Divestment campaign fails to garner U-Council support

A group of concerned University students and faculty have banded together to form a campaign against University investment in Israel. The divestment campaign, citing human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, has petitioned the University to withdraw investment in corporations that have ties to Israel.

"With the public eye focused on the Middle East, we feel that it is especially necessary now to bring to the attention of the campus community the conditions of oppression and humiliation that face three million people living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," said Vincent Lloyd '03, a member of the divestment campaign.

The group has circulated a divestment petition among University students and faculty, which it will present to the University administration after a rally tomorrow. More than 400 people — including 300 students and 34 University faculty members — have signed the petition.

Some of the more notable names on the petition include Wilson School professor emeritus Richard Falk, history department chair Robert Tignor, sociology professor Miguel Centeno and classics professor Ted Champlin.

Many large, multinational corporations, such as General Electric and Intel, have histories of investing in Israel, Lloyd said. By investing in such corporations, the University is supporting human rights violations in the occupied territories, he said.

On March 25, the Resources Committee of the U-Council discussed the divestment issue and reviewed the committee's guidelines for withdrawing investment.

The committee focused its attention on the first guideline, which states there must be "considerable, thoughtful and sustained campus interest in an issue."

The committee and the trustees determine the definition of "considerable and thoughtful" but the guidelines explicitly state "that an issue be raised several times over an extended period of time, say two academic years."

Vice President for Public Affairs and Resource Committee spokesman Robert Durkee '69 said the committee reviewed a letter advocating divestment and decided that the proposal did not pass the first test. The committee decided the lack of University consensus on the issue prevented the committee from arriving at any conclusions, Durkee said.

He added that the campaign did not present enough "sustained campus interest" for the committee to continue its discussion.

Almost 25 years ago, students pressed the University to divest from corporations affiliated with apartheid South Africa. Taking inspiration from that campaign — which took years to gain University support — Lloyd said he and the divestment campaigners do not intend to drop the issue anytime soon.

"We will continue to show the Princeton administration that students and University community members who know about the situation in the Middle East back divestment now, just as the University community backed divestment 20 years ago," he added.