Apartheid to fossil fuels: Columbia’s history of divestment before Gaza

The US university at the centre of protests against Israel’s Gaza war has a tradition of student action bringing change.

As the roar of protests against Israel’s war on Gaza grows louder on campuses across the United States, a key demand has taken centre stage: divestment. Students and teachers who are a part of the protests are insisting that their universities stop all funding and investments tied to Israel.

At the heart of the protests is New York’s Columbia University, an Ivy League institution steeped in the history of campus student action stretching back decades.

And while no two protests are the same, the university also has a long tradition of leading US educational institutions in ending controversial investments – often under pressure from its student, faculty and alumni communities.

What does it mean for Columbia to divest from Israel?  The underlying goal for any divestment is to redistribute the university’s endowment funds to focus on investments that are seen as more ethically sound while also using that money to encourage governments and other institutions to change their policies.

Columbia has an endowment fund of $13.6bn. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of campus groups that is one of the organisers behind the current protests, has identified a series of investors that it wants the university to sever ties with. They include BlackRock, the asset management giant; Airbnb, which has offered rentals in the occupied West Bank; Caterpillar, whose bulldozers Israel has used; and Google, which has faced protests from staffers over Project Nimbus, which provides artificial intelligence services to Israel.