Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

A core demand at the heart of the protests over the war in Gaza currently roiling college campuses across the US and around the world: that universities divest from Israel.

(That means withdrawing funds their endowments have invested in companies that are linked to Israel.)

Divestment has been a tactic embraced by protesters in previous student movements opposing the South African apartheid regime and fossil fuel companies contributing to climate change. Those calls for divestment have had varying degrees of success — to what degree depends on how you define that success in terms of their financial or political impact. 

Students' demands today — coming as the Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war tops 34,000 — borrow from the traditions of those historical movements. But will it work the same way?

Here are three questions that can help us explore that.

Two major divestment movements have laid the groundwork for the current protests.

In the 1980s, student activists pushed their universities to divest from firms that supported or profited from South African apartheid. Politically, they were effective: 155 universities ultimately divested. And in 1986, the US government also bowed to pressure from protesters and enacted a divestment policy.

Along with increasing protests within South Africa led by organizations including the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, and trade unions, that kind of international pressure helped force the white South African government to begin negotiations that ultimately ended apartheid, at least officially.

A few things helped make this movement successful. For one, protesters faced little pushback at the time given that much of the political establishment was embarrassed by the US’s ties to apartheid. Investments in commingled funds that are now favored by universities were not as widely used back then. And the interconnected, global economy as we know it today had not yet taken shape, making it practicable to isolate companies based in South Africa or with major South African interests. 

Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images

Currently, there is an ongoing movement to push universities to divest from fossil fuels, popularized by climate activist and Middlebury professor Bill McKibben. About 250 universities have at least committed to do so after years of campus activism, though this has overall had a negligible impact on the finances of fossil fuel companies (with the exception of coal companies), suggesting that it may not have yet had the impact hoped. 

Practically, fossil fuel divestment was also feasible. Though there are some quibbles about what constitutes a fossil fuel company, it’s a generally easy-to-define group.

It’s also become easier to disentangle fossil fuel investments from an endowment’s portfolio because fund managers have started to offer purportedly fossil fuel-free funds, seemingly in response to external pressure. 

Universities divesting broadly from Israeli companies or companies that do business in Israel might not have much of a financial impact.

“The data suggests that, economically, anything short of official sanctions by important economic partners such as the United States or European Union would be unlikely to produce anything near the kind of economic pressure BDS supporters envision,” researchers at the Brookings Institution concluded.

Broad divestment from Israel would also be very difficult. Israel has many research and development partnerships with US entities, and is also a major player in industries such as computer technology, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. Many major multinational companies do business in Israel or with Israel, such as Google and Cisco. To exclude them entirely would require withdrawing from many kinds of commingled investment funds.

Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images

It might be more practicable for protesters to target a specific list of companies, as students at Brown University are doing. They are seeking divestment from 11 companies that Brown directly invests in, accounting for less the 10 percent of its endowment: AB Volvo, Airbus, Boeing, DXC, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, Oaktree Capital, Raytheon, and United Technologies.

The question, however, is where universities would draw the line.

“There’s the very subjective nature of the assessment of the war in Gaza that I think puts you in a very different terrain than the fossil fuel divestment debate,” Cleveland said. “It will just be so arbitrary about who you’re going to include and not include.”

And even with more piecemeal efforts to divest, universities and students would need to weigh any financial hit to the endowment that would hurt the university community and its mission.

It’s hard to know exactly what the costs of divestment to universities might be in the context of Israel. Chris Marsicano, an assistant professor of education studies at Davidson College, told PBS that research including his own has shown that divestment in the fossil fuel context had “at worst, a negligible effect for institutions like Stanford and Dayton and Syracuse and, in many cases, may have had a positive effect.”

Calls for divestment at universities have always been a means to a greater end, whether it be bringing down an apartheid regime or reversing climate change. 

In the current context, what student protesters really want is an end to the fighting in Gaza, and the end of what they see as the injustices Israel, as the biggest cumulative beneficiary of US foreign aid, has exacted on Palestinians for decades. Whether universities ultimately divest and whether that has any material financial impact on Israel might be less important to the protesters than whether their calls for divestment alone can make the status quo politically untenable. 

The question is whether the political impact of the protests is lining up with that goal. 

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have already latched on to the protests as an example of America’s need for their brand of “law and order.” 

Both US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have publicly addressed the protests on US college campuses, suggesting that they are feeling at least some pressure to react — but are not bowing to it yet. 

“Demanding financial disclosure and asking US universities to break their financial ties has proven to be very powerful and threatening,” said Jennie Stephens, a professor of sustainability science and policy at Northeastern University who has written a forthcoming book about climate justice on campus. 

How powerful and threatening, however, remains to be seen.

—Nicole Narea, senior reporter

James D. Morgan/Getty Images

Are you enjoying the Today, Explained newsletter? Forward it to a friend; they can sign up for it right here. 

And as always, we want to know what you think. Specifically: If there is a topic you want us to explain or a story you’re curious to learn more about, let us know by filling out this form or just replying to this email. 

Today's edition was produced and edited by Caroline Houck. We'll see you tomorrow!

This email was sent to you. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe. If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution.

View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.

Vox Media, 1701 Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.