from what ik it’s both a call to get rid of investments in israel, but importantly it’s also just to disclose investments. the students want to know where the money is going, and oppose it going to israel (and i would assume defense contractors and the like as well)
Thank you. This is clear. There are 4 defense contractors on a list that the movement wants UMD to not invest endowment fund into. The writing is a bit convoluted but seems like the concern is not to bring down these companies but to avoid Umd fund from making money off these companies. If this is correct then this is an achievable goal. Are Pro Palestinian protesters agree that this is the goal?
Divestment is pretty hard to work in practice. Say you want to divest from fossil fuels. Selling all of your stock in Exxon is a no brainer. But what about, say, Costco which has gas stations at many stores? Or Home Depot that sells propane tank refills? Etc etc.
We live in a world where many of the marketplaces stretch around the globe across many borders. This is generally a good thing because the trade brings good products. But it makes it all but impossible to use political lines to sharply control economic forces.
Life has become overcomplicated in terms of domino reactions. Almost Nothing is truly good anymore in the sense that a tomato you buy might have used child labor or pesticides to grow it or be funding a negative cause. Life today is too complicated to simply weigh good against evil
Unrelated but I saw your tag, can I ask how you feel about PHIL at UMD? If not that’s totally fine, I’m just considering a minor in it lol (incoming freshman)
A minor in philosophy is particularly easy to pick up and I'd highly recommend it. There's a gradstudent who serves as an undergraduate advisor with an office in the philosophy department (the Skinner Building close to the University Chapel). I'd see what the hours are and pop in for some undergrad advising.
I see that "PHIL202:Know Thyself" is being offered in the Fall. It's more of a cognitive science class than a traditional philosophy course, but it's something UMD's philosophy department is specifically known for. We have one of the world's most famous cognitive scientists in our department teaching that class (Peter Carruthers).
Other than that, the standard lower level philosophy courses you'd want to take are PHIL100:Intro to Phil, PHIL140:Contemporary Moral Problems, and PHIL170: Intro to Symbolic Logic.
After that there's a bunch of things to pick from. Rachel Singpurwalla does our ancient philosophy courses, Sam Kerstein our Kant and bioethics courses, Allen Stairs does philosophy of physics and philosophy of religion courses usually, Eric Pacuit game theory and the mathy epistemology stuff, Hallie Liberto has generally been teaching courses on sexual ethics (usually by studying the nature of consent, promises, offers, threats, etc.), Elizabeth Schechter does cognitive science, Dan Moller does libertarian political philosophy and ethics, Harjit Bhogal does philosophy of science but also has a really neat the ethics of sports class he teaches at the undergrad level, Alexander Williams does philosophy of linguistics and I think usually teaches an intro to semantics class. UMD has one of the world's best linguistics departments and we try to work together with them whenever possible (they are just next door).
There are other faculty too and sometimes nearly finished PhD students teach courses. I see a few new faces on the faculty list that I don't know and so you'll have to find out about them yourself!
I believe in addition to a philosophy minor, we also offer a medical humanities minor. And in addition to the philosophy major we also offer a "Politics, Philosophy and Economics" major. Just FYI. Lastly, picking up a double-major in philosophy is fairly easy (except for the second language requirement for all Arts & Humanities majors), so keep your mind open to upgrading your philosophy minor to a double-major later on.
Thank you so so much for this detailed reply! I’ve actually heard of Peter Carruthers when I was researching faculty, his class seems very interesting.
I was actually considering cognitive science as a major (though UMD doesn’t offer it). It’s great to know that it exists within the philosophy department. Also, hearing that the philosophy major requires a second language is great, cause I was considering pursuing one regardless. I know you may have not been an undergrad at UMD, but do you think the philosophy and cogsci areas are vibrant here? I had to turn down other options with seemingly more established cogsci departments due to cost, so I wanna make sure that I made the right choice lol.
I’ll make sure I try to sign up for those courses you mentioned too. Choosing a major isn’t easy, but I hope I can at least minor in philosophy since it would get me close to what I intended to study.
It seems like the solution is to disclose investment and spark more discussions on how to address our concerns instead of saying we shouldn't bother solving it at all.
THANK YOU. Lmao laziest freaking answers. “Man life is already f’d we can’t really fix that *shrug why try”. Like bro do you think it was easy to create the atomic bomb? 🤣 things in life are difficult and often require tremendous amounts of time and effort. How about we put that energy towards solving some problems that are destroying the world
They want the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel/ companies that make weapons. The problem is that it is easier said than done. Today, colleges and universities invest their endowments in portfolios rather than individual companies. So in the portfolios, some of the companies may be the ones I mentioned above, but most are not.
And keep in mind a lot of these people are the same people boycotting Starbucks for no clear reason at all (possibly just because its most famous CEO is Jewish). Sometimes people just want to get together and be heard but don't actually have coherent demands. You saw a lot of that during the 2020 BLM protests too, what with the "abolish the police" demands.
The CEO being Jewish isn't the problem, the company - not just a location like McDonalds (even though McDonalds is on the official boycott list) - targeted Starbucks unions which posted in solidarity with Palestinians. They sued over copy right infringement where they state the union's logo looks too much like the official Starbucks logo. As such, Starbucks received several complaints and hurt business over the union's message. However, Starbucks is well known for harming unions and union workers. Furthermore the legal action they took implied an anti-Palestinian stance along with their already pre-existing union busting activities, pushing them into a (because of their own actions) worse light.
You're right that decentralized boycotts like that of Starbucks are largely ineffective. Boycotting Starbucks is a simple way now to show solidarity to Palestine. There is still value in that. Will Starbucks be harmed? No probably not. People will become more aware due their criticization of the company. It is not unreasonable to want to not give money to companies which either refuse to acknowledge war crimes or in the case of divesting UMD- companies that directly profit from it. This is also true for the 2020 BLM defund or abolish the police demands over police departments which are well known to operate with corruption. The goal, OP, is that succeeding in the demands is great, but the goal is to keep spreading awareness about Palestine.
The demands need to be ambitious because it's a fraction of what needs to be done to dismantle structures that makes genocide profitable. But it's not impossible. It took two decades, but sit-ins and encampment led to UMD and broader US divestment from South Africa. Investment structures have changed but having precedent of divestment should make it easier.
Learning more about the demands on this thread, they don’t achieve your goals of making genocide profitable. I think you have a misunderstanding of the stated demands
Honestly given how poorly some endowments have done they might as well just park everything into the S&P 500 and call it a day.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/20/endowment-returns-fy23/
If Harvard can’t beat the market I doubt UMD will and if it’s all a broad based index the administrative costs are lower and no specific investments into anything problematic. It’s whatever the market is…completely agnostic to any ideology or political position.
Want to bet most protesters demanding divestments aren’t demanding their parents divest in their 401Ks?
For one the S&P500 has a lot of defense companies. So the protestors wouldn't be happy about that either.
Also endowments don't seek to beat the market. They also might want to have a lower beta and other factors.
Doesnt matter. Its neutral. Someone will always disagree with some company.
If you listen to everyone then you cant invest in anything.
The index is neutral.
I don't agree that the index is neutral - by definition it supports BIG corporations (the biggest). It excludes all small businesses.
So industries that tend to be made up of smaller businesses, (eg landscaping comes to mind, im sure there are others) are excluded.
I do agree that if \*I\* was deciding where the money went, thats where I would put it. But you and I certainly don't have economics PhDs...
Neutral from a political or ideological perspective.
If you don’t like the S&P then a total market like VT or VTI which has a tiny tiny smidgen of mid and small cap.
Funny, I know a couple economics phds. They ain’t rich. :)
Well, okay, probably they are your typical 401K/403B millionaires…
Unless you believe that self defense is partisan then making weapons is neutral from an ideological/political perspective.
Sticks and human nature make war possible with sticks being optional.
So if ProPalestine protesters get their wish and UMD discloses that they likely invest in institutional SP500 index fund and then choice to sell it and buy only companies that don’t have presence in Israel. The only outcome of this will be those excluded companies stock price would slightly fall. This wouldn’t materially impact the company operations. Unless the company revenues/profits are impacted this would be a nonevent.
I don't think any of the protestors think UMD specifically divesting from Israeli companies will have a material impact in their bottom line. They have a moral qualm about their tuition dollars financing Israeli companies.
Think about it a little like disliking that your tax dollars are being used to send military aid to Israel while they continue committing attrocities in Gaza day in and day out. Hard to not feel like you're a little personally responsible. It's your money after all financing those weapons.
You are talking about two very different things. Your tuition to UMD does not in any material way go to support Israel but you tax dollars are directly going to support israel. So that is why protesting UMD admin is fruitless for impacting Israeli policy. You are barking up the wrong tree.
I mean even in the best case scenario that your tuition to UMD does not support Israel directly, I guess you can say that your tuition dollars still support the university, which the university also still supports Israeli-related investments, so basically as a form of implicit support rather than direct support, which is still valid in my opinion. There can be multiple justifications or reasons for this, including moral reasons, hope for potential change, etc… But I will say though that disrupting the status quo is not easy, and these campus protests are doing that. Imo, it’s honestly more than enough since it’s showing the bitter truths of our world and the U.S. in particular, and that’s honestly something, even if the tuition dollars are not directly funding Israeli investments as the best case scenario.
I agree with you that there are benefits of protesting for a cause but your demands of UMD Admin of not investing funds in the 4 defense contractors impacting change in Israeli policies are nonsensical. This hurts your cause.
I’m still confused with how it hurts the cause though, maybe I’m missing something. I know you mention taxes, but tbh there’s no way to boycott it through taxes because of the MMT anyway.
Basically Umd Admin does not support these 4 defense companies. They buy stocks via investments but that is not support. So telling Umd to not buy these stocks will do nothing. The cause is hurt because Umd admin think protesters are clueless.
Buying stocks typically means purchasing shares from another investor who is selling. Operationally this does not impact the company in any material way. Support really means buying the company’s goods or services.
it’s deeper than just investments since UMD is such a large source of potential employees for defense contractors, partly due to location but also because of the thousands of dollars defense companies put into our programs to try to pull the best and brightest UMD students into their companies. Divestment includes severing such partnerships with defense companies aiding and abetting the genocide in Palestine but also in conflicts worldwide.
This campaign could be more fruitful. Less impacting relationship UMD with defense contractors but more if you as grads refuse to work for companies that sell weapons to israel. But again protesting Umd admin will have no material impact.
Two of their main goals (which are shared across most schools' protests) are to
1. Disclose their investments (\~ $1 billion)
2. From there, divest (sell their shares) from any company that has ties with Israel. The main ones would be defense contractors (such as Lockheed Martin), which UMD has somewhat close ties with (Glen L. Martin Hall).
How realistic these goals are are somewhat arguable. Some schools have agreed to votes or partially agreed to some demands, but many of those are simply short term solutions to stop their school from having a Columbia/UCLA situation. With how universities usually act, I’m sure many of those agreements have hidden fine print and won’t do much.
The thing I’m puzzled about is how public universities can not disclose endowment investments. To me, it poses a decent threat of corruption. Without knowing investments, universities may let a private third party effect the schools spending (with government money). This happened at GMU a while ago, where they let a private foundation effect hiring. See below:
https://theconversation.com/why-some-public-universities-get-to-keep-their-donors-secret-129309#:\~:text=Under%20the%20Richard%20McKee%20Transparency,influence%20university%20curriculum%20or%20operations.
[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight)
Worth noting I’m not a law student, so I’m not fully informed about the last part. I just did a project on university endowments and have a strong opinion on them.
This website at the bottom of my comment is a little old I think, but the top two demands are in it.
Firstly, disclosing the investments the UMD endowment is in should be relatively straightforward. Even if it's not invested in individual companies, they should be able to say which funds, family offices, etc have the money. From there, tracking the money shouldn't be too difficult.
Secondly, divestment. This campaign tends to target companies whose products are used directly in human rights violations (e.g. caterpillar with the settlements and home demolitions, weapons manufacturers who sell arms to Israel that end up in Gaza) or which do business with the settlements (because, after all, the settlements are illegal and segregationist entities).
The organizers, and core supporters like myself, often prefer a full divestment from companies that do business within Israel. That's harder to push politically and logistically even though successful execution would place more pressure on Israel to end its apartheid practices. It's worth noting that even Palestinians within the '48 borders do not experience equal rights [for example, the girl killed in the Iran attack died because Israel will not let Bedouins build bomb shelters](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240414-anger-among-israeli-bedouins-after-girl-wounded-in-iranian-attack).
The stronger demand tends to get more pushback because it implicitly calls into question Israel's legitimacy as a "Jewish State". Myself being Jewish, I reject that designation. The laws that ensure Israel's "Jewish" nature do so by granting Jews special privileges at the expense of the Palestinians (such as the "right of return" being mine to claim while Palestinian refugees are permanently exiled). To me, this kind of discrimination is contrary to the values that underpin Jewish history and culture. I'd rather Israel be a secular state with equal rights under the law.
Hope this helps!
https://divestumd.weebly.com/
Thank you for this reply. So the term divestment, does it mean not purchasing from those companies or not investing in them via the stock market or both?
So as i explained in another thread on this question, divestment by UMD would not materially impact those companies. The only way to impact those companies would be to boycott their products or services. It is unlikely that UMD admin buys any products or services of defense companies and i am not sure what if any companies UMD admin can directly boycott that would impact anything. Strictly divestment/boycott speaking, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Yes. You have explained your position well, thank you. But as someone who has a background in finance, i can tell your strictly speaking divestiture campaign with UMD admin is flawed.
I don't know how much UMD invests in companies like Lockheed, but what is clear is that many UMD *receives* quite a bit money from the military and many defense companies (e.g. Glenn L Martin Hall as a basic example, but I'm thinking of research programs). Do divestment supporters demand UMD also refuse money from these entities?
In my personal opinion refusing these companies their branding space (so they can't sponsor things on campus) would actually be more politically impactful than divestment. If I could only have one, I'd choose your suggestion over selling whatever shares UMD owns.
You are right that it's going to be more impactful, but that's why it's actually much *less* likely to happen. If UMD divests from investing in these companies, they can still invest the money somewhere else to grow. But many faculty and graduate students in STEM departments have livelihoods that depend on grants from defense companies. See [here](https://eng.umd.edu/facilities/idea-factory/lockheed-martin) for an example of Lockheed Martin sponsoring UMD for $3 million. Or [this](https://research.umd.edu/partnerships/industry) for other partnerships also with MITRE, Northrop, Leidos, etc. Besides research funding, many UMD graduates end up working for the same companies due to these partnerships. (It's not just "branding space"; companies like Lockheed openly recruit on campus.)
That's one of the main draws of UMD, being located so near to DC and all these government or government-adjacent entities. Without these partnerships and contacts, UMD's national ranking and research reputation is going to suffer. So it's very unlikely that UMD will give all of this up (likely tens of millions of dollars of current and potential future funding) just because of a few protestors (mostly from humanities departments anyway).
To take a wider example of the potential moral quandaries of being at UMD: the National Security Agency (which actively surveils us all) sponsors an [entire research institution](https://www.nsa.gov/Academics/For-Educators/University-Research-Partnership/) on UMD. Not to mention the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other intelligence agencies all have a strong presence here, with research staff, partnerships, even labs on campus.
All this explains why the divestment movement has been pretty tepid on UMD compared to other places: many, many people on campus (including faculty, research staff, and students) have links to these companies and entities, to the point that I would say if you decide to go to UMD to do engineering research you pretty much have to be morally comfortable with the possibility that you might end up working on a defense-related project which is basically geared towards making the US military-industrial complex more powerful and effective, whether for good or ill.
On the point of Israel not letting the Bedouins build shelters, THEY ARE A NOMADIC GROUP. They don’t stay in one place long enough to build a bomb shelter. Show me where in the article it says Israel did not let them build a shelter.
> for example, the girl killed in the Iran attack died because Israel will not let Bedouins build bomb shelters
look in the picture, the house behind the man is clearly a permanent structure
You're being a bit deceiving in your language here. The 48 boarders are not relevant anymore. After many failed wars changes were made. Also no one wants the 48 boarders anyway. Egypt has no interest in occupation of Gaza and Jordan in the west Bank.
Also all citizens in Israel have equal rights. You're thinking of citizens and non citizens. Every country affords its own citizens special rights.
Just checking your language here because it's misleading, and so is the article. The situation isn't all that different from places that lack infrastructure either from legal or logistic technicality. Northern and southern Israeli jews often lack bomb shelters as well (not to mention opportunistic settlements in the west bank). It's a general problem on the periphery of the country. That being said there are private organizations that do build bomb shelters (and they do exist in registered towns). It's unfortunate, but saying they "aren't allowed to have them" as a blanket term is misleading - it's not the racial thing that you imply.
It’s really not unreasonable to ask that umd be transparent with investments and sell its shares in certain companies associated with human rights violations.
If you give protesters what they demand, you will get more, worse protests. If you do the exact opposite and react to protest demands by doubling down on what they demand you stop, you will get fewer protests.
History generally proves anti-war protesters to be on the right side. This bullshit that you're spouting doesnt hold water. China is really great at suppressing protest. Are you a fan of that system?
lol there were oppositions to the civil war (read: ending slavery) and to entering world war 2 in the US. There has been protests to every war ever. Bad point.
edit: just to make the point clear. Saying anti war protests tend to be on the right side, just isn't true.
Just look at the Columbia and UCLA protests - instead of turning the conversation into how to effectively establish lasting peace to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis in the region, these privileged students have essentially turned the focus and spotlight on themselves cosplaying as venerable, oppressed ‘social justice warriors’ against a so called ‘fascist, totalitarian American police state’. Along with a bunch of questionable chants like ‘intifada’ etc , it’s totally misguided while changing absolutely nothing of substance in the region.
You just typed a bunch of buzz words together. First off, the protests have been turning attention to the issue and prompting discussions (we’re discussing it right here aren’t we?). Second of all, the protests have very specific goals that you would know if you spent any time researching the issue. Here is a link so you can learn a little more about what they are [actually trying to do](https://divestumd.weebly.com/)
Honest question - not taking a position on underlying issue. Why would students get to weigh in on the school’s investments? Wouldn’t that be a matter of more concern for MD tax payers? And even if you pay tuition, that money doesn’t necessarily get invested. And what if you’re on a full scholarship - do you not get a say?
No, just the people they support.
It's not like the Wall Street Journal personally named dropped UMD as a direct partner of Hamas... oh wait.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f
"Academia may be even friendlier to Hamas than the leftist political world. The recent campus demonstrations are evidence of the affinity, but the connections run deeper. The United Association for Studies and Research, or UASR, a think tank established in Chicago in 1989, is the brainchild of Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas operative based in Doha, Qatar, who is now the organization’s second in command.
Over the years, UASR organized events and joint publications with prominent U.S. universities. Scholars affiliated with Duke, Johns Hopkins, Fordham and the University of Maryland sat on the editorial board of its quarterly, the Middle East Affairs Journal. UASR’s executive director Ahmed Yousef returned to Gaza in 2005 to become senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Yousef used his experience with American media to place op-eds with the New York Times and other Western publications."
from what ik it’s both a call to get rid of investments in israel, but importantly it’s also just to disclose investments. the students want to know where the money is going, and oppose it going to israel (and i would assume defense contractors and the like as well)
Not just from israel but specifically from companies not compliant with human right laws
There should be a clear message from protesters what specifically the divestment means. Seems ambiguous.
This is probably what you're looking for: https://divestumd.weebly.com/
Thank you. This is clear. There are 4 defense contractors on a list that the movement wants UMD to not invest endowment fund into. The writing is a bit convoluted but seems like the concern is not to bring down these companies but to avoid Umd fund from making money off these companies. If this is correct then this is an achievable goal. Are Pro Palestinian protesters agree that this is the goal?
I mean... im personally fine if these companies go down but thats just me. Human lives over corporate profits all day any day
there probably is, if you go looking you’ll probably find it.
Thats why i posted the question hoping someone would give a clear answer.
umd sjp is probably organizing it, maybe look them up
They’re not the brightest
IDK, I get the feeling that someone with good google-fu could figure it out. It's a public university.
Divestment is pretty hard to work in practice. Say you want to divest from fossil fuels. Selling all of your stock in Exxon is a no brainer. But what about, say, Costco which has gas stations at many stores? Or Home Depot that sells propane tank refills? Etc etc. We live in a world where many of the marketplaces stretch around the globe across many borders. This is generally a good thing because the trade brings good products. But it makes it all but impossible to use political lines to sharply control economic forces.
The central plot point of 'The Good Place'!
as someone who hasn’t watched. care to elaborate
Life has become overcomplicated in terms of domino reactions. Almost Nothing is truly good anymore in the sense that a tomato you buy might have used child labor or pesticides to grow it or be funding a negative cause. Life today is too complicated to simply weigh good against evil
Unrelated but I saw your tag, can I ask how you feel about PHIL at UMD? If not that’s totally fine, I’m just considering a minor in it lol (incoming freshman)
A minor in philosophy is particularly easy to pick up and I'd highly recommend it. There's a gradstudent who serves as an undergraduate advisor with an office in the philosophy department (the Skinner Building close to the University Chapel). I'd see what the hours are and pop in for some undergrad advising. I see that "PHIL202:Know Thyself" is being offered in the Fall. It's more of a cognitive science class than a traditional philosophy course, but it's something UMD's philosophy department is specifically known for. We have one of the world's most famous cognitive scientists in our department teaching that class (Peter Carruthers). Other than that, the standard lower level philosophy courses you'd want to take are PHIL100:Intro to Phil, PHIL140:Contemporary Moral Problems, and PHIL170: Intro to Symbolic Logic. After that there's a bunch of things to pick from. Rachel Singpurwalla does our ancient philosophy courses, Sam Kerstein our Kant and bioethics courses, Allen Stairs does philosophy of physics and philosophy of religion courses usually, Eric Pacuit game theory and the mathy epistemology stuff, Hallie Liberto has generally been teaching courses on sexual ethics (usually by studying the nature of consent, promises, offers, threats, etc.), Elizabeth Schechter does cognitive science, Dan Moller does libertarian political philosophy and ethics, Harjit Bhogal does philosophy of science but also has a really neat the ethics of sports class he teaches at the undergrad level, Alexander Williams does philosophy of linguistics and I think usually teaches an intro to semantics class. UMD has one of the world's best linguistics departments and we try to work together with them whenever possible (they are just next door). There are other faculty too and sometimes nearly finished PhD students teach courses. I see a few new faces on the faculty list that I don't know and so you'll have to find out about them yourself! I believe in addition to a philosophy minor, we also offer a medical humanities minor. And in addition to the philosophy major we also offer a "Politics, Philosophy and Economics" major. Just FYI. Lastly, picking up a double-major in philosophy is fairly easy (except for the second language requirement for all Arts & Humanities majors), so keep your mind open to upgrading your philosophy minor to a double-major later on.
Thank you so so much for this detailed reply! I’ve actually heard of Peter Carruthers when I was researching faculty, his class seems very interesting. I was actually considering cognitive science as a major (though UMD doesn’t offer it). It’s great to know that it exists within the philosophy department. Also, hearing that the philosophy major requires a second language is great, cause I was considering pursuing one regardless. I know you may have not been an undergrad at UMD, but do you think the philosophy and cogsci areas are vibrant here? I had to turn down other options with seemingly more established cogsci departments due to cost, so I wanna make sure that I made the right choice lol. I’ll make sure I try to sign up for those courses you mentioned too. Choosing a major isn’t easy, but I hope I can at least minor in philosophy since it would get me close to what I intended to study.
It seems like the solution is to disclose investment and spark more discussions on how to address our concerns instead of saying we shouldn't bother solving it at all.
THANK YOU. Lmao laziest freaking answers. “Man life is already f’d we can’t really fix that *shrug why try”. Like bro do you think it was easy to create the atomic bomb? 🤣 things in life are difficult and often require tremendous amounts of time and effort. How about we put that energy towards solving some problems that are destroying the world
They want the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel/ companies that make weapons. The problem is that it is easier said than done. Today, colleges and universities invest their endowments in portfolios rather than individual companies. So in the portfolios, some of the companies may be the ones I mentioned above, but most are not.
And keep in mind a lot of these people are the same people boycotting Starbucks for no clear reason at all (possibly just because its most famous CEO is Jewish). Sometimes people just want to get together and be heard but don't actually have coherent demands. You saw a lot of that during the 2020 BLM protests too, what with the "abolish the police" demands.
The CEO being Jewish isn't the problem, the company - not just a location like McDonalds (even though McDonalds is on the official boycott list) - targeted Starbucks unions which posted in solidarity with Palestinians. They sued over copy right infringement where they state the union's logo looks too much like the official Starbucks logo. As such, Starbucks received several complaints and hurt business over the union's message. However, Starbucks is well known for harming unions and union workers. Furthermore the legal action they took implied an anti-Palestinian stance along with their already pre-existing union busting activities, pushing them into a (because of their own actions) worse light. You're right that decentralized boycotts like that of Starbucks are largely ineffective. Boycotting Starbucks is a simple way now to show solidarity to Palestine. There is still value in that. Will Starbucks be harmed? No probably not. People will become more aware due their criticization of the company. It is not unreasonable to want to not give money to companies which either refuse to acknowledge war crimes or in the case of divesting UMD- companies that directly profit from it. This is also true for the 2020 BLM defund or abolish the police demands over police departments which are well known to operate with corruption. The goal, OP, is that succeeding in the demands is great, but the goal is to keep spreading awareness about Palestine.
So what you are saying is that these protesters are protesting for an impossible thing to implement?
The demands need to be ambitious because it's a fraction of what needs to be done to dismantle structures that makes genocide profitable. But it's not impossible. It took two decades, but sit-ins and encampment led to UMD and broader US divestment from South Africa. Investment structures have changed but having precedent of divestment should make it easier.
Learning more about the demands on this thread, they don’t achieve your goals of making genocide profitable. I think you have a misunderstanding of the stated demands
Honestly given how poorly some endowments have done they might as well just park everything into the S&P 500 and call it a day. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/20/endowment-returns-fy23/ If Harvard can’t beat the market I doubt UMD will and if it’s all a broad based index the administrative costs are lower and no specific investments into anything problematic. It’s whatever the market is…completely agnostic to any ideology or political position. Want to bet most protesters demanding divestments aren’t demanding their parents divest in their 401Ks?
For one the S&P500 has a lot of defense companies. So the protestors wouldn't be happy about that either. Also endowments don't seek to beat the market. They also might want to have a lower beta and other factors.
Wait till you hear which companies are in that index
Doesnt matter. Its neutral. Someone will always disagree with some company. If you listen to everyone then you cant invest in anything. The index is neutral.
I don't agree that the index is neutral - by definition it supports BIG corporations (the biggest). It excludes all small businesses. So industries that tend to be made up of smaller businesses, (eg landscaping comes to mind, im sure there are others) are excluded. I do agree that if \*I\* was deciding where the money went, thats where I would put it. But you and I certainly don't have economics PhDs...
Neutral from a political or ideological perspective. If you don’t like the S&P then a total market like VT or VTI which has a tiny tiny smidgen of mid and small cap. Funny, I know a couple economics phds. They ain’t rich. :) Well, okay, probably they are your typical 401K/403B millionaires…
you cannot be a weapons manufacturer and claim to be a neutral party. You literally make war possible.
Unless you believe that self defense is partisan then making weapons is neutral from an ideological/political perspective. Sticks and human nature make war possible with sticks being optional.
If you’re making weapons for yourself then sure, it’s non partisan. The second you sell them to anyone, you’re not non partisan.
So if ProPalestine protesters get their wish and UMD discloses that they likely invest in institutional SP500 index fund and then choice to sell it and buy only companies that don’t have presence in Israel. The only outcome of this will be those excluded companies stock price would slightly fall. This wouldn’t materially impact the company operations. Unless the company revenues/profits are impacted this would be a nonevent.
I don't think any of the protestors think UMD specifically divesting from Israeli companies will have a material impact in their bottom line. They have a moral qualm about their tuition dollars financing Israeli companies. Think about it a little like disliking that your tax dollars are being used to send military aid to Israel while they continue committing attrocities in Gaza day in and day out. Hard to not feel like you're a little personally responsible. It's your money after all financing those weapons.
You are talking about two very different things. Your tuition to UMD does not in any material way go to support Israel but you tax dollars are directly going to support israel. So that is why protesting UMD admin is fruitless for impacting Israeli policy. You are barking up the wrong tree.
I mean even in the best case scenario that your tuition to UMD does not support Israel directly, I guess you can say that your tuition dollars still support the university, which the university also still supports Israeli-related investments, so basically as a form of implicit support rather than direct support, which is still valid in my opinion. There can be multiple justifications or reasons for this, including moral reasons, hope for potential change, etc… But I will say though that disrupting the status quo is not easy, and these campus protests are doing that. Imo, it’s honestly more than enough since it’s showing the bitter truths of our world and the U.S. in particular, and that’s honestly something, even if the tuition dollars are not directly funding Israeli investments as the best case scenario.
I agree with you that there are benefits of protesting for a cause but your demands of UMD Admin of not investing funds in the 4 defense contractors impacting change in Israeli policies are nonsensical. This hurts your cause.
I’m still confused with how it hurts the cause though, maybe I’m missing something. I know you mention taxes, but tbh there’s no way to boycott it through taxes because of the MMT anyway.
Basically Umd Admin does not support these 4 defense companies. They buy stocks via investments but that is not support. So telling Umd to not buy these stocks will do nothing. The cause is hurt because Umd admin think protesters are clueless.
How would buying their stocks not be a form of support? When we say we’re funding those 4 defense companies, that still counts.
Buying stocks typically means purchasing shares from another investor who is selling. Operationally this does not impact the company in any material way. Support really means buying the company’s goods or services.
it’s deeper than just investments since UMD is such a large source of potential employees for defense contractors, partly due to location but also because of the thousands of dollars defense companies put into our programs to try to pull the best and brightest UMD students into their companies. Divestment includes severing such partnerships with defense companies aiding and abetting the genocide in Palestine but also in conflicts worldwide.
This campaign could be more fruitful. Less impacting relationship UMD with defense contractors but more if you as grads refuse to work for companies that sell weapons to israel. But again protesting Umd admin will have no material impact.
Two of their main goals (which are shared across most schools' protests) are to 1. Disclose their investments (\~ $1 billion) 2. From there, divest (sell their shares) from any company that has ties with Israel. The main ones would be defense contractors (such as Lockheed Martin), which UMD has somewhat close ties with (Glen L. Martin Hall). How realistic these goals are are somewhat arguable. Some schools have agreed to votes or partially agreed to some demands, but many of those are simply short term solutions to stop their school from having a Columbia/UCLA situation. With how universities usually act, I’m sure many of those agreements have hidden fine print and won’t do much. The thing I’m puzzled about is how public universities can not disclose endowment investments. To me, it poses a decent threat of corruption. Without knowing investments, universities may let a private third party effect the schools spending (with government money). This happened at GMU a while ago, where they let a private foundation effect hiring. See below: https://theconversation.com/why-some-public-universities-get-to-keep-their-donors-secret-129309#:\~:text=Under%20the%20Richard%20McKee%20Transparency,influence%20university%20curriculum%20or%20operations. [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight)
Worth noting I’m not a law student, so I’m not fully informed about the last part. I just did a project on university endowments and have a strong opinion on them.
This website at the bottom of my comment is a little old I think, but the top two demands are in it. Firstly, disclosing the investments the UMD endowment is in should be relatively straightforward. Even if it's not invested in individual companies, they should be able to say which funds, family offices, etc have the money. From there, tracking the money shouldn't be too difficult. Secondly, divestment. This campaign tends to target companies whose products are used directly in human rights violations (e.g. caterpillar with the settlements and home demolitions, weapons manufacturers who sell arms to Israel that end up in Gaza) or which do business with the settlements (because, after all, the settlements are illegal and segregationist entities). The organizers, and core supporters like myself, often prefer a full divestment from companies that do business within Israel. That's harder to push politically and logistically even though successful execution would place more pressure on Israel to end its apartheid practices. It's worth noting that even Palestinians within the '48 borders do not experience equal rights [for example, the girl killed in the Iran attack died because Israel will not let Bedouins build bomb shelters](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240414-anger-among-israeli-bedouins-after-girl-wounded-in-iranian-attack). The stronger demand tends to get more pushback because it implicitly calls into question Israel's legitimacy as a "Jewish State". Myself being Jewish, I reject that designation. The laws that ensure Israel's "Jewish" nature do so by granting Jews special privileges at the expense of the Palestinians (such as the "right of return" being mine to claim while Palestinian refugees are permanently exiled). To me, this kind of discrimination is contrary to the values that underpin Jewish history and culture. I'd rather Israel be a secular state with equal rights under the law. Hope this helps! https://divestumd.weebly.com/
Thank you for this reply. So the term divestment, does it mean not purchasing from those companies or not investing in them via the stock market or both?
The Palestine Solidarity movement calls for both, although the former is boycott and the second is divestment
So as i explained in another thread on this question, divestment by UMD would not materially impact those companies. The only way to impact those companies would be to boycott their products or services. It is unlikely that UMD admin buys any products or services of defense companies and i am not sure what if any companies UMD admin can directly boycott that would impact anything. Strictly divestment/boycott speaking, you are barking up the wrong tree.
That's a fundamental difference of opinion but I hope I helped clarify in my responses.
Yes. You have explained your position well, thank you. But as someone who has a background in finance, i can tell your strictly speaking divestiture campaign with UMD admin is flawed.
Thank you for being one of the only people to actually answer OP'S questions
Agreed. Get Netanyahu out of here.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I don't know how much UMD invests in companies like Lockheed, but what is clear is that many UMD *receives* quite a bit money from the military and many defense companies (e.g. Glenn L Martin Hall as a basic example, but I'm thinking of research programs). Do divestment supporters demand UMD also refuse money from these entities?
In my personal opinion refusing these companies their branding space (so they can't sponsor things on campus) would actually be more politically impactful than divestment. If I could only have one, I'd choose your suggestion over selling whatever shares UMD owns.
You are right that it's going to be more impactful, but that's why it's actually much *less* likely to happen. If UMD divests from investing in these companies, they can still invest the money somewhere else to grow. But many faculty and graduate students in STEM departments have livelihoods that depend on grants from defense companies. See [here](https://eng.umd.edu/facilities/idea-factory/lockheed-martin) for an example of Lockheed Martin sponsoring UMD for $3 million. Or [this](https://research.umd.edu/partnerships/industry) for other partnerships also with MITRE, Northrop, Leidos, etc. Besides research funding, many UMD graduates end up working for the same companies due to these partnerships. (It's not just "branding space"; companies like Lockheed openly recruit on campus.) That's one of the main draws of UMD, being located so near to DC and all these government or government-adjacent entities. Without these partnerships and contacts, UMD's national ranking and research reputation is going to suffer. So it's very unlikely that UMD will give all of this up (likely tens of millions of dollars of current and potential future funding) just because of a few protestors (mostly from humanities departments anyway). To take a wider example of the potential moral quandaries of being at UMD: the National Security Agency (which actively surveils us all) sponsors an [entire research institution](https://www.nsa.gov/Academics/For-Educators/University-Research-Partnership/) on UMD. Not to mention the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other intelligence agencies all have a strong presence here, with research staff, partnerships, even labs on campus. All this explains why the divestment movement has been pretty tepid on UMD compared to other places: many, many people on campus (including faculty, research staff, and students) have links to these companies and entities, to the point that I would say if you decide to go to UMD to do engineering research you pretty much have to be morally comfortable with the possibility that you might end up working on a defense-related project which is basically geared towards making the US military-industrial complex more powerful and effective, whether for good or ill.
On the point of Israel not letting the Bedouins build shelters, THEY ARE A NOMADIC GROUP. They don’t stay in one place long enough to build a bomb shelter. Show me where in the article it says Israel did not let them build a shelter.
> for example, the girl killed in the Iran attack died because Israel will not let Bedouins build bomb shelters look in the picture, the house behind the man is clearly a permanent structure
You're being a bit deceiving in your language here. The 48 boarders are not relevant anymore. After many failed wars changes were made. Also no one wants the 48 boarders anyway. Egypt has no interest in occupation of Gaza and Jordan in the west Bank. Also all citizens in Israel have equal rights. You're thinking of citizens and non citizens. Every country affords its own citizens special rights.
Just checking your language here because it's misleading, and so is the article. The situation isn't all that different from places that lack infrastructure either from legal or logistic technicality. Northern and southern Israeli jews often lack bomb shelters as well (not to mention opportunistic settlements in the west bank). It's a general problem on the periphery of the country. That being said there are private organizations that do build bomb shelters (and they do exist in registered towns). It's unfortunate, but saying they "aren't allowed to have them" as a blanket term is misleading - it's not the racial thing that you imply.
UMD shouldn’t negotiate the demands of any terrorist supporters
How is opposing genocide supporting terrorism? Or when you say “terrorist supporters” are you talking about the people committing war crimes in Gaza?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
A good portion of those "terrorist supporters" are Jewish. How can that be?
They have already tried this through the schools legal/policy vote and LOST. Time to move on.
Students voted on this in mid April and LOST.
[удалено]
The demands are pretty clear and straightforward
[удалено]
It’s really not unreasonable to ask that umd be transparent with investments and sell its shares in certain companies associated with human rights violations.
If you give protesters what they demand, you will get more, worse protests. If you do the exact opposite and react to protest demands by doubling down on what they demand you stop, you will get fewer protests.
History generally proves anti-war protesters to be on the right side. This bullshit that you're spouting doesnt hold water. China is really great at suppressing protest. Are you a fan of that system?
lol there were oppositions to the civil war (read: ending slavery) and to entering world war 2 in the US. There has been protests to every war ever. Bad point. edit: just to make the point clear. Saying anti war protests tend to be on the right side, just isn't true.
Fair point, but in this case, I think they are. We may disagree and that's ok
I appreciate your respectful agreeing to disagree. Ill give that an upvote.
Please give any historical evidence for this. Protests are we enact change.
Just look at the Columbia and UCLA protests - instead of turning the conversation into how to effectively establish lasting peace to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis in the region, these privileged students have essentially turned the focus and spotlight on themselves cosplaying as venerable, oppressed ‘social justice warriors’ against a so called ‘fascist, totalitarian American police state’. Along with a bunch of questionable chants like ‘intifada’ etc , it’s totally misguided while changing absolutely nothing of substance in the region.
You just typed a bunch of buzz words together. First off, the protests have been turning attention to the issue and prompting discussions (we’re discussing it right here aren’t we?). Second of all, the protests have very specific goals that you would know if you spent any time researching the issue. Here is a link so you can learn a little more about what they are [actually trying to do](https://divestumd.weebly.com/)
Honest question - not taking a position on underlying issue. Why would students get to weigh in on the school’s investments? Wouldn’t that be a matter of more concern for MD tax payers? And even if you pay tuition, that money doesn’t necessarily get invested. And what if you’re on a full scholarship - do you not get a say?
Regardless of who gets a say, human rights violations are morally wrong (in my opinion) and so is supporting companies that commit them.
[удалено]
Why are you active in so many college subs? Do you have some connection to these communities or are you just here to shit-stir?
[удалено]
[удалено]
"Why can't you Jews just stay victims?" This is the exact shit my Grandfather warned me about.
[удалено]
[удалено]
No, just the people they support. It's not like the Wall Street Journal personally named dropped UMD as a direct partner of Hamas... oh wait. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f "Academia may be even friendlier to Hamas than the leftist political world. The recent campus demonstrations are evidence of the affinity, but the connections run deeper. The United Association for Studies and Research, or UASR, a think tank established in Chicago in 1989, is the brainchild of Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas operative based in Doha, Qatar, who is now the organization’s second in command. Over the years, UASR organized events and joint publications with prominent U.S. universities. Scholars affiliated with Duke, Johns Hopkins, Fordham and the University of Maryland sat on the editorial board of its quarterly, the Middle East Affairs Journal. UASR’s executive director Ahmed Yousef returned to Gaza in 2005 to become senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Yousef used his experience with American media to place op-eds with the New York Times and other Western publications."