FILE – Activists hold placards from an upper-floor window of the Rhode Island School of Design building on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Providence, Rhode Island. Students and supporters occupied part of the building. The school condemns Israel’s war effort in Gaza and demands that the school divest from investments that benefit Israel. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – On college campuses across the country, pro-Palestinian protesters are chanting “Discover, take away!” We will not stop and we will not rest. ”
Some are currently winning the first of these two demands. It promises to provide information about how much university endowments are invested in companies profiting from the Israel-Hamas war.
As part of that effort, the University of Minnesota, for example, announced this week that about $5 million (less than a quarter of 1%) of its $2.27 billion endowment investment is tied to Israeli companies or U.S. defense contractors. It revealed that.
For Ali Abu, 19, a University of Minnesota student and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, the disclosure is the first step in what he described as “just the beginning of our fight.” It’s Ayumu. He said the ultimate goal remains divestment. A meeting with the university’s Board of Trustees is scheduled for Friday.
But Jewish leaders have expressed concerns, and endowment experts say it is difficult to predict the potential impact of the disclosure. They say transparency has its pros and cons.
“I think the widespread trend toward transparency is probably healthy. I think people get nervous when dealing with very tense situations. Once the information is out there, what happens to that information?” Former investor Kevin Maloney, manager and current dean of the Department of Finance at Bryant University in Rhode Island, said:
Endowment Funds has very little federal regulation compared to other fundraising agencies. And there have long been calls for greater transparency.
Maloney said portfolio managers may simply say they don’t want to worry about attracting attention.
Universities’ endowments are increasingly being sold by activists.
For the past decade, students have called on universities to cut financial ties with fossil fuel producers, weapons manufacturers, tobacco companies and prison companies. In many cases, it has been carried out in conjunction with students of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to sever ties between Israel and the companies that support it.
Most universities stand firm, saying their investments provide financial support for future generations and should be protected from politics.
Neil Stoughton, a finance professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, said universities are being cautious about releasing information because they don’t want to compete with other universities or institutions. He likened it to billionaires’ reluctance to share investment tips.
“Those types of people won’t tell you exactly where their money is,” says Stoughton, former director of the Endowment Research Center at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. He currently does research and consulting at the University of Arizona.
At the University of Michigan, officials responded to recent calls for divestment by saying the university’s decades-long policy “shields endowments from political pressure and ensures that investment decisions are based solely on financial factors such as risk and return.” to do so.”
Michigan’s policy allows for exceptions, such as divestments from tobacco companies and apartheid-era South Africa, but the bar is “intentionally set extremely high.”
Officials said only that there were no direct investments with Israeli companies and indirect investments through the fund amounted to less than $15 million, a small portion of the university’s $18 billion endowment.
Universities also cite the complexities surrounding divestment. Much of the endowment is often held in investment funds that bundle many assets together. Tracking exactly where money is spent can be difficult, and universities typically cannot be selective among the fund’s investments.
Other schools that have taken the public route include Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, which said in an agreement posted on its website last week that it would answer insider questions about its holdings. .
The University of California, Riverside also announced that it would begin posting information online to provide “a complete list of portfolio companies and full disclosure of investment sizes.”
And in New York state, Vassar College has vowed to “increase transparency regarding large independent contractors” and reconsider its defense divestment proposal.
The University of Minnesota’s decision to provide more details about donations was made as part of a deal to end a protester encampment on its Minneapolis campus. Chants in recent weeks have included: “No more money, no more money. No more money for Israel’s crimes.”
Ty Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said disclosure would only lead to calls for divestment and harm Jewish students without actually changing the tide of fighting in Gaza. He said there was a risk.
“From my experience, they will not relent towards the regime unless we accept all their demands,” he said. “And the government is not in a position to accept all their demands. So my advice is not that they will accept it, but don’t negotiate on it. You’re not going to make them happy. there is no.”
Abu, one of the leaders of the protest, said students will demand full disclosure at Friday’s board meeting of all investments over $5 million that university leaders have already detailed. Stated.
Information provided by the school lists the names of various companies in which the university holds investments or funds. The list also includes defense contractor Honeywell, which protesters named by name at the rally. Honeywell did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Professor Abu said the goal is to “target all weapons companies in which the university has investments, as well as all stocks, contracts and bonds of countries that are complicit in war crimes.”
___
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Posted by Collin Binkley in Washington, DC.
