Battling Divestment Campaigns

At A Campus Near You ....

One outcome of the pro-Hamas encampments at well over 100 North American universities in the spring was that many universities agreed to consider various forms of divestment requests, targeting Israel. Thankfully most universities who have gone through the decision-making process have, so far, rejected divestment, though several have embraced it; but in my view you should take nothing for granted. So if a university you are affiliated with—as a faculty, staff, student or alum—or merely one where you live is entertaining divestment, please engage in fighting the initiative. To serve as a resource I have written a detailed paper summarizing the MANY arguments against divestment, including both general arguments based on academic norms and particular arguments based specifically on the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim-Iran conflict (as I think it should be called). I shared a draft of that paper to this substack several months ago, but it has now been published, and is available at an online link.

So please: if you or anyone you know is engaged in fighting divestment, please share this document, to help provide them with resources for the battle.

https://academicengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AEN_Research-5_Final-Web-2.pdf

Thanks,

AP