Protesting US students won’t get very far

The Revolution will not be Deliverood. Among the demands of students occupying Columbia University in New York City is that the delivery of “basic humanitarian aid” must be allowed. “’Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation?” asked a keffiyeh-wearing spokeswoman, seemingly unaware that the campus eating halls are open and the water taps are working.

The subsequent ridicule heaped upon her was widespread, and the unfortunate role-playing revolutionary has probably added to the dim view most Americans take of the campus occupations which have spread across the country. Given that around 80 per cent of Americans support Israel in the Israel/Gaza war, footage of angry shouty elite Ivy League col­lege stu­dents is unlikely to change their minds.

The protesting students are overwhelmingly left of centre, and most will likely vote for Joe Biden this autumn. Trump supporters tend to oppose the protests. However, the students cannot count on the support of young people. Eighty-one-year-old Biden has an age problem, and it’s not just his memory. A recent CNN poll suggests he is trailing Trump by 11 percentage points in the under 35 age group and a FOX poll indicates an even wider gap among under 30s.

When you are caught up in the emotional moment of the battle, and surrounded by people who agree with you, it’s easy to miss that you might not be winning the war. It was the same in earlier decades. Between 1964 and 1966, students from University of California campuses staged numerous protests which included occupying a hotel. In the 1966 election campaign for governor of California, the incumbent Democrat was accused of not being tough enough on them. His Republican opponent pledged to “clean up the mess”. Ronald Reagan was elected with 57 per cent of the vote. The rest is Reaganomics. Four years later, when the National Guard shot dead four students at Kent State University in Ohio, only 11 per cent of people polled by Gallup blamed the Guard.

France has experienced something similar. In May 1968, left-wing students occupied universities and, after a heavy-handed response by the police, workers went on strike in sympathy. The economy was almost at a standstill, riots broke out, and there was a genuine danger the country would side into a civil war. The situation was defused, partially by President De Gaulle dissolving parliament and calling an election. The following month his right of centre party won the biggest victory in French parliamentary history, reflecting the views of a majority of people anxious about the degree of radicalism they had seen.

This may happen again in the US and impact the presidential election. The students may win some minor concessions, but they will mostly fail. One of their main demands is that their universities’ endowment funds divest from Israeli companies and companies which do business with them. Endowments are holdings and investments used to generate returns to fund the universities’ work, safeguard it for the future, and help with scholarships. Columbia’s fund was worth $13.6 billion last year and across the country more than $800 billion is invested. With those sorts of assets involved, most big universities have external investment managers to manage their affairs and a lot of the money is held in opaque private equity funds.

That brings a problem for the student demands. Even if a university agrees to stop investing in the list of targets chosen by the students (and most won’t) they will find it difficult to untangle the portfolios. Often a manager will have put money into a fund which comprises a bloc of companies and they can’t pick and choose within the bloc.  

To disinvest from a particular company, you might have to ditch several entire funds. For example, the protesting Columbia students are demanding that the university pull funds from Google, Amazon, Airbnb, Caterpillar, and others. This raises another issue. The boards of trustees of the universities have a duty to focus on risk and to maximise returns. Disinvestment might reduce the value of the endowments and so the university would have to legally change its position on that. 

It can be done. It took years, but some universities successfully unpicked their investments in fossil fuel companies, and in the 1980s dozens disinvested from South Africa. However, in those instances there was little pushback and a lot of embarrassment at being associated with South Africa. That is not the case with Israel. Also, South African exports could be easily sourced elsewhere whereas Israel’s high-tech advanced medical equipment, machinery, and computer expertise are much sought after and harder to find. That’s among the reasons the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has had such little success.

More problems. Boycotting Israel could bring legal challenges from non-protesting students (the majority) already angry that their classes are being disrupted and they are not free to move around their campuses due to the “liberated zones”. If the university is in one of the 27 US states which penalise organisations boycotting Israel there would be further grounds for legal action. Another issue would be donations from wealthy alumni drying up.  

The protesting students won’t change much, but they are young, and they feel they are changing the world. It is the nature of things. In a different but similar time their grandparents sang along with Bob Dylan: “Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand. For the times they are a-changin”. In a few years, most will have jobs, they’ll have partners, mortgages, and children – just like their grandparents did.  

To date, only Brown University has agreed to consider disinvesting, and its board will meet in October to discuss the issue. It’s a small victory and morale boost for the protesting students, and an important publicity win.

At Brown, students upped tents and ended their occupation. Elsewhere the chants of “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” continue – until the end of term, when they will go for a rest.

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