Students achieve Israeli divestment victories on US college campuses

Two significant US campus divestment victories were hard-won by students and community activists in San Francisco, California, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On 19 April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduate Student Union democratically adopted a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the MIT community to cut all research and financial ties with the Israeli military.

According to the MIT Coalition for Palestine, along with BDS Boston, the Industrial Liaison Program of MIT officially cut its ties with Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.

After a sustained six-month campaign against the program, which included disrupting the liaison program’s conferences both in the US and in three countries in Asia, the coalition says that it sets the stage for future wins against Elbit and the Israeli military complex in the US and around the world.

Richard Solomon, an MIT doctoral student in political science and a member of the MIT coalition for Palestine, tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast that though the campaign against Israel’s technological relationship with MIT has been active for some time, the student and the community has accelerated their mobilization strategies.

“We don’t just send polite emails,” Solomon says.

“We show up to the office, we picket outside. We make the staff feel uncomfortable. We went to the MIT Museum, which is a public place tourists go, and we would have rallies there. We had waves of phone calls to the office. We went there several times. We know that Elbit itself has become a toxic asset globally.”

Solomon explains that though the university won’t admit it, the divestment was due to public pressure and growing revulsion at the genocide in Gaza.

“It’s the global awakening of public opposition to the genocide and to the aiding and abetting of that by the most prestigious and institutions in America – I think, that’s what’s doing it now,” he says.

He notes that it could have been not MIT’s, but Elbit’s own decision to “remove themselves from a community that’s extremely hostile towards it, and we would not have got to that point without the levels of mobilization we see now.”

It is only the first victory, he says, with more to come.

“We know that Elbit AI engineers continue to collaborate with MIT faculty on drone coordination projects. Those projects are often sponsored by the Israeli military itself directly. We know this violates MIT’s own rules on foreign engagements, it violates the rules of our own conscience, and it disrespects the majority mass opinion of students, faculty and people of conscience around the world.”

Liza Behrendt, an activist with BDS Boston, added that Elbit Systems is a company that they identified as a target on which to focus “both because of its particularly egregious role in violence and genocide and because of how important Elbit’s leaders see Cambridge and the surrounding Boston community … as part of their global strategy.”

Behrendt explains that Elbit “is Israel’s largest weapons dealer. They manufacture 85 percent of Israel’s military drones. Elbit describes its drones as the backbone of the Israeli [army]. And in addition, it supplies the Israeli military with tanks, munitions, surveillance towers – and being the largest weapons company that is based in Israel, it also plays a really key role in Israel’s economy, and the economy of the nation state as a whole that is continuing to inflict genocide.”

One lesson for activists, she says, is the importance of persistence.

That means “continuing to show up until we not only annoy the targets of our campaigns, but annoy people around them, so that folks who are in the general vicinity and might not be persuaded have their minds changed,” she adds.

“Despite the global upswell and support for Palestine, they may still want our targets to listen to us so that they can get some peace.”

University of San Francisco divests from four companies

Meanwhile, in California, the University of San Francisco announced plans to divest from four US weapons companies that contract with the Israeli military.

According to KQED news, “The school’s endowment fund will sell off its direct investments in Palantir, L3Harris, GE Aerospace and RTX Corporation by 1 June, the university confirmed. The four companies, which provide weapons technologies and military intelligence tools to Israel, had been specifically targeted by student activists.”

At the University of San Francisco, this divestment was won because of a similar “persistent, non-stop campaign by students, especially USF [undergraduate] students” over the last 19 months, says USF student Ani De Lira Lopez.

De Lira Lopez, a third-year undergraduate, took part in the Gaza encampments on campus.

USF is a private Jesuit institution, and is not mandated to publicly disclose its financial investments.

But the students’ demands for transparency and disclosure during the encampment protests has pushed the administration to start disclosing its investments related to Israel.

After October 2023, De Lira Lopez explains that there were rallies and protests on campus to demand that the university declare that what was happening in Gaza was a genocide – the institution still refuses to use the term, they say.

In a statement on 8 May, the university acknowledged those demands, but said that it “will not take an advocacy position.”

De Lira Lopez says that students have addressed the USF’s hypocrisy that it is a socially-conscious hub for students while it continues to invest in Israel’s atrocities.

“So we were able to educate other students on, hey, you know this school markets itself as being somewhere where you can come and change the world. Did you know that we are actively investing in genocide?”

That messaging, they say, has been “extremely powerful.”

“And I’m really proud of other students who have been able to get that messaging out there to local media, to other people in the Bay Area. And I think because we’re a Jesuit private institution, we’re in this very unique place where we’re able … to benefit off of their own messaging, the marketing that they chose to give to students in order to get them to pay $90,000 to go there,” they say.

Produced by Tamara Nassar

Photo: Vincent Ricci/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom