Two weeks ago, the Brown Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies, or ACCRIP, petitioned President Christina Paxson for a sustained dialogue regarding the University's continued investment in corporations that do business with Israel. This petition, a product of years of discussion between ACCRIP and Brown Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), calls out major corporations including Caterpillar, Boeing and, in past iterations, General Electric, Motorola and others. The call for divestment, according to SJP, is motivated by these companies' alleged violations of human rights in the Israeli-occupied territories. However, both ACCRIP and SJP appear to be conspicuously silent on divestment from other nations that have committed similar known human rights violations. Potential divestment from companies that do business with the state of Israel, a politically charged issue in itself that lacks a consensus on campus and nationwide, should not be considered until we have reached a conclusion on divesting from companies that do business with oppressive governments.
Last week's article ("Committee seeks campus discussion on divestment," Nov. 19) noted that Hampshire College became the first American institution of higher education to divest in 2009. However, an open letter written by Hampshire President Ralph Hexter and Board of Trustees Chair Sigmund Roos clarified that the college had chosen to divest from the "problematic mutual fund" not because of its ties to Israel, but because it violated the investment committee's "socially responsible investment policies." The letter reads, "No other college or university should use Hampshire as a precedent for divesting from Israel, since Hampshire has refused to divest from Israel." Hampshire's decision to divest does not and should not represent the first stone cast to a nationwide trend of universities considering divestment.
Brown, in recent years, has only divested from three major causes: tobacco, Sudan and HEI Hotels and Resorts, all for labor violations. Divestment has proven effective in the past, notably in South Africa during the apartheid - Nelson Mandela himself referred to the University of California at Berkeley's $3 billion divestment as a catalyst for its abolition. However, anger at the state of Israel alone is misdirected. In response to a 2009 divestment petition by Hampshire students, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz argued that the campaign, in ignoring Hampshire's involvement with companies that work with other oppressive regimes, "has absolutely nothing to do with human rights," saying that it was instead "motivated purely by hatred for the Jewish state."
This issue is not new - in 2002, following renewed violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many student groups advocated the same type of divestment. Then-Harvard President Larry Summers at the time said, "Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent." That same year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction - out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East - is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest."
Neither Friedman nor we are suggesting that those who seek divestment from Israel harbor anti-Semitic beliefs. Investment in companies that do business with Israel should be debated in a forum that incorporates those supporting both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The act of divestment should be the result of further reflection, and the single-minded focus on this particular conflict is intensely hypocritical and should be reconsidered.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board: its editors, Daniel Jeon and Annika Lichtenbaum, and its members, Georgia Angell, Sam Choi and Rachel Occhiogrosso. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
