Let’s say that a university decides to acquiesce to the demands of anti-Israel protestors and divest its endowment from companies with business ties to Israel. It’s a plausible scenario, despite the many political, economic, and legal reasons to reject the idea: its unfair singling-out and demonization of Israel; the likelihood of reduced endowment returns and lower donations from alumni; state measures discouraging boycotts of Israel; and potential legal risk from…
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Campus activism surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict often presents a skewed narrative, painting Israel as the sole aggressor and magnifying its flaws beyond those of any other nation. While all countries have their shortcomings and deserve scrutiny, Israel stands out as a unique target of widespread university divestment campaigns, suggesting a disproportionate focus on its actions and policies. Through their rhetoric and demands, anti-Israel divestment campaigns can feed into the…
There are many reasons why it’s a bad idea for university endowments to divest from Israel. Divestment serves to delegitimize Israel and puts the onus for solving the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli conflict on only one side. It could also likely lead to economic ramifications, such as reduced alumni giving and lower returns, as well as open up the potential for heavier taxation of endowment income. Beyond all of these arguments, universities that decide to divest…
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As encampment protests riled college campuses throughout the Spring 2024 semester, some universities agreed to formally consider protestors’ demands that their endowments divest from companies with business interests in Israel. It is the latest iteration of the years-long Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to isolate Israel economically. Brown University reached an agreement for student protestors to take down their encampment and refrain from…
As students start returning to campuses with expected continuation of anti-Israel protests, JLens unpacks the demands and consequences of divestment campaigns.
On Wednesday, October 25, 2023, students at more than 100 U.S. college campuses staged walkouts demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israel and that their institutions divest from weapons companies allegedly involved with Israel. The walkouts, prompted by Israel’s military response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre, were organized primarily by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters and several other student groups. Some events included language that both explicitly and implicitly…
June 11, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Antisemitic incidents more than doubled in May compared to last year following Mideast violence, according to new data from ADL. Online antisemitism grew significantly during the pandemic, with COVID-19 ushering in “a new wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate in Europe,” the European Commission said in a report issued last week. Four members of the same family were killed in a pickup truck attack in London, Ontario in what…
March 12, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard was fined $50,000, suspended from the team's facilities and banned from team activities after he uttered an antisemitic slur while playing video games. Israeli society is increasingly divided, with 81 percent of Israelis stating that they believe that their society is increasingly divided, a 12 percent increase since 2017, according to a new ADL. survey. A panel of South Carolina lawmakers stripped explicit protections…
April 24, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3A series of anti-quarantine rallies took place across the country this week, several of which were sponsored in whole or part by identified extremists and featured antisemitic content. A new ADL survey released on Holocaust Remembrance Day found that more than half of America’s Jews have either experienced or witnessed an antisemitic incident over the past five years. And Israel’s year-long political stalemate has come to an end, with the…