Over the past 18 months, the genocidal onslaught on the Palestinian people in Gaza has reached unfathomable levels. No food or medicine has entered for over two months. An Israeli minister recently announced what has already been clear policy: an intention to entirely destroy and annex Gaza.
During that same time, Dartmouth’s administration has arrested its own students en masse and abdicated its responsibility to stand up to authoritarian overreach on campus. As a result, two thirds of students now feel unsafe expressing their opinions.
These two paths are in fact deeply entwined. Dartmouth’s compromise of academic freedom has been in direct response to the growing calls from its community to divest from the genocide in Palestine. If you care about free speech, assembly or due process on campus, you should also care about divestment.
Dartmouth’s campaign to divest for Palestine began well over a year ago, including an 11-day student hunger strike which obtained a commitment from the Advisory Board on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) to consider divestment. Yet when President Sian Beilock wrote the Dartmouth community after her militarized police crackdown in May 2024, she justified her actions against the “extraordinarily dangerous precedent” of divestment.
Contrary to President Beilock’s framing, divestment is not radical, any more so than choosing where to spend our money in the first place. Dartmouth has divested five times in its history, including from South African apartheid, Sudanese genocide and the fossil fuel industry. Each time, it was done to align the College’s investments with its stated educational mission and moral commitments.
In fall 2024, a coalition of students, faculty, staff and alumni formed “Dartmouth Divest for Palestine” and researched and wrote a 55-page divestment proposal. We argue that holding stock in companies complicit in Israel's violations of international law is contrary to Dartmouth’s educational mission. The proposal highlights six military contractors with extensive and direct involvement in war crimes for immediate divestment – RTX, Boeing, BAE Systems, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and L3 Harris.
Since the proposal was published in February, 35 campus, community and alumni organizations have endorsed it, among them Palaeopitus Senior Society and members of Dartmouth Community for Divestment — the alumni who led Dartmouth’s divestment from South African apartheid in the 1980s. Hundreds more individuals have signed a petition in support of the proposal.
The most compelling argument for divestment is that it works. In the 1980’s, Dartmouth contributed to the wave of companies and institutions who divested from South African apartheid, which played an important role in its downfall. It is only the extent of the administration's opposition that has made it seem a radical act.
Dartmouth was among the first colleges to arrest its own students for divestment advocacy in October 2023. Its May 2024 crackdown was swift, excessive and chilling — storm troopers in full riot gear were called within hours of Beilock’s demand for peaceful protestors to vacate the Green.
Beilock’s language opposing divestment in the wake of May 2024 has solidified into Dartmouth’s policy of “institutional neutrality.” What began as a pretext to avoid publicly acknowledging Israel or Palestine, has expanded into a blanket excuse to stay silent on federal attacks on research funding, immigration, and diversity and inclusion, and justify not signing the American Associations of Colleges and Universities letter.
Worst of all, Beilock has contributed to the national rhetoric that casts peaceful student protestors as a public threat. She invoked campus safety in violently arresting our own students and faculty, and remained silent when New Hampshire’s governor smeared the May 1, 2024 protest as “pure antisemitism.” In doing so, she both undermines the fight against real antisemitism, and hands rhetorical ammunition to politicians eager to suspend due process and dismantle the independence of American colleges.
The backlash to Beilock’s actions have been loud and swift. Students passed a “no confidence” referendum condemning her May 1 2024 crackdown. Faculty voted to censure her. Identity-associated affiliation groups across campus united to condemn the attack on campus freedom in an open letter. This spring, Beilock’s hiring of Matt Raymer and her refusal to sign the American Association of Colleges and Universities letter prompted an unprecedented alumni outcry. The Alumni Council just sent Beilock a scathing letter, citing over 600 furious submissions to its biannual survey.
But outrage isn’t enough. These attacks on our campus values have been intended to suppress divestment. And until divestment is passed, those attacks will have succeeded. Higher education will not endure by focusing solely on its own preservation. “Academic freedom” in the abstract feels self-serving. But academic freedom wielded as a tool of dissent, in defense of the oppressed, is something worth fighting for.
I find it telling that Beilock’s most strident defenders — leading a recent on-campus “free speech” forum and circulating a petition in her support — are led by a participant from the 1986 shantytown sledgehammer attacks on the Green. Anti-divestment forces tried to push Dartmouth to the wrong side of history 40 years ago, and they are still trying today.
Next week may be the divestment campaign’s most important yet. Student protestors recently negotiated a commitment from ACIR to review the proposal by May 20. ACIR’s recommendation is only a first step; ultimately, the Board of Trustees holds sole responsibility for investment matters. The Board in 1989 saw the importance of divestment, and we hope our current Board of Trustees, charged with stewarding forward the values of the College in challenging times, sees the parallels today.
Yet this week, we have a chance to meet ACIR’s review with a loud and clear call from our community for divestment. Search for Dartmouth Divest for Palestine’s website to read the full proposal and find the linked petition. Share it with your networks. Demand that Dartmouth live up to the values it claims to champion: ethical leadership and moral courage.
Divestment is not a radical demand. It is a statement that our college should not profit from genocide and apartheid. It is a call for Dartmouth to take its place — as it has before — on the right side of history.
Peter Cooch is a member of the Class of 2007 and Dartmouth Alumni for Palestine. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
