Brown University committee: Divest from firms profiting from ‘occupation of Palestinian land’

“I am really excited that ACCRIP took this step towards divestment,” Tal Frieden, a member of student group Jewish Voice for Peace, told The Brown Daily Herald.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

On Monday, the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies (ACCRIP) issued a formal recommendation that the Rhode Island university divest from “any company that profits from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.”

The nonbinding recommendation was made to President Christina Paxson and the Corporation, the university’s highest governing body.

According to the Brown University website, ACCRIP “considers issues of ethical and moral responsibility in the investment policies of Brown University.” Committee members include students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the university.

At a Tuesday meeting, committee members discussed their criteria for selecting which specific companies Brown should divest from.

The recommendation follows a Dec. 2 vote by ACCRIP urging the university divest from “companies identified as facilitating human rights abuses in Palestine.”

Six of the nine committee members present at the meeting voted in favor of the motion. Two voted against the motion, while another committee member abstained.

“I am really excited that ACCRIP took this step towards divestment,” Tal Frieden, a member of student group Jewish Voice for Peace, told The Brown Daily Herald.

“We know that this is the first Ivy League university to recommend divestment from companies committing human rights violations in Palestine, and we’re really excited for other universities to join this movement,” Frieden said.

Student group Brown Students for Israel issued a Facebook post strongly condemning the vote.

“Moreover, we are appalled by the disregard and disrespect to which anti-Divest students, faculty, alumni and even ACCRIP members, were subjected in the course of today’s meeting,” the group wrote.

In March 2019, Brown’s undergrad student body voted in favor of a referendum to “divest all stocks, funds, endowment and other monetary instruments from companies complicit in human rights abuses in Palestine.”

That vote was dismissed by President Paxson. “Brown’s endowment is not a political instrument to be used to express views on complex social and political issues, especially those over which thoughtful and intelligent people vehemently disagree,” she said.

But members of the student group Brown Divest continued to press on, repeatedly presenting their case to Brown’s advisory committee.