Columbia University students call for disinvestment; here's what the institution has previously divested from.
Columbia's endowment is valued at $13.6 billion and is managed by a university-owned investment firm.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a cluster of student groups, has urged the institution to withdraw investments from various weapons and technology firms that collaborate with the Israeli government. They claim these companies profit from "Israeli apartheid, genocide, and military occupation of Palestine." However, Israel denies any accusation of genocide.
This isn't the first time demands for divestment have been presented. Columbia has a rich history of student activism, from the iconic 1968 student takeover of multiple campus buildings to raise awareness about the Vietnam War, to hunger strikes over issues like the university's expansion in Upper Manhattan.
And students have frequently pushed the university to divest in different causes.
In 2000, Columbia established an advisory committee on socially responsible investments, consisting of students, faculty, and alumni, to offer feedback on Columbia's endowment investments. The group has a defined system for submitting divestment proposals.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest submitted a formal proposal to the committee regarding Israeli investments in December, but it has not yet been accepted. The students at Columbia College, the university's undergraduate school, voted in support of the divestment proposal last week.
The students are determined to persuade the university to endorse the proposal.
"We are building on the legacy of decades of students calling for freedom, liberation, equality, and an end to apartheid systems around the world... for all oppressed peoples," remarked Catherine Elias, a Columbia student organizer, during a recent interview with CNN.
Leading a nationwide South Africa divestment movement
Currently, Columbia refrains from investing in five sectors: tobacco, private prison operations, thermal coal, Sudan, and fossil fuels - all decisions made within the last decade. However, the school's divestment history goes back much further.
In the 1980s, a group of Columbia students campaigned for the university to break connections with companies doing business in South Africa due to its apartheid racial segregation policy.
Daniel Armstrong, who founded the Coalition for a Free South Africa as a Columbia student in the early 1980s and now owns a mentoring business in Los Angeles, recollected that the initiative started with flyers and guest speakers but expanded in the coming years.
"Students began to see that this isn't a crazy position to have," Armstrong told CNN. "Then our student newspaper endorsed it, which I considered a significant step as far as legitimizing the demand for divestment."
In 1983, Columbia's student Senate backed the decision to divest, with nearly unanimous support, but the university's trustees declined.
In April 1985, a group of Columbia students staged a three-week protest against the university's investments in South Africa, ultimately blocking access to a campus building. Months later, in response to this protest, trustees agreed to sell the majority of Columbia's stock in American companies working in South Africa. These investments included a substantial amount of shares in American Express, Chevron, Ford, and Coca-Cola, accounting for $39 million and about 4% of Columbia's overall portfolio, according to the New York Times.
Columbia became the first Ivy League university to divest from South Africa, leading many others, such as University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to follow suit. The South African apartheid officially ended in the early 1990s.
'Symbols hold power'
Since that time, student activists have effectively convinced Columbia to divest from several other areas.
In 2015, Columbia became the first U.S. university to divest from private prison firms following a year-long campaign led by students concerned about human rights abuses. The university sold its investments in G4S, the world's largest private security company, and Corrections Corporation of America, the most extensive private prison company in the United States.
In 2019, a group of Columbia students affiliated with Extinction Rebellion, an environmental activism organization, went on a one-week hunger strike in the library to urge the university to exceed its earlier commitment to divest from thermal coal. Although there was some pushback from university authorities in the subsequent months, the group submitted a formal divestment proposal to the socially responsible investing committee.
"Critics have said (these movements) should avoid using the goal of divestment because it's just a symbolic goal, and if the university divests, someone else will just buy those same shares," explained Savannah Pearson, a former Columbia student who participated in the 2019 hunger strike. "But symbols hold a lot of power... and it can stimulate other institutions to do the same thing."
The fossil fuel divestment proposal was endorsed by Columbia's Board of Trustees in early 2021. The regulation contains a commitment not to invest in "companies primarily involved in the exploration and production of fossil fuels." After Columbia's announcement, student advocacy efforts led to similar commitments from other Ivy League universities.
"A few students have the potential to bring about a huge change at a place like Columbia University, but they can't make it happen alone," Michael Cusack, a graduate student at the Teachers College in 2019, explained. He was involved in creating the proposal for the group.
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Source: edition.cnn.com
