The protests rocking campuses across the United States are not only demanding an end to the war in Gaza;

By Rob Wyle NBC News

In addition to the Gaza ceasefire, demonstrators on college campuses across the country are demanding their schools disengage from all financial support for Israel and divest from the US ally.

The term divestment usually refers to the sale of shares in companies that do business with a particular country. This has always been one of the goals of the movement that seeks to stop what it considers to be hostile operations carried out by Israel and to put an end to the expansion of what the United Nations is doing. It was ruled that they were illegal settlements.

Now, university protesters hope to force their universities to divest in order to financially pressure companies that do business with Israel to achieve both goals.

“The university must do something about what we are demanding, regarding the genocide that is happening in Gaza,” said Columbia University student and protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian, noting that the students have been pushing for Colombia to divest from Israel ever since. 2002. “They Must Stop Investing in This Genocide.”

Israel launched its war on Gaza shortly after the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, which led to the death of 1,200 Israelis, according to the authorities. About 250 people were taken hostage. The subsequent Israeli military response led to the deaths of more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Like many universities, Columbia owns shares in various companies as part of its financial operations. However, information about Columbia's exact holdings was not immediately available, and it was not clear whether the information released by Columbia University for Deracialization (CUAD), the group leading the protests at the school, was accurate.

As Brown University students admitted in a motion against their school's alleged investments linked to Israel, they have backed away from it “It will be difficult logistically.” In fact, they found that none of their school's current direct investments appeared to be in companies that violated their standards regarding Israel.

The nature of what is involved in the divestment process makes it a more difficult task than it might first appear, said Allison Taylor, an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.

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“There are questions such as what percentage of a company's business is actually related to the activities in question.” Taylor added.

The Columbia Investment Management Association, which oversees the school's market assets, has an advisory committee on socially responsible investing.

This committee is committed They do not invest in companies that run private prisons; they derive significant income from thermal coal Dedicated to the tobacco industry. It also has a policy against investing in companies doing business in Sudan.

Therefore, there is a precedent for Colombia limiting its financial exposure to socially irresponsible companies, CUAD noted. The organization said that Colombia's investment today in companies that CUAD accuses of having ties to Israel makes it “complicit in genocide.”

“By divesting from properties that benefit from Israel’s human rights violations, Colombia can invest in other companies of greater value,” CUAD insisted in a proposal submitted in December to the Committee for Socially Responsible Investment that calls for divestment.

A representative of Colombia's Committee for Responsible Investment did not respond to a request for comment.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik did not specifically address divestment calls in her remarks about the campus protests. His predecessor, Lee Bollinger, rejected calls for divestment in 2020, saying the student vote calling for divestment simply represents… “certain views on a complex political issue” and that there is “no consensus throughout the university community” on the issue.

Students voted for divestment, said Sylvia Burwell, president of American University in Washington, D.C It does not represent the school and will not be recognised.

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“The African Union’s long-standing position is to oppose the boycott, divestment from Israel and other related measures known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” the African Union said in a statement last week, referring to a Palestinian-led movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

“Such actions threaten academic freedom, the free and respectful expression of ideas and opinions, and the values ​​of inclusion and belonging that are fundamental to our society.”

There is debate about the effectiveness of divestment. Some evidence suggests that buyers of shares sold as part of a divestment campaign can sometimes turn out to be worse actors than their original holders, New York University's Taylor said.

He gave the example of Myanmar, where energy giant Chevron ended up selling assets to an entity that human rights groups said was less responsible.

Divestment advocates often cite the successful campaign to dismantle apartheid in South Africa as an example of what can be achieved.

But Taylor and others argued that the wave of international and civil society support needed to end apartheid did not materialize in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people.

In a 2021 study on the impact of divestment, business school professors at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University found that the practice had little effect.

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Instead, activists seeking to change company behavior should preserve their investments and exercise any oversight rights they may have to change company policy, they said.

The Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization that fights anti-Semitism, also concluded that shareholder resolutions It has proven effective in changing corporate behaviorAlthough he criticized these efforts as “simplistic” and unconstructive.

“Organizations submit resolutions repeatedly until they get the change they want, often getting more votes each year,” the Anti-Defamation League said. In a 2022 article On their website. “Even if the proposal fails, sometimes the mere fact of presenting it can be enough to make a company hesitate to do business with Israel.”