Brown University trustees vote against Israel divestment
Brown University trustees, known as the Brown Corporation, voted on Tuesday night against divesting from nearly a dozen companies with ties to Israel, in a rebuke to students who have been pushing for boycott measures in protest of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The vote, which was held during a special convening ahead of the regularly scheduled meeting slated for Oct. 17, made Brown one of the first major research universities to vote on a proposal to boycott companies with ties to the Jewish state. (At most other universities, the resolutions have been voted on only by student governments.) It did so as part of an April agreement 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 Brown Corporation held the vote by secret ballot “so that no members felt pressure to conform to a majority view,” a spokesperson told Jewish Insider. Results were not made public until Wednesday.
The vote totals are not known by members of the Corporation or the chancellor, president or University administration in general — only that a majority of the Corporation as a body voted to support Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management’s recommendation on the question of divestment, the spokesperson said, adding that Brown “always releases only final decisions regarding votes on Corporation business, not vote totals, regardless of the item of business.” The spokesperson said that “the timing of the vote was guided by a number of factors, including the very high interest from members of our community to both see the advisory committee report and learn the Corporation’s decision.”
The resolution called 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.
In a letter on Wednesday, Paxson and Brown University Chancellor Brian Moynihan wrote to the campus that “Brown’s exposure to the 10 companies identified in the divestment proposal is de minimis, that Brown has no direct investments in any of the companies targeted for divestment and that any indirect exposure for Brown in these companies is so small that it could not be directly responsible for social harm … These findings alone are sufficient reason to support ACURM’s recommendation” against divestment.
“ACURM’s analysis shows that, based on data from June 30, 2023, Brown’s indirect investments in the 10 companies represent only 0.009% (i.e., nine-thousandths of one percent) of their aggregate market value,” Paxson and Moynihan wrote.
Leading up to the vote, Brown University leaders faced significant pushback — including the resignation of one Brown trustee, Joseph Edelman, the CEO of the hedge fund Perceptive Advisors, who condemned the Corporation’s “stunning failure of moral leadership.”
Rabbi Josh Bolton, executive director of Brown Hillel, told JI ahead of the vote 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 and “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.”
Brown University facing pressure to cancel board vote on Israel divestment
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.”
Universities make concessions to anti-Israel campus activists
It’s spring in Cambridge, Mass. — graduation season — which means that large white tents have started to appear on the leafy quads throughout Harvard Square.
Until Tuesday, a different kind of tent was still visible in Harvard Yard: small camping tents housing the stragglers who remained in Harvard’s anti-Israel encampment even after final exams wrapped up several days ago. Last week, Harvard suspended student protesters who refused to abide by campus administrators’ orders to disband the encampment, blocking access to their dorms.
But now, just a week from the start of official university commencement festivities, Harvard has backtracked on its disciplinary action, ahead of the arrival next week of thousands of graduates’ family members, alumni and honorary degree recipients to the Ivy League university. University officials seemed to be saying that Harvard cannot get ready for commencement if Harvard Yard is still gated and locked, accessible only to university affiliates and the handful of people still camped out in protest of Harvard’s alleged “complicity in genocide.”
In making a deal with the protesters, Harvard interim President Alan Garber joined a growing number of leaders at elite universities who are incorporating protesters’ voices into major university investment decisions and allowing student activists to get off with few, if any, repercussions after weeks of disciplinary violations. Harvard’s dean of the faculty of arts and sciences wrote in a Tuesday email that the outcome “deepened” the university’s “commitment to dialogue and to strengthening the bonds that pull us together as a community.”
The path Garber took is now a well-trodden one — remove the threat of disciplinary consequences and allow protesters to meet with university trustees or other senior leaders to pitch them on divesting their schools’ endowments from Israeli businesses, a concession that before last month would have been unthinkable at America’s top universities.
In a matter of days it has become commonplace. Just two years ago, Harvard’s then-president, Lawrence Bacow, responded to the campus newspaper’s endorsement of a boycott of Israel by saying that “any suggestion of targeting or boycotting a particular group because of disagreements over the policies pursued by their governments is antithetical to what we stand for as a university.”
Northwestern University set the tone two weeks ago when President Michael Schill reached an agreement with anti-Israel protesters in exchange for them ending their encampment. Jewish leaders on campus found the agreement so problematic that the seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism committee — including Northwestern’s Hillel director, several faculty members and a student — stepped down in protest. Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who resigned from the committee, summed up their concerns: “It appears as though breaking the rules gets you somewhere, and trying to do things respectfully and by the books does not.”
Her observation has proven prescient as universities negotiate with anti-Israel protesters who break campus rules while they slow-walk reforms long sought by Jewish students — or even avoid meeting with Jewish community members altogether.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone signed onto a far-reaching agreement with protesters this week that calls for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, condemns “genocide” and denounces “scholasticide” in Gaza and cuts off ties between a university-affiliated environmental NGO and two government-owned Israeli water companies. Meanwhile, Hillel Milwaukee said in a statement that Mone has refused to meet with Jewish students since Oct. 7. Where universities fumbled over statements addressing the Oct. 7 attacks last fall in failed bids to satisfy everyone, many campus leaders have now conceded it is easier to give in to protesters than to stand firm against their rule-breaking. (The president of the University of Wisconsin system said he is “disappointed” by UWM’s actions.)
Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University made concessions to encampment leaders this week. At Johns Hopkins, the school pledged to undertake a “timely review” of the matter of divestment, and to conclude student conduct proceedings related to the encampment. Hopkins Justice Collective, the group that organized the protests, characterized the agreement as “a step towards Johns Hopkins’ commitment to divest from the settler colonial state of Israel.”
In a campus-wide email on Monday, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said all students must vacate the campus quad where they had organized an anti-Israel encampment. He offered the campus protest leaders an audience with the body that reviews petitions for divestment. Other student groups can also petition for a meeting, he wrote.
Students who were arrested during the course of the protests may have a chance to take part in a so-called “restorative justice” process, whereby the university “would work to minimize the impact of the arrest on the participating students.” If protesters take responsibility for their actions, Eisgruber wrote, the school will conclude all disciplinary processes and allow the protesters to graduate this month.
At many more universities, top administrators — including university presidents — have met with demonstrators, giving them a chance to air their concerns even when they didn’t reach an agreement. University of Chicago administrators held several days of negotiations with encampment leaders before the talks fell apart and police cleared the protesters. The George Washington University President Ellen Granberg met over the weekend with student protesters who lectured her about “structural inequality” at GW and likened the university’s code of conduct to slavery and Jim Crow-era segregation, according to a video recording of the meeting.
College administrators’ negotiations to end the protests might bring a wave of good headlines and promises of quiet at campus commencements, the largest and most high-profile event of the year for most universities. But students haven’t said what they’ll do when school is back in session next year.
By promising meetings with university investment committees, the administrators are almost certainly guaranteeing that campus angst over the war in Gaza will not die down. Brown University President Christina Paxson pledged that protest leaders can meet with the university’s governing body to discuss divestment from companies that operate in Israel — in October, a year after the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and ignited the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East.
Correction: This article was updated to more accurately reflect negotiations between Princeton’s president and the protesters.
Jewish leaders worry that university presidents are appeasing anti-Israel protesters — at any cost
As universities around the country strike various deals with anti-Israel protesters to quell the turmoil on college campuses — including giving protesters a seat at the table regarding investment decisions — Jewish leaders fear that even these largely symbolic concessions could further poison the atmosphere for Jewish students.
Negotiating with protesters sets up a climate in which “Jewish students — who are not violating rules —- are being ignored, bullied and intimidated,” Mark Rotenberg, vice president and general counsel of Hillel International, told Jewish Insider. “People who violate university rules should not be rewarded with financial benefits and rewards for the violation of university rules,” he continued.
Shira Goodman, senior director of advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League, echoed that the series of deals struck all “ignore the needs of Jewish students increasingly at risk of harassment and intimidation, or worse, on campus.”
“It is critical to acknowledge the facts on the ground,” Goodman said. “For days and in some cases weeks, anti-Zionist protesters have openly violated school policies and codes of conduct by erecting encampments that have provided cover for students to fan the flames of antisemitism and wreak havoc on the entire campus community… The protesters’ aim and impact on many campuses has been to intimidate and alienate Jewish students for whom Zionism and a connection to Israel is a component of their Jewish identity. They must be held to account, not rewarded for their conduct.”
The nationwide “Gaza solidarity encampments” began on April 17 at Columbia University. On April 29, Northwestern University set the precedent for conceding to some of the protesters’ demands when its president, Michael Schill, reached an agreement with the activists to end their anti-Israel encampment, in which protesters camped out and engulfed campuses for weeks.
The protesters — most, but not all, of whom were students — took over buildings, blocked access to throughways, vandalized school property and chanted intimidating, antisemitic slogans while calling for an end to Israel’s war with Hamas and demanding that institutions cut ties with the Jewish state.
The deal at Northwestern complied with several of the students’ demands. These include allowing students to protest until the end of classes on June 1 so long as tents are removed, and to encourage employers not to rescind job offers for student protesters. The school will also allow students to weigh in on university investments — a major concession for students who have been demanding the university to divest from Israeli corporations.
The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to slam the strategy and call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. But a handful of schools, including University of Minnesota, Brown University, Rutgers University and University of California, Riverside followed suit — giving into the demands of encampment protesters in an effort to shut them down.
While all of the agreements center around divesting from Israel, resolutions at each school look different. At Rutgers, a proposed deal reached last Thursday includes divesting from corporations participating in or benefiting from Israel; terminating Rutgers’ partnership with Tel Aviv University; accepting at least 10 displaced students from Gaza; and displaying Palestinian flags alongside other existing international flags on campus. Eight out of the 10 demands were met, while Rutgers students, faculty and alumni continue to push for the two not yet agreed to — an official call for divestment as well as cutting ties with Tel Aviv University.
At Minnesota, meanwhile, protesters packed their tents after a 90-minute meeting with Jeff Ettinger, the school’s interim president. A tentative deal was reached, which could include divestment from companies such as Honeywell and General Dynamics, academic divestment from Israeli universities, transparency about university investments, a statement in support of Palestinian students, a statement in support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and amnesty for students arrested while protesting (nine people were arrested on campus on April 22).
In a statement to students and faculty, Ettinger wrote that coalition representatives will be given the opportunity to address the board of regents at its May 10 meeting to discuss divestment from certain companies. Public disclosure of university investments would be made available by May 7. Ettinger also said that the administration has asked university police not to arrest or charge anyone for participating in encampment activities in the past few days, and will not pursue disciplinary action against students or employees for protesting.
Rotenberg, who was general counsel of University of Minnesota for 20 years before coming to Hillel, told JI that he is working on a statement objecting to the settlements, which will be addressed to the school’s board of regents.
“I am hopeful that this is not a trend,” Rotenberg said. “No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded,” he continued. “That’s an upside-down world and it cannot be acceptable for individuals who violate university regulations to be given the benefits while our students’ voices are not heard.”
Rotenberg expressed ire over universities’ lack of consulting with Jewish faculty or students ahead of making the agreements. At Northwestern, seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism advisory committee stepped down from the body last Wednesday, citing Schill’s failure to combat antisemitism while quickly accepting the demands of anti-Israel protesters on campus.
“Any meeting with the board of regents at University of Minnesota that relates to these issues, must include Jewish voices — voices of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community who identify with and support Israel,” Rotenberg said.
“There are many ways to enforce university time, place and manner regulation that do not involve rewarding violators,” he continued, applauding the University of Connecticut, University of Florida and Columbia University for shutting down encampments while “eliminating the dangers of disruption and violence, without rewarding the violators.” At Columbia, for example, officers in riot gear removed demonstrators who had seized Hamilton Hall and suspended students who refused to dismantle their encampment.
Not all efforts to strike deals have been successful. At University of Chicago, for instance, negotiations to remove encampment tents from the campus central quad were suspended on Sunday, after protesters reached a stalemate with the university president, Paul Alivisatos.
“The Jewish community is right to be outraged,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told JI. “You don’t capitulate to groups that are in violation of reasonable restrictions by giving into demands. That is not moral leadership… the right statements are not negotiations with rule violators, but rather say that free expression is a core value but you have to abide by university policy in doing that,” she continued, noting that she has observed a “trend with private universities being more able to weather the storm, as well as just doing better than some of the public universities.”
Like Rotenberg, Elman singled out Minnesota for its “disheartening” snub of Jews.
“Their statement [on encampments] had nothing to say to the Jewish community,” Elman said. “Nothing condemning the rank antisemitism on display, in rhetoric and calls for violence against Israeli citizens. How can you not even in one paragraph of your statement condemn how antisemitism has infused these protests?”
In a statement to JI, Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, called on university administrators to “clear the encampments, equally enforce existing policies, and protect Jewish students and their friends and allies,” without capitulating to “supporters of Hamas.”
Experts said that it’s too early to know whether or not the concessions offered are merely symbolic — Brown, for example, plans to wait until October for its corporate board to vote on a proposal to divest from Israeli interests, as per its negotiation with protesters. But already, according to the ADL’s Goodman, administrations that have made deals “[incentivized] further rules violations and disruption and normalized antisemitism on campus.”
Goodman cautioned that as universities try to restore order during finals and graduations, more may strike similar deals. “Administrators may see this as an acceptable solution to resolve the current situation on their own campus… It will also be interesting to see how they determine whether protestors who committed no further code of conduct violations comply and what happens if they do not comply.”
Rotenberg warned, “The Jewish community has ample reason to fear when people take the law into their own hands and who, after being warned, decide to violate the norms of their community and then get rewarded for doing so.” Going down that path, he said, is “marching down the road to authoritarianism.”
Jewish leaders slam Northwestern agreement with anti-Israel protesters
After an anti-Israel encampment was erected at Northwestern University last week, the school’s president on Monday reached an agreement with protestors to end the encampment — acceding to several of their demands in the process, which drew strong condemnation from many in the Chicago and national Jewish communities.
In a letter to university President Michael Schill, the Jewish United Fund — Chicago’s Jewish federation, which also oversees Northwestern Hillel — excoriated the administrator for embracing “those who flagrantly disrupted Northwestern academics and flouted those policies.”
“The overwhelming majority of your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel betrayed. They trusted an institution you lead and considered it home. You have violated that trust,” the letter said. “You certainly heard and acted generously towards those with loud, at times hateful voices. The lack of any reassuring message to our community has also been heard loud and clear.”
The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced.
“For days, protestors openly mocked and violated Northwestern’s codes of conduct and policies by erecting an encampment in which they fanned the flames of antisemitism and wreaked havoc on the entire university community,” the groups said in a statement. “Rather than hold them accountable – as he pledged he would – President Schill gave them a seat at the table and normalized their hatred against Jewish students.”
In a document deemed “Agreement on Deering Meadow,” Schill agreed to allow students to protest until the end of classes on June 1 so long as tents are removed, and to encourage employers not to rescind job offers for student protestors. The school will also allow students to weigh in on university investments — a major concession for students who have been demanding the university to divest from Israeli corporations.
A section titled “inclusivity” pledged extra funding to programs supporting Muslim students and Palestinian faculty, and to build a campus house for Muslim students. (A university spokesperson declined to say whether Northwestern will also offer funds for the campus Hillel house, an independent organization that funds its own operations.) The agreement earned the praise of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It mentioned Jewish students once, in a section committing to “additional support for Jewish and Muslim students.”
After criticism mounted from Jewish leaders and stakeholders, Schill released a video Tuesday evening defending the agreement while also condemning antisemitism.
“I am proud of our community for achieving what has been a challenge across the country: a sustainable de-escalated path forward, one that prioritizes safety, safety for all of our students, for all of our Jewish students, for all of our Muslims students, all of our students,” Schill said. “This agreement reduces the risk of escalation which we have seen at so many of our peer institutions.”
Schill, who is Jewish, outlined his own connection to antisemitism — a great-grandfather was killed in a Russian pogrom, and several relatives were killed at Nazi concentration camps.
“I recognize that some slogans and expressions are subject to interpretation, but when I see a star of David with an X on it, when I see a picture of me with horns, or when I hear that one of our students has been called a dirty Jew, there is no ambiguity. This needs to be condemned by all of us and that starts with me,” said Schill.
A university spokesperson declined to comment when asked if the negotiations with the anti-Israel protesters also included representation from the university’s antisemitism task force, or Jewish students.
Northwestern’s deal with campus protesters comes on the heels of Columbia University’s failed negotiations with protestors, who had been in talks with Columbia administrators before they stormed an administrative building on Monday night.
Brown University’s leadership also reached a deal with a similar group of activists who had set up an encampment on the Providence, R.I., campus. The agreement stated that no Brown affiliates who were involved in the encampment will face retaliation from the university, and that leaders of the encampment will not have suspension or higher. No student groups will lose their formal recognition over members’ role in the encampment.
Perhaps most significantly, Brown President Christina Paxson agreed that the Brown Corporation, the university’s governing body, will vote in October on divestment from Israeli companies. The Corporation will also meet with representatives of the Brown Divest Coalition in May.
The text of the agreement and a letter sent from Paxson to the university community did not mention anything about Jewish and Israeli students, or about antisemitism.
