Protestors explain divestment issues at UC Berkeley as encampment continues
BERKELEY, Calif. - Protestors camping out at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza on Thursday said they were encouraged by meetings with UC officials.
The protestors are calling on the university to review its investments and cut ties with any weapons manufacturers and military supply industries involved with Israeli attacks and civilian casualties in the Gaza war.
"We've met with all sorts of people, Chancellor Christ, the staff. I'm not sure about the positions of all the people, but we are seeing progress," said Yazen Kashlan, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate and spokesperson for the coalition of students organizing the protest.
"We're getting into the details. This is an academic setting and its all about the nuance," Kashlan said. "We're working on keeping things civil and nonviolent."
Protestors say they had a small victory Thursday, after the undergraduate study body voted for a bill to block the expenditure of student funds on companies linked with military industry.
"It was a near unanimous vote in favor of the bill," said Zaid Yousef, a UC Berkeley law student and member of the UCB Divest Coalition.
The protestors say they have formed a Divestment Committee that includes faculty members. They hope the university will listen to their concerns and the research that they have done into the issue.
"So the primary ask is complete divestment from Blackrock. Blackrock, as you know, is a holding company that has multiple investments," Yousef said.
"Among them is Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the missiles and the planes and the tanks used to kill the people of Gaza. Among them is Raytheon, and all these companies that are profiting off the war," Yousef said. "So the primary ask is complete divestment from Blackrock just to take our money, our tuition, our taxes, off the blood of the people of Gaza."
Christopher Marsicano, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and Public Policy at Davidson College in North Carolina, studies higher education financing.
He says the protestors' demands vary by campus as to which investments they want to be removed from each university's endowment portfolio.
"What students are by and large calling for is divestment from weapons manufacturers, Israeli businesses, and companies that do business with Israeli businesses," said Marsicano.
He says in the 1980s there was a similar focus on divesting from South Africa during the apartheid era.
"Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa, functionally ending apartheid," Marsicano said. "For the 10 years prior, students were protesting on college campuses and in 150 some odd cases, students got their universities to divest in some way from South Africa."
Marsicano says at that time, the students also targeted specific companies, but university funding has changed over the decades, making divestment more complicated in some cases, now that many universities hold blended index funds instead of individual stocks.
"What, effectively, endowment managers have to do is figure out which of the various different pieces of their very complicated endowment meet those criteria," Marsicano said.
Marsicano adds that protestors' demands that focus on a particular sector such as weapons manufacturing are easier to address.
"There are already index fund products that don't include weapons manufacturers or defense companies," Marsicano said.
Kashlan however, says the UC Berkeley protestors' divestment committee wants a broader ban.
"There are other companies in the supply chains of these firms," Kashlan said, adding that the students are talking with UC about those concerns in the discussions.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof told KTVU Thursday that the university had no comment on the divestment issue.
Jana Katsuyama is a reporter for KTVU. Email Jana at jana.katsuyama@fox.com or call her at 510-326-5529. Or follow her on Twitter @JanaKTVU.
