Finance & economics | Buttonwood

What campus protesters get wrong about divestment

Will withdrawing money hurt Israel?

Illustration of a man holding a placard with a hand that's grabbing a money bag which makes the man's face, it has a angry shouty face
Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi

One-third of Ivy League graduates end up working in finance or consulting. So perhaps it is unsurprising that campus protesters are providing investment advice: they want university endowments to get rid of assets linked to Israel. At Columbia University, for instance, a coalition of more than 100 student organisations is demanding that administrators divest from companies that “publicly or privately fund or invest in the perpetuation of Israeli apartheid and war crimes”. Another longer-running campaign by green types hopes to push fossil fuels out of portfolios.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Activist investing”

From the May 4th 2024 edition

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