Brown University rejects pro-Palestinian protesters’ demand to divest from Israel

The Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island was among the first this past spring to agree to hold a vote on divestment in exchange for a peaceful end to its student encampment.

By Andrew Lapin, JTA

Brown University’s board of governors has rejected a closely scrutinized, student-led proposal to divest from companies with business in Israel.

The rejection allays concerns expressed by some pro-Israel groups that the divestment movement was gaining momentum after the pro-Palestinian student encampments at universities across the country last spring.

“Baruch Hashem,” Rabbi Josh Bolton, executive director of Brown/RISD Hillel, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, using a Hebrew term akin to “Thank God.”

Bolton said the vote “is a definitive and powerful rejection of divestment on every level.” Coming so soon after the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel was also significant, he said:

“After a year of insanity, antisemitic sloganeering, maligning of Jewish students, this is a day that we can be proud of our institutions.”

The vote was in the works and debated for months before taking place on Tuesday, months before it was expected, by secret ballot. The Brown Corporation agreed with an internal committee that had voted 8-2, with one abstention, to recommend rejecting divestment.

“The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts,” the board wrote in a lengthy statement Wednesday explaining its vote.

The Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island was among the first this past spring to agree to hold a vote on divestment in exchange for a peaceful end to its student encampment.

The encampments often pushed for divestment, while Jewish students reported being antagonized by the pro-Palestinian activists. Protesters at Brown were motivated by, among other factors, a Palestinian student who was shot in Vermont in November in an apparent hate crime.

After dismantling their encampment, Brown student activist leaders were permitted to make their formal case for divestment to the board; similar deals were also struck at Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota and elsewhere.

An internal committee then considered the case but kept its report private until Wednesday, after the formal vote was announced. Leading up to the vote, Brown would only confirm that it was scheduled for October but provided no other details on timing.

Among its chief rationales for rejecting divestment, the committee determined that Brown was not heavily nor directly invested in the 10 companies included in the proposal “and that any indirect exposure for Brown in these companies is so small that it could not be directly responsible for social harm.”

Those 10 companies included Boeing, General Electric, Motorola, Volvo and Northrop Grumman, all of which the divestment proposal said “facilitate the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.”

The school’s leadership declared it was satisfied with the process and the results of the divestment vote.

“Brown’s mission doesn’t encompass influencing or adjudicating global conflict,” Christina Paxson, the school’s Jewish president, and chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a joint statement shared with the school, alumni and press.

“Our greatest contribution to the cause of peace for which so many members of the community have advocated is to continue to educate future leaders and produce scholarship that informs and supports their work. A decision to divest would greatly jeopardize our ability to continue to make this contribution.”

Paxson and Moynihan continued, “If the Corporation were to divest, it would signal to our students and scholars that there are ‘approved’ points of view to which members of the community are expected to conform. This would be wholly inconsistent with the principles of academic freedom and free inquiry, and would undermine our mission of serving the community, the nation and the world.”

Some Jews had been angry that the vote was happening at all. One Jewish member of the Brown Corporation resigned in protest over it, saying the school had capitulated to extremists.

He was rebuked by Paxson, who has long argued that the vote was happening in accordance with Brown’s usual procedures for considering divestment-related proposals.

At least 100 Brown faculty members publicly supported divestment, while the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups have ardently argued against college Israel divestments in general.

Dozens of Republican state attorneys general had warned Brown that any move toward divestment could result in pushback from their states.

The Rhode Island chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, which had advocated for divestment alongside other pro-Palestinian groups, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Brown Divest Coalition, together with the national Students for Justice in Palestine movement, posted a profane message on Instagram directed at the Corporation and Paxson, concluding with “Free Palestine” and, in all caps, “All settler colonial institutions will fail.”

Paxson and Moynihan concluded their communication on the vote with a plea that the university community maintain civility even in disagreement.

“Whether you support, oppose or have no opinion on the decision of the Corporation, we hope you will do so with a commitment to sustaining, nurturing and strengthening the principles that have long been at the core of our teaching and learning community,” they said.

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