Amid pressure from Brown University students who demonstrated on the campus green last spring against the war in Gaza, the university’s trustees are slated to vote next week on whether to divest from companies with ties to Israel. The upcoming vote would make Brown one of the first major research universities to vote on a board-sponsored proposal to boycott companies with ties to the Jewish state. 

The divestment vote, scheduled for Oct. 17, 10 days after the first anniversary of Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel, comes as a result of an agreement in April between Brown University President Christina Paxson and members of the Brown Divest Coalition to take down an anti-Israel encampment that was set up on the campus’ Main Green for six days. One of the students’ central demands was a divestment vote. The Rhode Island school was among the handful of universities nationwide to offer concessions to demonstrators rather than call in law enforcement to break up encampments. 

“[The vote] has a chilling effect on pro-Israel students,” Rabbi Josh Bolton, executive director of Brown Hillel, told Jewish Insider. “And it makes being Jewish and Zionist a liability in terms of full participation in campus life, freedom of expression in the classroom and social relationships between students.” While Rhode Island is one of several states that bans discrimination against Israel, the law does not apply to private institutions, such as Brown, which is located in Providence. 

The resolution calls for Brown to divest from 10 companies with ties to Israel: Northrop Grumman, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon), Airbus, Volvo Group, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola Solutions, Textron Corporation and Safariland. Brown’s endowment, which grew to $7.2 billion this year according to the university, is relatively small compared to other Ivy League institutions.

The vote also comes amid a resurgence in efforts to bring the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement that targets Israel back to the forefront on campuses nationwide in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas. (BDS efforts nearly disappeared on college campuses in recent years before Oct. 7, with just three resolutions being brought forward in 2022, compared to 44 at their peak in the 2014-2015 school year.) 

But at other universities, the resolutions have been voted on only by student governments and have been purely symbolic. At Brown, the scheduled vote is among members of the Brown Corporation, the university’s governing body. 

Brown had in recent years worked to make a concerted effort to recruit Jewish students in recent years. While Jewish enrollment at most Ivy League universities has dropped, it has increased at Brown. Although Brown’s board is unlikely to pass the resolution, according to Bolton, simply voting on divestment could be seen as legitimization of the BDS movement and contribute to a divisive campus climate for pro-Israel students. 

As the vote approaches, Brown University leaders have faced significant pushback — including the resignation of one former Brown trustee, Joseph Edelman, the CEO of the hedge fund Perceptive Advisors, who condemned the Corporation’s “stunning failure of moral leadership.” 

“I am concerned about what Brown’s willingness to hold such a vote suggests about the university’s attitude toward rising antisemitism on campus and a growing political movement that seeks the destruction of the state of Israel,” Edelman wrote in a Sept. 8 op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal. 

Edelman continued, “I find it morally reprehensible that holding a divestment vote was even considered, much less that it will be held — especially in the wake of the deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” 

In response to Edelman’s letter, Paxson wrote in a separate Wall Street Journal op-ed that “Brown has maintained a process for members of its community to put forth divestment proposals” and that the upcoming vote “isn’t in direct response to the current student activism.”

JI reached out to Paxson, Brown Chancellor Brian Moynihan (who is also the CEO of Bank of America) and Vice Chancellor Pamela Reeves for comment; no one responded to JI’s request.

On Monday, about two dozen protesters congregated outside the Bank of America headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., calling on Moynihan to cancel the vote. Signs read “Divest from Bank of America not Israel,” “Stop antisemitism at Brown” and “Stop the vote.” 

The protest followed a letter from Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, addressed to Moynihan earlier this month. Poliakoff wrote that “to legitimize student demands for antisemitic divestment proposals is wrong and counterproductive for several reasons,” noting that the call for divestment “singles out Israel” while there have not been divestment demands for other countries, such as China or Turkey.

Bolton echoed the belief that “divestment as a movement, as a strategy, is all about causing chaos and all about causing the playing field for Zionist Jewish students to shrink.” 

At the same time, Bolton called Paxson’s negotiation with encampment protesters “a wise move to end what was a toxic situation.” 

Bolton said that “even if divestment is voted down,” the fact that it reached the university’s board  “is still a win to some certain extent” for anti-Israel groups. 

Still, the vote could bring about a silver lining for pro-Israel students, Bolton said. 

“We hope that this brings an opportunity for Brown to say not only are we voting this down but from a principled position, divestment from Israel runs counter to our values and counter to our goals as an academic community.”