Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. What is it that the protestors at Columbia and elsewhere are actually calling for? In many cases, they have moved the focus from the Israeli military campaign itself and US government participation in it to the role of their colleges themselves, specifically calling for divestment from Israel in various ways. A part of the movement known as BDS or a Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel. USA Today staff writer Claire Thornton is writing about what the campus protestors are actually calling for. She spoke to students at Columbia and Princeton specifically and what that would involve or what it would involve to implement what they want.

She joins us to explain. Claire, thank you for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Claire Thornton: Hey Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You begin one of your articles by simply defining the word divest. Would you start there with a definition?

Claire Thornton: Yes. The word divest refers to diverting money that's in a university's endowment. The endowment is the pool of money a college has and tries to grow through investments. Student organizers at Columbia are saying we should divest from weapons manufacturers, companies that make military equipment that they say is currently being used in Gaza because they say that the military attacks there go against their values.

Columbia's endowment is more than $13 billion. It's one of the wealthiest universities in the country. There's a lot of money at stake and these university students, in addition to calling for a ceasefire, they're saying, "Hey, we're all part of this university community and we have this money, some of which may be being invested in companies that are directly involved in the war in Gaza. We think that goes against our community's values."

Brian Lehrer: You defined the word divest. Now can you briefly explain what an endowment is since they're calling for a divestment from Israel in the school's endowments? What an endowment is, people hear the word, but they don't necessarily know what it means, and how colleges use and manage their endowments.

Claire Thornton: Yes. An endowment is a big pool of money and at colleges like Princeton, Yale, MIT, some of the colleges that are in headlines this week, they have some of the biggest endowments in the country, tens of billions of dollars. A lot of that money is donated from alumni and universities hire finance experts to privately manage their investments.

The point of an investment is you want to grow it. The structure and rules of an endowment say that you have to preserve it. You can't spend more money than the money that the endowment is making in investment income because you need to preserve it so that you can keep funding your university's basic operations, teaching, maintaining buildings.

Brian Lehrer: That's right. We'll go on from here. That's the basics of it. Well done. By the way, I was curious to know if it's just these most elite colleges that have endowments and listeners, you might be interested in this. The website of the American Council on Education has a study of endowments from a few years ago, the late teens, and found that the median endowment for public four-year colleges-- because that was one of my questions, "Oh, do state schools have endowments?" They do, or at least they can.

The median endowment for public four-year colleges as of 2018 was about the same as for private colleges, about $35 million, but that most public colleges have limited endowments or none at all. Most public colleges have limited endowments or none at all. When we see Columbia, for example, at 13 billion as Claire reported, compared to a median nationally of 35 million for public and private colleges and universities and many with none at all, we can understand Claire, why the elite universities are where the calls for divestment are focused.

It also means the encampments at many other schools are necessarily focused on other things. I don't know if you've reported on that.

Claire Thornton: I have really focused on what's going on at Columbia and Princeton. The bigger a university's endowment is, more is at stake. That's what economists who study college endowments say, and that's exactly why pro-Palestinian student protestors at wealthy universities like Columbia and Princeton, and MIT are fighting so hard this week. No matter what the investment is, no matter the size, big or small, there are always going to be differences of opinion about what you should invest in according to your values and what you shouldn't invest in.

The reason why this debate we're seeing about college divestment is so fraught or controversial is because for an institution like Columbia, it's going to be so much harder for them to say, "Yes, we're going to invest in this. No, we're not going to invest in this," because they're an institution. It's much easier for an individual to say, "Yes, I'm going to buy stocks of this company because they align with my values and I'm not going to invest in this company."

Brian Lehrer: Now listeners, we can take just a few phone calls in this explainer segment if you support or oppose divestment from companies somehow related to the Israeli side of the war in Gaza just for other listeners to hear an argument or two for or against. It's a relatively short segment. It's an explainer segment but we know there are different points of view out there.

As I said at the beginning of the show today, we're trying to respect different points of view. There are people for or against divestment. We'll take just a couple of phone calls maybe just to model the arguments. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. People from the encampments if you're listening, or others supportive of the protest, you can call. I know supporters of BDS say it's a non-violent alternative to groups like Hamas, just economic pressure and support of human rights.

Listeners opposed, you can call too. I know that some Jewish organizations frame BDS as antisemitic because they see it as an attempt to delegitimize even the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, not just pressure it to end the occupation. Listeners, if you have a question, 212-433 WNYC. Also, welcome for Claire Thornton who wrote What Do the Campus Protestors Want explainer for USA Today. Call or text 212-433-9692. I see you spoke to students at Columbia and Princeton this week about what they want. What are some of the things you heard?

Claire Thornton: Yes. Students at Princeton, for example, have been very active around different kinds of calls for divestment for more than a decade. There's a group on campus called Sunrise Princeton, which was previously called Divest Princeton and they have really rallied around divesting from the fossil fuel industry, citing concerns about the environment and climate change.

In 2022, advocates for that group actually landed a pretty big win, and because of years of pressure, the endowment will be divested-- Was starting to divest from publicly traded oil and gas companies. That group, like I said, focuses on the environment, and more recently they're calling to divest from Israel. I spoke with one student, a sophomore who said that as far as Sunrise Princeton is concerned, they're very much against the violence and destruction in Gaza.

In addition to the human rights violations, they said they see it as an environmental issue too. They used the word eco side. They say the war is destroying the environment in Gaza and parts of places where attacks are happening.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Brian in Queens in support of BDS. Brian, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Brian: Hi, good morning. Yes, I'm in support of this because it really is, as you say, just an avenue to really show that we're not supporting our money, and especially weapons being used to kill innocent Palestinians. In addition to that, I would say to your second point that when it came to people who are pro-Israel side saying it's delegitimizing-- Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Delegitimizing their state, Israel state, I just say this, the whole purpose and the narrative for Israel has been to delegitimize the Palestinian people.

Any civilian deaths that have happened, whether it's the bombing of those poor innocent people by drone strikes, that has always been an excuse of "Hamas this, Hamas that," and they're always given the benefit of the doubt with the media, but then when it's the other way around, the pro-Palestinian side is always met with maximum scrutiny, being called Hamas lovers, et cetera.

Brian Lehrer: Brian, thank you very much. Now I think an opponent of BDS, Alan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Alan.

Alan: Yes. I'm an opponent with a very complex view on this because I'm also conscious of the fact that I think there's been overkill by Netanyahu and damage of a lot of property that has a lot of invested carbon fuel in it, and I criticize him intensely, but I think there's been a tipping over from criticizing him and his policies to identifying all of that with the entire Israeli state. I would really caution against that momentum that's building and spilling over into antisemitism generally and treating every Jew on a campus as if he's personally responsible for the excesses in Netanyahu.

If there is going to be collective guilt against Jewish students at Columbia, then that would say that the Israeli attempt to blame Palestinians in Gaza for the act of Hamas is also justified collective guilt. It goes both ways. We really have to be reasoned and moderate here and not overshoot the mark even if we have strong beliefs as I do that Netanyahu has made mistakes and a lot of that involves climatic damage. That's not a reason to divest from Israel but to correct the path of Israel.

Brian Lehrer: To supporters of BDS who say this is a nonviolent economic form of pressure that could be effective even at reducing Israel's military footprint and the occupation, how would you respond?

Alan: In terms of population and geography, I think there's a lot of ignorance among students who were born after the six-day war or the Yom Kippur war of the tiny proportion of the region that Israel's land represents and certainly a proportion of the population that it represents, and also the disproportionate level of criticism of Israel for its excesses, given the proximity of threats to it compared to other threats the US has responded to very disproportionately as in Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction there, yet we sent shock and awe half a world away for political reasons that have nothing to do with the real threat they pose to our country.

I'm not saying don't ever criticize anyone for their excesses or their faults, but I'm saying there should be some balance and equal distribution of the criticism and I think it's been unduly focused on Israel.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. We appreciate it and we appreciate the previous caller with the opposing point of view. Claire, here's a question from a listener who writes, "Divestment targets from the BDS movement focus primarily on arms manufacturers, which begs the question, why are universities invested in arms manufacturing in the first place?" I don't know if your reporting can answer that question, but I'm curious if it's come up.

Claire Thornton: That is a really excellent question. The person who posed that question is pretty spot on. There's a group at Columbia called Columbia University Apartheid Divestment, that is a group of many, many student organizations on campus, many Jewish students are involved and if you go to that group's Instagram, you will see that they are calling for divestment of five or six specific weapons manufacturers and companies that make military equipment that they say is being used.

They say that Columbia needs to halt investments in those and halt investments in Israel overall, but an economist I spoke to said that what colleges do with their funds at the end of the day is very, very complicated, and it may be very difficult to define what an investment in Israel entails. An economist named Sandy Baum who studies college endowments said that could mean a weapons manufacturer, it could also mean divesting from an airline company that flies to Israel.

Some bigger investments might be more obvious than smaller ones, much smaller ones that might be tucked away in mutual funds, the kind of investment tool that pools money and spreads it out over many assets, and that's something that college endowments are invested in.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener responding to the previous texter writes, "Why divest from arms manufacturers? We need those arms for Ukraine." It goes round and round and down many spurs. Just one more question-

Claire Thornton: It does.

Brian Lehrer: -before you go. As a historical note, you mentioned in your article that back in 1969 there was a student occupation of a prominent building on the Princeton campus in support of divestment from South Africa during the apartheid era, and nearly a decade later, Princeton did announce what it called a selective divestment. I'm curious what selective divestment means.

Claire Thornton: I need to look into that a bit more. That's a very important question, but part of the answer is that Princeton pretty much made it clear that they're going to take a closer look at companies in South--

Brian Lehrer: Whoops. Did we just lose Claire's line? Do we have Claire Thornton from USA Today? I guess we lost Claire's line, but you know what, it's about the end of the segment anyway, and I guess we're going to leave it there. We thank whether she can hear me or not Claire Thornton from USA Today for that explainer on what the campus encampments and the people there are actually asking for. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, we turn the page, much more to come.

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