The Company of Brown College, the establishment’s highest governing physique, rejected a proposal Tuesday to divest from 10 corporations and weapons producers that do enterprise with Israel.
Two of Brown’s high leaders — Brian Moynihan, the governing board’s chief, and Christina Paxson, the college’s president — supported the choice in a press release Wednesday.
“If the Company had been to divest, it will sign to our college students and students that there are ‘permitted’ factors of view to which members of the neighborhood are anticipated to adapt,” they stated. “This is able to be wholly inconsistent with the rules of educational freedom and free inquiry, and would undermine our mission of serving the neighborhood, the nation and the world. ”
The vote offers a significant blow to the student-run Brown Divest Coalition, which organized a pro-Palestinian encampment through the spring semester. The coalition referred to as for the college to divest from corporations it describes as “enabling and benefiting from the genocide in Gaza and the broader Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.”
Brown leaders struck a deal with the coalition members within the spring, permitting them to satisfy with the governing board in trade for clearing the encampment. The coalition additionally introduced its case final month earlier than the Advisory Committee on College Assets Administration.
The choice itself to vote on divestment proved controversial. One governing board member, Joseph Edelman, resigned forward of the vote, publicly calling it a “capitulation to the very hatred that led to the Holocaust and the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7.”
Tuesday’s governing board vote rejecting the divestment proposal is consistent with the suggestion from the advisory committee, which estimated that investments within the 10 corporations make up lower than 1% of the worth of the college’s endowment. It additionally discovered that Brown doesn’t maintain direct investments in any of the ten corporations, although it does have oblique investments via funds managed by third events.
The advisory committee concluded that the investments had been small and subsequently aren’t liable for social hurt.
The governing board thought-about these and different findings from the advisory committee, Moynihan and Paxson stated.
“The Company additionally mentioned the broader subject of whether or not taking a stance on a geopolitical subject via divestment is in line with Brown’s mission of schooling and scholarship,” they stated. “The Company reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to find, talk and protect data. It’s not to adjudicate or resolve world conflicts.”
On Instagram, the Brown Divest Coalition responded angrily to the choice by posting a picture of the officers’ public message overlaid with an expletive-filled assertion in daring crimson script.
