It may seem like a strange rallying cry for college protests but many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses include calls for the schools to divest from Israel. So what does that mean?
Large colleges and universities often have something called an endowment. They're often made up of donations to the school from various sources. That money is used for everything from research to scholarships. The unused funds are invested to help the endowment grow. And we do mean grow -- the University of Texas system, including the Texas A&M system, has a reported endowment over $52 billion.
When students are calling for schools to divest they are talking about those endowments. But what they want the schools to divest from can differ. According to the New York Times, students at Yale and Cornell want the universities to stop investing in weapons manufacturers. At Columbia, activists say the school is investing in companies that are profiting from Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian lands. According to those activists, those companies include Google and Airbnb.
Experts say even if the schools comply, divesting would have little effect on the companies or Israel, but there is precedence for this. In the 1980s, colleges and universities divested from companies that did business with South Africa after weeks of protests on campuses. At the time, South Africa was under apartheid rule.