Student activists said they want divestment from Israel. What does that mean?

Calls for divestment echoed across college campuses this spring as pro-Palestinian student protests across the country urged their schools to break from companies and institutions with business ties to Israel – especially those that support the ongoing war in Gaza.

It’s not a new request. College students have been using protests to urge divestment for decades in name of many social and political causes, but the scale of the movement this spring was sweeping. From Columbia University to Syracuse University to SUNY New Paltz, New York was a central stage for students’ divestment demands, which have varied in scope and level of detail.

Critics of the students have said many divestment demands are vague and won’t have a meaningful impact on geopolitics. Many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, called the movement antisemitic because it seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state.

But what exactly does it mean to call for colleges to divest from Israel? Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about calls for universities to divest.

Why are pro-Palestine students calling for divestment?

Today’s calls for divestment from Israel are rooted in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls for economic consequences for corporations and institutions that support Israel and its policies against Palestinians. The movement gained more awareness this spring as civilian casualties in the war between Israel and Hamas mounted, spurring widespread calls for a ceasefire. More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead and hundreds kidnapped. While the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, it estimates that at least two-thirds of the Palestinians killed are women and children.

Protests have been organized by coalitions of student groups that vary campus to campus, although often involve local chapters of organizations that have long opposed Israeli policies toward Palestinians like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.

What is a college endowment?

College endowments have been at the heart of students’ demands for their schools to divest – a term that describes selling or disposing of an asset or investment. Colleges and universities maintain endowments, which are composed of tax-exempt donations and investments, to pay for research, salaries, financial aid and emergencies amid potentially turbulent economic cycles. In short, they are the financial backbone of educational institutions. While the funds can be earmarked for specific goals or used for unrestricted spending, they are intended to grow over time as the school typically spends less than its annual return each year. For example, last fiscal year, Columbia University spent about 5.2% of its $13.6 billion endowment while reporting a trailing 10-year return of 8%.

The median endowment last fiscal year was about $209 million, according to a survey from the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Of the 688 U.S. colleges and universities surveyed, just 18 institutions reported endowments more than $10 billion, with Harvard University leading with about $49.5 billion. Columbia University and Cornell University were the only New York schools above the $10 billion mark. New York University’s endowment fund totaled $5.9 billion. The University of Rochester’s endowment was about $3.3 billion.

Critics of divestment demands have noted that university endowments, while hefty, are not big enough to influence global economic conditions or shift policy.

What exactly are student activists demanding? 

In the context of higher education, divesting from Israel would generally mean colleges reassessing their investments to identify and potentially divest from companies linked to Israel and its war efforts.

Pro-Palestine student protesters have argued that universities remain complicit in Palestinian suffering until officials divest from Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza. Some campus demands have been more specific, including divesting from major weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel, stop accepting research funding from Israel’s military, ending partnerships with Israeli universities and to disclose their investment profiles. Columbia University students, for example, have demanded the sale of university holdings in funds and specific businesses that they said are profiting from Israel’s invasion, including Google – which has a cloud computing deal with the Israeli Ministry of Defense – and Airbnb, which currently permits listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Critics have described student demands to divest as overly broad, arguing that there isn’t a clear distinction of what it means for a company to benefit from Israel’s occupation of areas where Palestinians lived.

Are college endowments invested in Israel?

To an extent, certainly, although it is difficult to know to what degree. Endowments typically don’t disclose their investments, which has spurred protesters to also call for a greater level of transparency. Wealthy universities spread their endowments across a vast spectrum of investments, which makes determining where it all goes extremely difficult. Universities with large endowments also generally don’t manage the funds directly. They use outside professionals to invest money in areas like real estate, private equity and stocks. A Washington Post examination of public documents found few direct holdings in Israel and defense stocks, although public universities’ annual reports and regulatory filings are typically scant on specifics.

Over the past two decades, roughly 100 U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel that total $375 million, according to a U.S. Department of Education database.

What other student protests have driven calls for divestment?

Student protesters have a history of using divestment as a tactic to encourage colleges and universities to adopt the principles of social and political movements. Their success has varied. When students pushed their universities to divest from companies that supported or profited from South African apartheid in the 1980s, 155 schools, including Columbia, ended up at least partially divesting. Students successfully pushed some colleges to divest their endowment funds from the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There’s also an ongoing movement pushing for schools to divest from fossil fuels, and roughly 250 universities have committed to doing so. Some schools – Columbia being the first – have also chosen to divest from private prison companies.

How feasible is it for universities to divest in the context of Israel?

Researchers contend that practically, it would be challenging for universities and colleges to divest from Israel. Schools tend to have less direct control over their investments today than they did in the 1980s, when they were fielding demands to divest from South Africa. Endowments are often managed by external investment experts, which makes identifying what companies are connected to Israel complicated. These managers have a fiduciary responsibility to act on behalf of the university’s interests regardless of political pressure. Wealthy universities generally maintain a vast network of investments tied up in portfolios that aren’t intended to be altered by the tweaking of a single stock or bond.

Israel has also established numerous research and development partnerships with U.S. entities that would be difficult to break. Further complicating things, 35 states have anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions laws barring public institutions from isolating Israel through divestment. There’s also the matter of potential backlash. Divesting could provoke backlash from donors, alumni and political groups – all of which aren’t exactly incentives from the perspective of college leaders.

Do divestments actually move the needle on global issues?

It’s debatable. Research on previous divestment efforts hasn’t found much evidence that selling assets adversely impacts targeted industries, companies or countries. With that being said, calling for divestment through protests can be an effective tool in mobilizing a movement and raising awareness.

Have any schools been receptive to calls for divestment? 

With a few exceptions, the vast majority of colleges and universities have refused to comply with students’ demands to divest. In perhaps the biggest win for protesters, Brown University agreed to be more transparent about its investments and to vote in October on a proposal to divest the school’s $6.6 billion endowment from companies affiliated with Israel’s war in Gaza. Northwestern University also struck a deal with protesters to reestablish an advisory committee on university investments. The University of Michigan said it would “make a good faith effort” to provide as much information as possible about the university’s holdings in private companies. Only the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and Evergreen State College in Washington said they would divest from companies profiting from the war.