All those student protests on the US seem to be about stopping their universities from supporting the Israel government. But supporting a foreign government is not a normal thing for a university to do, why do they do it?
Is there some educational or research resource they get?
Universities have huge endowments and investment portfolios. These are generally broad and in support of keeping the financial backing of the school stable; this is extremely prevalent in the large older universities like Harvard or Columbia (but almost all universities have one in some form or another). They support both students and ongoing academic research.
While many of these portfolios consist of wider funds, many have specific investments in specific companies and industries. That means that the university is invested in, and taking benefit from, areas of industry. The main request is to divest the investment portfolios from companies owned by or supporting entities connected with Israel’s war on Gaza. In some cases this may be possible (move a ton of stock from a defense contractor making weapons sold to Israel to an energy company) and in some cases it may not (they’re invested in a wide market fund that itself invests in specific funds, but you can’t easily cherry-pick which stocks are actually in it). It’s also possible that there are research grants funded through companies who the students want to apply negative pressure to; cancelling a grant sends a message to the company, but also leaves entire teams and time-dependent science without funding, potentially ending it outright unless alternate funding can be found. There also may be contracts involved for specific research and engagements, and breaking a contract is more complicated than just ripping it up (especially if there are early termination policies outlined).
Realistically, the best students can hope for is a commitment to investigate and divest where possible, which is frustrating but also makes sense. I’ve worked in higher education for 20 years and have seen this on a smaller scale around defense contractors during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The endowment is a slow moving leviathan, but I think it’s a good place for the students to apply pressure.
This is a fantastic answer with a lot of great context. Thank you for sharing!
I will try to be as neutral as I can, though it seems impossible in this space.
A lot of Jewish people live outside of Israel for reasons going way back in history, we won’t get into the details of that now. Many of them remain closely tied with family / community / culture / religious practices & beliefs in Israel. These folks are sometimes called the Diaspora.
Some of them live in the United States (and are US citizens) and some of them are very successful / influential. Like almost any other demographic group, some of them can be found on the boards of colleges and universities, corporations, etc.
And some of these folks are still very much invested in Israel and care about what is going on over there, like other folks in the Diaspora.
I hope that helps. I am not taking a side with this answer, just trying to provide some general context on the how we got here.
I think this covers everything except for one last question the OP might have had. Israel was, and still is, a US ally. Trading is generally pretty open with those allies, so citizens are fairly free to invest with any company headquartered in those countries. Investing in an Israeli company was no different than investing in an Australian or UK company. Offshore investment can be smart too, as they can potentially insulate you from the effects of economic shocks in America (in the short term). I’m sure someone much more versed in economics or finances could give you a better summary of that end though.
Just in case they’re wondering whether/why it’s possible/common to have foreign investments in the first place. Your comment is a great explanation for why Israel specifically.
For the most part, they’re not specifically supporting the Israeli government. They have endowment funds, which they invest in mutual funds and other such financial instruments, like everyone else. Those mutual funds, in turn, invest money in a huge array of different stocks, bonds, etc, generally with the goal of producing a decent return with a minimum amount of risk. Buried somewhere in that pile of investments are things like Israeli government bonds, shares in defense contractors, etc, because political priorities are not usually a factor in how mutual funds decide where to put their money.
Many universities have money that they are allowed to use to invest, as long as the principal is used for explicit educational purposes. The investments are supposed to be public/reported, though there have always been complaints that they aren’t.
Students are protesting at college campus that have reported investments in Israel related companies (some, notably, directly related to war efforts) to demand the universities divest from those investments. Some universities have conceded and done so. Others have just called the cops.
NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/business/brown-university-divestment-israel-gaza.html
Brown University explanation of their endowments: https://investment.brown.edu/endowment
Oh boy…so this is how I understand it (as someone who has spent many years in the tech industry - I got out of it thank god - as well as have worked closely with university engineering research departments while employed in tech), but could certainly be missing some critical components here, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
So, the tech industry in the US is heavily subsidized with taxpayer money (like many other industries in the US…yes folks, even the US “Free Market Capitalism “ isn’t really a “Free Market”, as that short experiment has shown it wouldn’t last 2 seconds…but that’s a whole other topic).
As you may know, the tech industry is critical for US “defense” operations. Like helping Israel defend themselves from those ravenous and dangerous Palestinians.
So how does this work in the US? Taxpayer dollars go to funding certain “defense” projects thru the Pentagon mostly. That money then ends up making its way to defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, etc. The government basically gives these contractors money and says “Go make new tech that can help us build better bombs and weapons and stuff. And if there is any tech developed that can be used for other private industries (think consumer tech), then great. But that is sort of secondary. All we care about is the weapons”. Of course, the language in these contracts are much more nuanced as to avoid any moral hazards with knowing what exactly it is you’re working on; something that took me a while to finally figure out. But, that’s essentially what it boils down to. “We’ll give you taxpayer money and your company will be very profitable. All we want is for you to use your resources to develop weapons, and if you do that we will keep giving you money”
So these contractors get their money, and hire smart engineers to help with these projects. Well a major component of this is that these contractors are heavily invested in academia and universities, because that’s where they get their smart engineers from. These contractors may also fund departments at Universities for research and development. How much specific universities are tied in with these contractors is of course university dependent, but most are tied in some way or another.
The goal of most of these protests is to stop the universities from collaborating with these defense contractors that help to support these horrific wars and injustices we’re seeing today, which if you think about it is a very ambitious goal. These students are directly challenging a major component of the military industrial complex.
THIS is why we see such a strong response from those in power trying to quell the protests and demonstrations.
I mean just take a look at the response from law enforcement. It is much, much stronger than the response from, for example, the January 6th insurrection.
Whenever you see a strong response from LE, that should immediately make a blip on your radar. It means that whoever LE is going after is directly challenging power, or some component of power/the status quo. Seeing such a strong response, you should immediately be asking yourself “Damn what are these people (students) challenging/demanding that is such a threat to those in power?” And once you begin looking into it, it all sort of starts to make sense.
Either way, I wish these students and protesters all the best of luck. Major changes in policy often start in universities, so I am crossing my fingers that this evolves into a greater challenge on the military industrial complex apparatus.
Free Palestine. 🇵🇸
Well, if the students are protesting that, the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
I can understand protesting against ties with the defense industry, as well as I can understand wanting to maintain those. And I imagine this one is not unanimous between the students. And you are right, that this explains the police reaction much better than what is being reported.
Oh that is by design my friend. The media will often obfuscate the protesters’ true aims, instead focusing on a very, very small number of “agitators” (either real or imagined) to try and delegitimize them to the public. They want people to think “Oh those crazy, privileged, liberal college students don’t know what they’re doing”.
It is all one giant, well oiled machine.
the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
Yep, that’s pretty much by design. Most large media companies rely on these same companies (or parents/subsidiaries) for the bulk of their advertising revenue.
Divestment from Israel can take many forms, depending on the institution. Some colleges may be directly involved with Israeli companies, or receive funding from them, while others may simply have a broad investment portfolio that includes Israeli companies, or just Western companies that also do business with Israel.
So it’s not like all colleges and universities in the US are all supporting Israel in the same way, and therefore divesting from Israel can vary in terms of how complicated the process would be.
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Haha woah buddy, you’re asking some sensitive questions there
