One of the core demands over the past week by the pro-Palestinian student groups at Columbia University has been for the school to withdraw investment funds from what they describe as companies profiting from Israel’s military action in Gaza.
Columbia’s endowment is worth $13.6 billion and is managed by a university-owned investment firm.
The request from Columbia University Apartheid Divest — a coalition of student groups behind the movement — includes, among other steps, divesting endowment funds from several weapons manufacturers and tech companies that do business with Israel’s government. The group has described those companies as profiting “from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and military occupation of Palestine.” Israel denies accusations of genocide.
This is not the first time such demands have been made. Columbia has a history of student activism, from the now-famous 1968 student occupation of multiple campus buildings to raise awareness of the Vietnam War, to hunger strikes over issues such as the university’s expansion in Upper Manhattan.
Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
And protesting students also have a history of pushing for Columbia to divest in different movements.
In 2000, the university established an advisory committee on socially responsible investing, made up of students, faculty and alumni, to provide feedback to the managers of Columbia’s endowment investments. The group has a formal process for submitting divestment proposals.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest submitted a formal proposal to the committee for withdrawing investments related to Israel in December, which has yet to yield success. Students at Columbia College, the university’s undergraduate school, voted to support the divestment proposal last week.
And students are continuing to push for the university to adopt the proposal.
“We are building on the legacy of decades of students who are called for freedom, for liberation, for equality and for an end to apartheid systems across the world … for all oppressed peoples,” Columbia student organizer Catherine Elias told CNN earlier this week.
Heading a nationwide South Africa divestment movement
Currently, Columbia lists five areas where it refrains from investing: tobacco, private prison operations, thermal coal, Sudan and fossil fuels — all decisions that were made in the past decade. But the school’s divestment history goes back even farther.
In the 1980s, a group of Columbia students began to call on the school to cut financial ties with companies doing business in South Africa over its apartheid racial segregation policy.
Daniel Armstrong, who founded the Coalition for a Free South Africa as a Columbia student in early 1980s and now owns a mentoring business in Los Angeles, said the effort began with fliers and guest speakers but grew in the subsequent years.
Students “began seeing that this isn’t a crazy position to have,” Armstrong told CNN. “Then our student newspaper began supporting it, which I thought was a huge step as far as legitimizing the demand for divestment.”
In 1983, Columbia’s student Senate approved the move to divest with nearly unanimous support, but the university’s trustees said no.
In April 1985, students led a three-week student demonstration against Columbia’s investments in South Africa, the New York Times reported at the time. The demonstration involved around 150 students blocking access to the entrance of a campus building.