Re: Dartmouth committee unanimously votes against advancing divestment proposal
Having read the carefully researched, well-supported proposal for divestment, I have to ask how Dartmouth’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility can reject divesting from six military corporations that are aiding genocide, ethnic cleansing and immense environmental damage. How can ACIR make such smug arguments against divestment while Gaza is burning and its two million residents are being deliberately starved by Israel with U.S. complicity?
The ACIR response is cold-hearted, but even worse, it makes the committee complicit in the destruction, when they instead have the opportunity to act and lead. Dartmouth managed to join other states and universities in the 1990s to divest from investments in corporations doing business with apartheid South Africa. Why not now with apartheid Israel and Palestine? What will it take for Dartmouth to finally take action? European states and others around the world are condemning Israel’s war in Gaza. Universities across Spain, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom are completely divesting.
How does Dartmouth want its image portrayed in history? What does “responsible investing” actually mean to us?
The ACIR report and Beilock’s response are unacceptable to those Dartmouth community members who carefully prepared the divestment proposal. It is disrespectful to the many campus and community members who value all lives as sacred and who oppose the crimes of occupation and genocide in which Dartmouth is investing.
Liz Blum is the founder of Jewish Voice for Peace NH/VT. Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
