Brown University Votes Against Divestment From Companies With Ties to Israel

Pro-Palestinian protesters rally at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on April 29, 2024. Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

Brown University has rejected demands from pro-Palestinian student activists to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

“Brown University will not divest from 10 companies described in a student-led divestment proposal as facilitating ’the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory,'” the Ivy League school announced on Oct. 9 following a vote by Brown Corporation, the custodian of the school’s $7.2 billion endowment.

In July, student activists submitted a proposal urging the university to sever financial ties with 10 companies—primarily in the aerospace and defense sectors—that they claim contribute to Israel’s “occupation of Gaza and the West Bank” and profit from the ongoing conflict in the region. As part of a deal with the university’s administrators, students agreed to dismantle their protest encampments ahead of commencement ceremonies in exchange for a formal vote on the proposal.

The proposal was then reviewed by Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM), which recommended against divestment in a vote of 8–2, with one abstention.

In its Sept. 30 report, ACURM stated that Brown does not have direct investments in the companies listed. Additionally, the school’s indirect investments—about 0.009 percent of the aggregate market value of those 10 companies, or 1 percent of the Brown endowment—were deemed too small to justify divestment on the grounds of causing any meaningful “social harm.”

A divestment of that size would merely serve as a “symbolic political statement,” ACURM said, noting that its own policy prohibits recommending actions that push a certain social or political agenda unrelated to the university’s financial interests.

The 10 firms targeted in the divestment proposal were Volvo, Airbus, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corporation, Textron, and Safariland.

On Oct. 8, Brown Corporation voted to accept ACURM’s recommendation, emphasizing that the university’s indirect exposure to those companies was “so small that it could not be directly responsible for social harm.”

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who chairs the university’s governing body, said in a joint statement with Brown President Christina Paxson that the university’s role is to educate, not to take sides in or attempt to solve the Middle Eastern war.

“Brown’s mission doesn’t encompass resolving or adjudicating global conflict,” Moynihan and Paxson wrote in a campus-wide message.

“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.”

Brown Divest Coalition, the pro-Palestinian student activist group behind the failed proposal, criticized the Oct. 8 vote.

“Brown’s Corporation board of cowards voted in secret to reject divestment,” the group wrote in all caps on Instagram. “All settler colonial institutions will fall.”

Brown’s activists are part of the broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has gained renewed traction on college campuses across the United States since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel by Hamas reignited the war in Gaza.

While BDS advocates hope to inflict economic pain on the Israeli government in order to change its policies toward Palestinians, critics argue that the movement is nowhere near its goals and, ultimately, makes life harder for Palestinians and Arabs living in Israel.

Dozens of states have adopted laws that condemn BDS as discriminatory or penalize businesses that engage in or call for boycotts against Israel. There is no anti-BDS law at the federal level.