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US Colleges Reject Divestment Proposals Targeting Israel

Illustrative: Law enforcement clash with pro-Hamas demonstrators at the University of Michigan on Aug. 28, 2024. Photo: Brendan Gutenschwager/X

American universities are largely rejecting demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering further blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement, which students and faculty pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations to coerce officials into enacting the policy.

“We have a fiduciary responsibility to preserve and grow the endowment, which directly supports the mission of the university,” Chapman University trustee Jim Burra said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “It is important that we make financial decisions based on risk and return.”

Late last month, the University of Minnesota provided similar reasons for not divesting from Israel, citing “fiduciary duty” and the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes the campus community. However, the university adopted a new policy for its investments, a so-called “position of neutrality” which insulates official business from the daily caprices of political opinion.

“For the past several months, we have sought expert analysis and a variety of perspectives on how the university invests its Consolidated Endowment Fund,” Board of Regents chair Janie Mayeron said in a statement. “We have reviewed how this fund operates, how it supports affordable education for students, groundbreaking research, and community engagement, and the possible financial challenges of divestment … In the end, it is clear our community is divided on the topic. After careful consideration of all this input, we believe today’s action honors our fiduciary duty and the long term needs of the university.”

Several weeks earlier, Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees voted against divestment after reviewing a proposal submitted by “Students for a Free Palestine,” a spin-off of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations.

“Accepting this proposal could substantially limit our ability to deliver on Oberlin’s mission, namely, by reducing our financial resources and restricting critical discourse, as described below,” the college said in a statement. “The burden it would impose on Oberlin could be substantial and out of proportion with the direct and indirect impact of divesting.”

Oberlin also explained that divestment would undermine its mission to create a space in which students “express contested views,” adding that adopting the divestment proposal “would be taking a clear institutional stand on one side of a fraught and contested issue that divides the Oberlin community.” It continued, “The board believes that doing so could constrain critical thinking, discourse, and debate on the subject, which would jeopardize the college’s mission.”

These colleges and universities are not the first to reject divestment from Israel, a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate the Jewish state from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.

Williams College’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) rejected a proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers that sell their products to Israel in May, handing an early and substantial loss to the anti-Zionist movement in the final days of an academic year convulsed by pro-Hamas demonstrations. In addition to ruling out divestment as a possibility, ASCR declined to make itself a permanent standing committee or to recommend adopting controversial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles which have been pushed by far-left groups aiming to use the market as an accelerator of social change.

ASCR cited a number of reasons why the move would be disadvantageous to the college, including that some of its funds are potentially “commingled.” Divesting from them, it explained, “could have a negative impact on investment performance out of proportion to the negligible impact on the targeted company.” It also said that the anti-Israel activists’ demands were “broad” and target companies such as Boeing, which “not only builds missiles, but also satellite systems and commercial aircraft.”

ASCR added that there is no “shared understanding” among scholars and experts, nor among its own community, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would make divestment from Israel as morally cogent as divesting from South Africa in the 1980s or, more recently, fossil fuels.

Some colleges have embraced divestment or other policies approximating it, Inside Higher Ed reported earlier this month, noting that California State University-Sacramento has said it will not invest in companies which “profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights,” an ambiguous turn of phrase that does not specifically mention Israel. Additionally, the outlet added, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York has committed to implementing “socially responsible investment screens” that prevent investments in companies “substantially and intractably benefiting from the war in Palestine.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Brown University’s Corporation of trustees will soon vote on a divestment proposal submitted by a group which calls itself the Brown Divest Coalition (BDC). According to The Brown Daily Herald, Brown president Christina Paxson initially only promised the protesters a meeting with members of the Brown Corporation, but the students pushed for more concessions and ultimately coaxed her into making divestment a real possibility. If it becomes university policy, Paxson will expose Brown to “immediate and profound legal consequences,” two dozen US attorneys general warned in a letter late last month.

“It may trigger the application of laws in nearly three-fourths of states prohibiting states and their instrumentalities from contracting with, investing in, or otherwise doing business with entities that discriminate against Israel, Israelis, or those who do business with either,” the missive, written principally by Arkansas state attorney Tim Griffin, explained. “Adopting that proposal may require our states — and others — to terminate any existing relationships with Brown and those associated with it, divest from any university debt held by state pension plans and other investment vehicles, and otherwise refrain from engaging with Brown and those associated with. We therefore urge you to reject this antisemitic and unlawful proposal.”

Thirty-five states in the US have anti-BDS laws on their books, including New York, Texas, Nevada, Illinois, and California. Tennessee passed one in April 2023, and in the same year, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) issued an executive order banning agencies from awarding contracts with companies participating in the BDS movement. The justice system has repeatedly upheld the legality of such measures. In February 2023, the US Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Arkansas’ anti-BDS law, which argued that requiring contractors to confirm that they are not boycotting Israel before doing business with the University of Arkansas is unconstitutional. Several months later, a federal appeals court dismissed a challenge to Texas’ anti-BDS law, ruling that the plaintiff who brought it lacked standing.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post US Colleges Reject Divestment Proposals Targeting Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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