One way to implement BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) on your campus is to support student-led calls for divestment, which have increased in number across the country at a wide range of institutions. Demands range from divesting student funds to divesting endowments and the targeted companies range from Israeli companies to those that support Israeli state violence, genocide, and apartheid, to all weapons-manufacturing companies. On some campuses, these movements also dovetail with or work in solidarity with calls to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Divestment is a tried and true political strategy. Beginning in the 1960s, the movement to end apartheid in South Africa began pressuring US institutions to divest from companies supporting that apartheid state. Eventually, in 1986, this pressure led the Congress to adopt the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which included a divestment policy towards South Africa. Prior to that act of the Congress, student movements across the country successfully pressured their universities and colleges to divest from companies that did business with apartheid South Africa and over 100 institutions did so, including the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Pitzer College.

Numerous lists of targeted companies have been compiled by various organizations, including the BDS Movement, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and Who Profits, an independent research center dedicated to exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international corporations in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land. The UN Human Rights Council has also produced a list of companies that operate in illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and West Bank; their site of operation renders their business activities by default illegal under international law. It is important to keep in mind that divestment from companies that contribute to Israeli apartheid and genocide often intersects with divestment from fossil fuel, mass incarceration, military occupation, and the border and surveillance industries, as demonstrated by the list compiled by the AFSC. The Mapping Project has visualized data showcasing the interconnections among these companies and the ways they are embedded in wider financial and higher education institutions.

In advocating for comprehensive divestment from these companies, we heed the Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). As part of the BDS movement, the call for divestment has been issued by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, the broadest of such coalitions to date, and reflects wide consensus among those both in Palestine and the diaspora.

As growing numbers of people across the political spectrum and generations have recognized that Israel is an illegitimate apartheid state, multiple state legislatures and governors have aimed to curtail support for BDS. Legislation that aims to curtail BDS activities does not impact our right to call for BDS, and the anti-boycott laws rarely directly impact individuals who do so. Several successful court challenges have affirmed that the right to boycott for Palestinian rights is protected, and have led legislatures to make these laws only applicable to larger companies and contracts with state entities. The primary intent and impact of anti-boycott laws is to cause a chilling effect, which we can overcome by continuing to organize and engage in BDS campaigns. Students across the US have accomplished encouraging successes pushing their institutions to divest. Since 2003, over 95 referenda at colleges and universities related to divestment or product boycotts have been adopted, and Hampshire College has fully implemented divestment (Hampshire was also the first to divest from apartheid South Africa, in 1977). Most recently, for example, student govesrnment at the University of California, Davis, voted to divest student funds in accordance with BDS, and faculty at the University of Michigan passed a resolution calling on their institution to “divest from its financial holdings in companies that invest in Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.” In addition, in recent years numerous campuses have divested from industries like private prisons, including from security corporations like G4S, and over one hundred institutions have partially or fully divested from fossil fuels, for example from oil and gas companies like Chevron.

Many endowments are held in funds managed by a variety of professional investment managers. Just because this is the case does not mean that these funds cannot be reallocated. Investment managers do this all the time and if an institution’s chosen investment manager is unwilling to do so, the Board of Trustees can direct the office of investments to choose a different company or person to manage their funds. This is not an unusual request and should not be considered an obstacle to divestment.

Faculty play a crucial role in these divestment campaigns, both supporting student-led efforts and as key actors. Depending on the type of institution, faculty can:

• put divestment resolutions forward through faculty governance processes;

• work to access fiscal data through academic senates or other governance committees;

• participate in educating colleagues and administrators about divestment movements more broadly, including the history of US university divestment during the South Africa anti-apartheid movement;

• join campus committees that report back to the board of trustees on responsible investments;

• meet with administrators or board of trustee members to explain how divestment works and that it is in fact something that universities and colleges have done in the past and continue to do today.

We call on FJP chapters to join the call to push our academic institutions to divest from companies that participate in Israel's oppression of Palestinians, both by supporting student-led divestment movements and by taking initiative as faculty who work in these institutions.