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Divestment Can't Work, Media Tell Protesters—Even Though It Has Jim Naureckas ([link removed])


WaPo: Secret meetings, social chatter: How Columbia students sparked a nationwide revolt

A Washington Post "expert" (4/26/24 ([link removed]) ) assured readers that divestment is "way more complicated” than protesters think.

In a piece on how the nationwide protest campaign against the Israeli slaughter in Gaza came to be, the Washington Post (4/26/24 ([link removed]) ) explained that the central demand of the protests—university divestment from companies that support the genocide—is, well, stupid.

The article reported: "Experts say student requests for divestment are not only impractical but also are likely to yield little if any real benefit."

"How universities invest their money makes disinvestment complicated," declared one such expert—"Chris Marsicano, a Davidson College assistant professor of educational studies who researches endowments and finance."

"First, it’s impossible to know just how and where universities’ endowments are invested," he maintained, because "schools are notoriously close-mouthed about it, revealing as little as they can." Yes, which is why, as the Post noted, investment transparency is the second of three demands ([link removed]) from Columbia University protesters, and a key issue in many other encampments.

But not so fast, Marsicano warns: "Disclosing investments can lead to complications large and small," including "the possibility that a university disclosing its decision to sell or buy stock could affect the price of that stock."

Surely that will keep a lot of protesters up at night—the fear that their university's sale of stock might cause Boeing's stock price to drop.


** Doing Israel's supporters a favor?
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WSJ: Dear Columbia Students, Divestment From Israel Won’t Work

The Wall Street Journal's James Mackintosh (4/30/24 ([link removed]) ) compared the Gaza protests to "misguided demands to quit investments in fossil fuel companies to slow climate change."

But they need not worry, assured James Mackintosh, senior market columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who offered some friendly advice in "Dear Columbia Students, Divestment From Israel Won’t Work" (4/30/24 ([link removed]) ). "The impact of even a lot of universities selling would be negligible," he wrote. In fact, any financial impact from divestment would be counter-productive:

Selling the shares cheaply to someone else just leaves the buyer owning the future profits instead, at a bargain price. The university would have less money to spend on students, while those who are pro-Israel, pro-oil or just pro-profit would have more.

The economic logic is so compelling, you have to wonder why supporters of Israel aren't supporting the divestment movement, rather than pushing for laws that make divestment from Israel illegal ([link removed]) .

But, really, why is anyone even talking about divestment, when it can't even happen? As former Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks told CNN (4/30/24 ([link removed]) ):

The economy is so global now that even if a university decided that they were going to instruct their dominant management groups to divest from Israel, it would be almost impossible to disentangle.... It’s not clear to me that it’s really possible to fully divest from companies that touch in some way a country with such close political and trade ties to the US.


** Helping spark a movement
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Columbia Spectator: Mandela Hall: A History of the 1985 Divest Protests

Columbia Spectator (4/13/16 ([link removed]) ): "During that fateful month in 1985, a protest movement in favor of divestment from the National Party of South Africa's apartheid regime rocked Columbia to its core."

So, divestment would be dangerous, self-defeating and impossible, is what we're hearing from corporate media. Why are students even bothering?

At Columbia, protesters are well aware of the history there, where students blockaded Hamilton Hall ([link removed]) for three weeks in April 1985 to protest the university's investments in South Africa. A committee of the school's trustees recommended full divestment in August 1985, a recommendation the board adopted ([link removed]) in October 1985.

The first secret negotiations between the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the South African government about ending apartheid began in November 1985 ([link removed]) .

Obviously, this wasn't just a result of Columbia's protest—but the divestment campaign there helped spark a nationwide movement that spread beyond campuses, establishing a consensus that South Africa's behavior was unconscionable and had to change.

It's hard not to suspect that corporate media are telling us so firmly that divestment can't work because they're worried that it can.






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