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Board of Trustees decides not to divest from companies in Israel

Michael Gioia

Desk Editor

By: Michael Gioia | Desk Editor

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the Stanford Board of Trustees announced that the University would not divest from certain companies operating in Israel. The statement responds to a request from Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student group that hoped Stanford would divest from a list of companies that it claimed profited from human rights abuses in Palestine.

According to the statement, the Board concluded that any action to divest would serve to deeply divide the Stanford community.

“The Board concluded that the University’s mission and its responsibility to support and encourage diverse opinions would be compromised by endorsing an institutional position on either side of an issue as complex as the Israel-Palestine conflict,” the statement read. “Therefore the Board will not be taking action on this request, nor will it consider this request further.”

The debate over divestment has already been a source of controversy this year. A series of two votes by the ASSU Senate provoked disagreement and, at times, shouting between students, moving one senator to tears. President John Hennessy additionally addressed the issue at a faculty senate meeting.

“I have never seen a topic that has been more divisive within the university community,” Hennessy said.  “As a university, we must remain committed to civil and rational discussion, especially when the issues are highly controversial. An atmosphere of intimidation or vitriol endangers our ability to operate as an intellectual community.”

The Trustees’ statement was met with dismay among students associated with the divestment movement.

“It is unacceptable that the Board of Trustees is hiding behind a call for campus unity to justify continued complicity in the suffering and death of Palestinians under the occupation,” said Clayton Evans ’15. “The brochures peddling diversity that are sent to admits and parents are a sham: Stanford continually marginalizes students of color, and the University does not care at all about Palestinian students, their families or their communities.”

“The board’s key criteria — divisiveness and negative impact to the university’s educational mission — are the politically correct way of maximizing Stanford’s public image and profit margins,” said Natasha Patel ’16.

Others welcomed the news. Hillel at Stanford sent a statement via email to members of the University’s Jewish community.

“Hillel applauds the Board of Trustees for this statement which makes clear that the campaign to single out Israel and isolate specific communities at Stanford based on ethnic, religious or cultural identity, is harmful to the campus environment and the University’s reputation as a world-class educational institution,” read the email.

“We steadfastly support the administration’s broader efforts to promote debate in a strong intellectual climate, while ensuring that students uphold a civil campus environment,” Hillel added.

Liana Kadisha ’15, president of Stanford Israel Association, also believed that the Board of Trustees made the right decision.

“The Trustees’ number one priority should be to safeguard the quality of Stanford’s environment as an intellectual institution that supports pluralism and a variety of perspectives,” Kadisha wrote in a statement to The Daily. “Any support for divestment from companies that work with Israel will seriously silence a major group and perspective on campus.”

“Taking sides on such a complicated conflict on the other side of the world will not only not help the parties involved in the conflict but will also cause unnecessary harm here at Stanford,” she said. “Speaking on behalf of the majority of Israeli and Jewish students and as president of Stanford Israel Association, I can say that I am very glad with their decision.”
Contact Michael Gioia at mgioia2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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About Michael Gioia

Michael Gioia is a Desk Editor at The Daily and leads the academics and research news beat. He is from Plano, Texas, and studies History and Modern Languages at Stanford. When he is not working for The Daily, he can generally be found reading or drinking coffee.
  • bittergradguy

    Thank goodness.

  • William Devillis

    I commend the move by the Board of Trustees not to give in to the anti-Semitic movement on campus. Why anti-semitic? If they are about human rights, please provide stories or photos of these groups protesting:
    1. ISIS beheading hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children last week in the Yarmouk camp.
    2. Syria killing thousands in that same Palestinian camp between 2013-2014.
    3. Boko Haram’s mass killings of Christians and kidnappings of hundred of students in the past couple of years.
    4. The Muslim Brotherhoods open war in Coptic Christians in Egypt when Morsi was in power. Tens of thousands killed and many many churches burned .
    5. Hamas publicly executing 37 Palestinians after last summer’s war for speaking up about being forced by Hamas to remain in their homes to be martyrs.
    6. Syrian Rebels last Easter killing a Dutch priest helping Syrian refugees and nailing 3 men on a cross to make their point as the burned Christian churches.
    7. Rallies throughout that area last year where signs read ” Jesus is a slave to Allahabad” and “Islam will conquer Rome”.
    8. Saudi Arabia’s policy to jail anyone practicing a religion other than Islam.
    9. Palestinan official policies making honor killings of women who are raped legal and executing all gays because it is illegal.

    There’s plenty more that can be added the list but my guess is that none of these groups protested those actions because Jews weren’t involved. But then again, they’re only anti-Israel not anti-Jew.
    And the Easter Bunny is real too! Stanford students are supposed to be smart enough to smell the difference between hatred and reality.

  • Emma

    In what world is it acceptable for an institution tasked with upholding ethical investment to admit that we may well be invested in human rights abuses and they aren’t going to even look into it? From the Board’s statement: “The request from the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine asserted that Stanford should divest its holdings in certain companies that they claim profit from human rights abuses and violations of international law in Israel/Palestine. Neither the APIRL nor the Board sought to determine the veracity of those claims, or to disprove them.”

    The root of campus divisions is not our expression of our moral conscience; it is Stanford’s active choice to continue investing in human rights violations, which causes harm on a daily basis to people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, to Palestinian students, and to students who identify with the oppression of the Palestinian people. People dedicated to upholding that status quo have been responsible for the vast majority, if not all, of the “intimidation or vitriol” that Hennessy cited. It’s time to continue to build campus unity around following our moral consciences, not the continued oppression of a people, and call on the Board to actually do its job.

  • Alum ’14

    Congrats to the Board of Trustees for not giving in to anti-Semitic groupthink in the echo chamber that is the undergrad senate, and for standing up for rationality and morality. May the relationship between Stanford and Israel only strengthen for years to come.

  • ModernMaccabi

    Jewish students have rights too. Shouldn’t the school also consider the countless examples of human rights violations perpetrated by the Palestinians and those that support them? The moral compass should swing both ways in this complicated issue. It isn’t as cut and dry as you and others are trying to make it.

  • MtSneffles

    Watching this debate about divestment has forced me to realize that many undergrads, even at Stanford, lack the ability to see complexity in big issues. Many are also apparently unable to detect attempts to stir outrage by well funded, outside groups with an anti-Israel axe to grind.

    If the divestment movement truly is concerned about human rights, its members need to quickly realize that there are two sides to this coin and that there is no hope of securing human rights for all involved unless we view all involved (yes, even Israelis) as being deserving of the same protections. Of course there needs to be a strong Palestinian state and an end to settlements. But if Israel ceased to exist, or was weakened as intended, what would happen to those thousands of Jewish families no longer protected by a government that protects their lives and free expression? What is the point of divesting from Israel when we aren’t divesting from Gaza or from whatever sides we arbitrarily pick in other conflicts across the world? Where is the outrage about the thousands of rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians? When did this debate stop being about protecting all civilians, no matter their ethnicity or nationality or religion?

    I am disturbed by the ease with which many Stanford undergrads seem to be manipulated into supporting someone else’s noxious agenda, and by their inability to see that they have been unintentionally (but in the most well meaning way) caught up in the millennia-old cycle of antisemitism. The ferocity of the debate on this particular issue, about one of dozens of conflicts halfway around the world, is puzzling to me, until I remember the influence of the anti-Israel outside groups that have been successfully turning well meaning but perhaps not yet very wise young people at colleges across the country into unwitting foot solders for their noxious and unnuanced causes.

    What is the purpose of an education, especially an elite one, if it doesn’t teach its students how to see grey areas and value all human life equally? Is Stanford really just a glorified technical school?

  • Emma

    I am a Jewish student. Please don’t claim that my rights on this campus depend on funding the oppression of others. Additionally, students are asking the university to divest from the only human rights violations in Israel/Palestine in which it is actively invested: those perpetuated by multinational corporations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. And the Board has an ethical obligation to investigate its investment in those human rights violations, no matter how complex or “cut and dry” the issue may be.

  • ModernMaccabi

    The University administration, board and a number of professors and faculty obviously disagree with your opinion.

  • MtSneffles

    Counting the 2 faculty letters against divestment (not to mention the concern voiced by President Hennessy), well over 100 Stanford professors have publicly expressed concern with the style and substance of this divestment movement. To those of us living outside of a small bubble within the undergraduate population, this particular divestment movement is correctly viewed as simplistic, misguided, and probably harmful to human rights in the long run.

  • bob

    pretty likely they did do research into the veracity of the claims, but didn’t want to endorse a position

  • steve_mendelle

    You may be a Jewish student but do you live in israel? Your opinions are flawed in their veracity (eg Occupied/disputed territories) and show signs of absolute ignorance of history. Oh, and let’s not mention thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel with the intent of killing jews anywhere in country. That’s OK is it? Grow up please, come here and see for yourself what an oasis of sanity this country is in a desert of barbarity.

  • Calipenguin

    If you truly believe what you say, then don’t be a hypocrite and leave America. Go back to whatever country your parents or grandparents came from, because this entire continent used to belong to indigenous Native Americans. Yes, you are a settler on occupied lands.

  • RealStory

    I dont care if you are Jewish – you are acting as what we call a useful idiot. SJP has never been interested in the human rights of Palestinians. Rather, as part of the Arab propaganda machine, which is clearly hard at work at Stanford, they use them as a pawn to demonize the state of Israel, spreading lies and as if they are truth. They are blatantly anti-semetic based upon the state departments definition of anti-semitism – and then hide under the guise of anti-Israel – Based on your comments you clearly have a very limited understanding of the issues in the region as well as the history of what actually occurred there and what is happening now. The blame for the “oppression of the Palestinians’ as you put it can be placed squarely upon their own “elected” leaders (although not in a very long time and I’m not sure how democratic it is to vote with a guy with a machine gun looking over your shoulder) – deals that would tremendously benefit them and put Israel in dire risk were on the table – agreed to by Israeli leaders – – “palestinian leaders” walked away – WHY? because the leaders know if they make peace it is all over – their people are not the pawn anymore – — – Going back to the beginning there were wars, countries created (not just israel but Jordan which was the arab palestinian section that included over 80% of the land) and there were more wars – all arab initiated – which cause the “displacement” of these people – but guess what – in all the pre-1967 years that Jordan controlled the west bank, they purposely didnt absorb the palestinians (who were mostly migrants from those countries), but kept them in refugee camps – In contrast Israel (a new, poor and fledgling nation, absorbed the 850,000 jews that were expelled from arab lands – – Its not simple and black and white – and the only reason that Israel even entered the west bank in 1967 was because all the Arab armies launched an attack – they call it “occupied palestine” but in truth it was part of Jordan – and conquered in a defensive war – and offered back in exchange for peace the very next day, but of course rejected by Jordan – This so called “occupation is far more legal than the land we sit on in the US which was actively conquered from the native americans by aggression – In truth, Israel is more civil to the enemy that lives in their midst than any other nation would be – how do you protect your population ( the Jewish and Arab and Christian citizens) from an enemy that calls for your destruction and launches constant terror attacks – but when you build a wall, when you have border crossings you are demonized (guess what the US has border crossings too, as does every other nation – i’ve often sat for hours on the way back from canada) and you still allow people entry on a daily basis – trying to weed out the terrorists…….LEARN SOME HISTORY, LEARN THE SITUATION FROM BOTH SIDES – BEFORE YOU SPEW IDIOCY – FOR GODS SAKE YOU GOT INTO STANFORD YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIGURE SOMETHING OUT – – And just to give you one an example of SJPs “helping” the palestinians – SJP goes on a campaign to have the soda stream plant in the west bank closed- so 1000 “palestinians” lose their jobs – i’m sure the palestinians that lost well-paying jobs are thrilled with those advocating for them

  • Emma

    Yes, the U.S. is a settler colonial project. I need to be way better at listening to and acting on the demands of indigenous communities here, as do most people. That doesn’t make violent occupation any more justified elsewhere in the world, and it doesn’t mean we should be investing actively in enabling other states to commit violent human rights violations as we have throughout this country’s history.

  • bittergradguy

    From the perspective of the greater Stanford community, it was clear that supporting divestment would be neglecting the opinion of an important subcommunity of Stanford. Doing so would only create greater walls within the Stanford community. The Board of Trustees did their job and were able to see the bigger picture.

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