09

draw straight lines between divestment

24:11

and the transition to democracy

24:13

in South Africa and

24:15

the end of apartheid. But

24:17

one of the things that happened

24:19

around that is it really focused

24:22

debate and attention across

24:25

society about South Africa.

24:28

And so it had implications for

24:31

the geopolitics, for the international relations

24:34

in ways that may have benefited the

24:36

liberation movement in South Africa. You

24:41

know, I think the recent

24:43

divestments from fossil fuels and

24:45

from for-profit prisons show

24:48

that divestment is something that universities

24:50

can do and that

24:52

protest movements and engagement

24:55

by the campus community can lead to

24:57

that. I think one

25:00

of the hard things

25:02

about divestment from the

25:04

Israeli-Gaza conflict is

25:06

that there's a

25:08

lot more contention on

25:10

campus across the campus community.

25:14

There's resistance among

25:16

some folks on campus. There's not the

25:18

same level of consensus yet, I

25:21

think, that we've seen around fossil fuel

25:23

divestment. Okay, and perhaps not even the

25:25

same as there was around divestment from

25:27

South Africa, which for

25:30

various reasons, Americans did have

25:32

a fair amount of distance

25:34

from, right? Yeah,

25:37

yeah. There are, you know, members

25:40

of our Jewish community in the U.S. feel

25:42

strong attachments and have strong social

25:45

attachments to Israel in many cases.

25:48

And so there's really strong

25:50

and invested feelings, recent traumas,

25:53

around the tragedy and the horrors

25:55

of October 7th. So I

25:57

think that's part of the context that we're seeing

25:59

play out on campus. campuses. I

26:03

think that universities are going to have

26:05

to grapple with what

26:08

are their values and how do

26:10

they apply their values to their

26:12

endowment investments because with

26:14

how big endowments are they connect

26:17

the university community to ever more

26:20

far-flung corners of the global

26:22

economy. And so

26:25

if it's not the Israeli Palestinian conflict

26:27

there are going to continue to be

26:29

other issues where we see

26:31

demands from students and from

26:33

communities for endowments to be divested

26:35

from things that they don't see

26:38

as aligning with their university values.

26:41

And I think the university should be

26:43

thinking also about affirmatively what are the

26:45

kinds of things that they want to

26:47

invest in that do align with university

26:49

values and I think that'll help universities

26:52

to navigate contentious issues that their

26:54

endowments will continue to be tied

26:56

up in because of the

26:58

scale of endowments today and the interconnectedness

27:00

of our economy. That's

27:09

Charlie Eaton at the University of California,

27:11

Merced. Today's show was produced by Abishai

27:14

Artsi. It was edited by Amman El-Sadi

27:16

and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amanda

27:18

Llewellyn. Rob Myers, engineered. I'm

27:20

Noelle King. It's today explained. Hey,

28:04

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