PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – At a meeting on Tuesday, the Brown Corporation rejected a student-led proposal that would have resulted in the university divesting 10 companies that students say “profit from and commit gross human rights violations by Israel throughout the occupied territories. Palestine.”
In a letter to the Brown community, Chancellor Brian Moynihan and President Christina Paxson shared that the Corporation has voted to accept a recommendation from the University’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM) against divestment.
According to ACURM, the committee could not find a “causal link between the investment”.
or the expenditure of University resources and associated harms,” as the University does not directly invest in any of the companies listed in the student-led Brown Divest Coalition proposal nor does its indirect investment exceed 0.01 % of the “total market value of the ten companies.”
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Moynihan and Paxson said ACURM and the Corporation concluded that divestiture would serve more as a political statement by the university than it would place a significant financial burden on any of the companies named in the Brown Divest Coalition proposal .
The coalition identified Textron, Safariland, Volvo Group, Airbus, Boeing, General Dynamics, Motorola Solutions, General Electric, RTX Corporation and Northrop Grumman as “[providing] products or services that contribute to the maintenance of the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank,” citing previous decisions by Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Practices (ACCRIP) that led the university to divest from South African apartheid, the Sudanese government and the tobacco industry.
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In response, Paxson and Moynihan wrote: “We recognize that in two cases – Sudan and South Africa – Brown made divestment decisions that might appear largely symbolic today. While we note that there are many important differences between these cases, the Corporation believed that the current backdrop of deep divisions within our community – not to mention nationally – clearly sets this proposal apart.”
(ACCRIP, which preceded ACURM as the committee charged with managing Brown’s investments, also released a report in 2020 entitled “To Recommend Divestment from Companies that Facilitate the Israeli Occupation of Palestine Territory.” According to the students, Paxson told them in a December 2023 report. in a letter that she had rejected the original proposal because it “did not meet established standards for identifying specific entities for divestment or the formulation of how financial divestment from the social entities would address damage.”)
Paxson agreed to submit the Coalition’s divestment proposal to the Brown Corporation in April in response to a multi-day student camp on the university’s green.
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