Universities’ capitulation to protestors

June 1, 2024 • 11:15 am

It’s my day off, but I have to post at least one piece of news. This comes from Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which is a pro-Israel organization whose reporting seems pretty accurate (there is lots of documentation, for example, in the article below). And that article, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot, is a longish summary of what happened in the last two months with encampments, arrests, punishments, capitulations, and so on.

If you’re interested in the campus protests, you’ll want to read the whole thing, but I’ll just post one excerpt about the concessions that universities made to protestors. Some are serious, others performative, but all were made to stop encampments and protestors.  Maybe I’m a grumpy old man, but I would stop illegal disruptions, like encampments, in their tracks using sanctions, and would be very loath to “bargain” with protestors who enacted illegal disruptions. (If protests are legal and student “demands” worth considering, it’s another matter. But institutional neutrality, at least a Chicago, would prohibit almost any concessions for protestors, as it did indeed.)

The excerpt:

At Northwestern University concessions included a promise to reveal its investments and to establish an investment advisory board with student participation which will advise trustees, student involvement in assessing university vendors, as well as two professorships and five scholarships for Palestinians, and a ‘Middle Eastern and North African’ residential unit.

Brown University promised protestors that after a student presentation divestment would be voted on by trustees. The students identified a number of aerospace and defense companies they alleged were complicit in “grave human rights violations” including Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics.

  • At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee administrators agreed to permit anti-Israel students to present the case for divestment to trustees, called the situation a “plausible genocide,” condemned destruction in Gaza, and demanded a ceasefire. The chancellor later apologized for weighing in on “deeply complex geopolitical and historical issues.”
  • The University of Washington agreed to demands from the “United Front for Palestinian Liberation” including student representation on a divestment committee, free tuition for 20 Gazan students, a faculty committee to examine academic boycotts, and a “Center for Scholarship of Palestine.”
  • Within the University of California system the Berkeley administration agreed to a divestment task force and the chancellor called for a ‘permanent ceasefire.’ The Riverside administration agreed to similar terms and also terminated a variety of overseas programs including in Israel, which had been the target of long term pressure.
  • Goldsmiths College agreed to student demands after a five week occupation, including scholarships for Palestinian students, a review of investment policy, and renaming a theater in honor of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
  • Trinity University announced “divestment from equity investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN Blacklist in this regard.” It will also bring in Gazan students and faculty and review student exchange programs. The decision came after protestors blockaded the exhibit of the Book of Kells which earns the school some €350,000 a week during the summer.
  • Union Theological Seminary announced that it would “identify all investments, both domestic and global, that support and profit from the present killing of innocent civilians in Palestine” in order to “withdraw support from companies profiting from the war.”
  • The New School for Social Research agreed to hold a divestment vote in June “from industries implicated in military and police violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and all global militarized conflict such as companies or subsidiaries involved in weapons manufacturing, military supplies and equipment, military communication, and public surveillance technology.”
  • Bard College announced an agreement with protestors that included disclosure of investments, strengthening ties with a branch campus in East Jerusalem, and “support of appropriate challenges — political, social, and legal— to Executive Order 157,” banning investments in institutions or companies that boycott Israel.

The most extreme example of concessions to students came at Sonoma State University where the president, Mike Lee, agreed to fully divest from Israel, permit an SJP ‘advisory council’ to oversee the agreement with protestors, introduce ’Palestine’ and a ‘Palestine Studies’ program, and to ban all Israel programs. Cal State administrators, however, quickly accused Lee of “insubordination” and forced his retraction and then retirement. Acting President Nathan Evans then met with protestors after they disrupted commencement.

Many of these colleges, in their concessionary pronouncements, violated any principle of institutional neutrality. These violations include terminating programs to Israel, calling for “permanent ceasefire,” and declaring that they’d divest.  Preferential admission of students from Gaza is surely illegal under Title IV (see below), as is preferential hiring of scholars from Gaza, a Title VI violation involving employment discrimination.

My view is that when the dust settles after graduation, the protesters will have accomplished very little with their demands, and certainly will not have done anything to influence the war.  The problem is that the Gaza issue will remain alive for some time, even after Israel destroys Hamas, and so the whole thing is likely to start up again in the fall, turning colleges once more into Social Justice Factories instead of places of learning.

Here’s a few words from the article about where I was a few weeks ago, and where Maarten Boudry tells me things are even worse than depicted below.

The most significant and real Israel boycotts have emerged in the Netherlands. Ghent University [JAC: Not in the Netherlands!] severed ties with three Israeli research institutions on the grounds they are “problematic according to the Ghent University human rights test” while Leiden University has put exchange programs with Israeli universities on hold and “will assess all our current ties with Israeli institutions and joint research projects.” The university also stated it will also not admit Israeli students from Tel Aviv University or Hebrew University “until after an evaluation.”

And the summary of just this section (the whole article is much longer):

Overall the universities appear to have provided a mixture of performative and real concessions. Some appear to be simply delaying tactics, postponing confrontations until the fall semester. Funding Gazan students and creating ‘Palestine studies’ centers, however, guarantees future campus radicalization by introducing anti-Israel extremists. The privileged admission of Palestinian students also appears to be in violation of Title IV of the Higher Education Act while the creation of residential and Muslim-only spaces reinforces campus identity politics.

Observers also note that most institutions invest in index funds rather than individual stocks, making removal of specific companies difficult or impossible. Nor is it assured that even individual institutions with less complex finances could divest. William College’s decision not to divest and not to embrace ‘environmental, social, and governance’ (ESG) guidelines was specifically explained as a function of the inherent practical and moral difficulty involved. State anti-BDS laws also complicate divestment.

It’s been a very long academic year. . . .

17 thoughts on “Universities’ capitulation to protestors”

  1. Over here at Pretty Good Suburban Commuter University the endowment is only about a billion dollars (and only Canadian dollars eh?), of which about 0.6% is invested in equity funds that hold stock in the three companies targeted by our local activists. Moving that ~$7M won’t move the needle on the war. But as TP would point out here, the issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.

      1. God, is Judy Rebick (author of the tweet Jon Kay cites) still around? The only thing nuttier than “Gays for Gaza” is “Second-Wave Feminists for Hamas”.

  2. So interesting that the protesters want universities to cut ties academically with Israel while many of the same universities have long standing global centers in China (with large “reeducation camps” for its Muslim population) or the Middle East (where human rights violations are rampant, or in the case of Saudi Arabia actual genocide (by the protesters definition) is occurring on the Muslim population in Yemen). I wonder why? Hmm….

  3. Adding ‘Palestine Studies’ is farcical. Most Middle East Studies departments/centers are already predominantly Arab/Muslim.

    1. All the “studies” departments arose from protests (didn’t exist in my day, 1969-73).

      They’re just jumping on the bandwagon.

  4. The whole article is a sickening indictment, but an indictment against what? Certainly academia, but also the arts, literature, the entirety of society? Even clinical psychologists are now being blacklisted—and thereby purged—for showing any sympathy for Israel (https://jewishinsider.com/2024/05/therapy-jewish-mental-health-professionals-oct-7-war-gaza-antisemitism/). And we’re all aware of the Boston-area project to map Jewish businesses and institutions. What purpose could that possibly serve other than to intimidate, demonize, and isolate Jews. (See here https://www.adl.org/boston-mapping-project for an FAQ from the ADL. I won’t dignify the mapping project web site by citing a direct link.)

    I found the following sentence in Joffe’s article the most chilling:

    “It is likely that that massacre and Israeli counterattack have given license to a long-desired purge of Jews from academia.”

    But his article is much more sweeping than that. Is the world trying to purge itself of Jews altogether?

  5. If Boeing is one the supposedly evil companies supporting Israel, the student protesters at Brown should take a vow never to fly on a Boeing aircraft. I’ll enjoy seeing how this impacts their pricey vacations and visits to their parents.

  8. My solution: spinal transplants for college administrators. They have accepted a parental role in their institutions and need to step up and be good parents in a crisis or when their campuses are out of control. When members of the college community throw a temper tantrum they need to isolate the tantrum throwers until the tantrum is over, keeping everyone safe from its effects. Then discuss with tantrum throwers whatever triggered the tantrum. Discussions during the tantrum are ineffectual and relay the message that throwing a tantrum is a good way to get what you want. Dealing with two year olds and two year old wannabes isn’t rocket science but it does take a calm, consistent approach that does not reward unwanted behavior. Or so I hear. 😉

  9. Jerry, you have a strange definition of “capitulation.” Brown ended the encampment on its main green by agreeing to do nothing more than to hear out the protestors. A committee of five trustees heard a presentation from student leaders. They agreed to allow the full board of trustees to vote on their proposals in the fall. Brown didn’t give in to a single demand, and it is likely they will reject the student proposals in the fall.
    That’t not “capitulation.” That’s opening a dialogue and listening. Nothing wrong with that – it’s what a university is supposed to be, a place open to free exchange of ideas.

    1. Au contraire,
      Unless the full Board of Trustees routinely votes on individual investment decisions by the Finance Committee of the Board, this is a capitulation. It means that any group that wants to expose investment decisions to the capricious whims of financially naive wastrels on the Board need only occupy the campus for a few days.

      1. The evidence that what Leslie says is true is that it’s already happened. At my university the previous group of naive wastrels demanded the university divest from fossil fuels. Now the same wastrels have come for Israel. Hard to know what’s next on their shopping list but I’m betting on something about either gender wang or affirmative action.

  10. The encampment protest at the University of Toronto carries on, secure inside the University’s own temporary but sturdy fence encircling the Front Campus. To its credit, the University has made no concessions at all in its discussions with the occupiers, only trying (unsuccessfully) to get them to do something about sanitation that doesn’t involve using the large lawn as their leach field. It did tie a vague offer of a committee to look at investments to substantive operational changes in the encampment, which the spokescritters immediately rejected.

    On Monday 27 May, the University served notice to the occupiers that they were deemed to be trespassing and has filed an application for a Court injunction to compel them to clear out, which the Toronto Police would theoretically be bound to enforce. The Court has set 13 and 14 June to hear both sides. Stalemate until then. The track record of injunction applications (in Montréal) so far has not been encouraging: all denied. The police have shown no interest in taking it on themselves to enforce the University’s property rights and the University seems not to have the private muscle to clear them off itself, the way a squad of bouncers would remove an unwelcome patron from a tavern. If the injunction is not granted, the encampment might be there forever, like all the other encampments scattered around the province.

    It should be noted (and has by some media) that the protest encampment is heavily dominated by organized labour unions, not so many students except as mouthpieces. The unions can assign members in rotation for the equivalent of strike picket duty and last a long long time. The head of the Ontario Federation of Labour has said that if the University (i.e., the cops) moves against the protesters “they will have to come through the workers” and a senior hack in the Canadian Union of Public Employees pledged “we will be your human shields”. These sound like threats of violence. (Since one of these people is a slightly built woman and the other is an effeminate homosexual man, it seems unlikely that either of them will be anywhere near the site when/if heads get banged together. I suppose they have people for that…)

    1. In BC:

      14 arrested at pro-Palestinian protest that blocked trains and traffic in East Vancouver: VPD

      https://bc.ctvnews.ca/14-arrested-at-pro-palestinian-protest-that-blocked-trains-and-traffic-in-east-vancouver-vpd-1.6909430

      But they’re still at the universities

      “Police have arrested one person during the clearance of pro-Palestinian protesters who were blocking a main intersection at the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver.

      But there was no obvious move against a protest encampment that has occupied a sports field at the campus for a month.”

      https://bc.ctvnews.ca/police-move-on-pro-palestinian-protesters-at-ubc-campus-1.6905542

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