ACSR recommends against divestment from IDF weapons manufacturing and suppliers in report – The Williams Record

The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) has published a report on May 23, recommending against divestment from companies that sell weapons or reconnaissance tools to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and against articulating public ethical standards for the College's investments. The report also recommends that the Investment Committee consider increasing transparency regarding investment decisions to the extent it deems possible.

The ACSR, non-permanent committee, met in January in response to a November 2023 request from J4J. On February 9, J4J representatives met with ACSR and presented three demands: First, that the College institute investment criteria that “aim to eliminate businesses that support continued violence in Israel/Palestine,” such as arms suppliers to the IDF; Second, that the College applies environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards to its investment strategy and publicizes companies or industries that the College excludes from its investments; And third, that the Faculty Steering Committee establish the ACSR as a standing committee.

On February 29, philosophy professor Steven Gerrard submitted a second request to the ACSR, urging them not to recommend divestment. Gerrard wrote that divestment in reaction to any issue violates the College's ethical imperative of “institutional restraint” or allowing students to learn to think for themselves, and wrongly elevates some global issues while diminishing the importance of others. Gerrard declined to comment on the final ACSR report. Provost Eiko Siniawer, president of ACSR, also declined to comment.

ACSR's recommendations follow months of advocacy by campus organizers demanding that the College divest from weapons manufacturing and increase its fiscal transparency. From May 1 to May 13, J4J and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) maintained a camp on Sawyer Quad to demand that the College improve its fiscal transparency and divest from arms manufacturers that supply Israel. SJP decided to dismantle the camp after College President Maud S. Mandel and several board members agreed to two meetings with SJP, J4J and at least 19 board members.

The ACSR report provides responses to these two requests and makes a final recommendation to the Board's Investment Committee.

First, the report provides guidelines for evaluating applications. It states that changes to the College's investment strategy should be supported by “broad and deep consensus” on campus, should be supported by considerations that are not likely to change in the short term, and should have a ” substantial impact” on the issues motivating the project. request while avoiding “negative and collateral impacts”.

In the report, ACSR concluded that J4J's first demand – divestment from IDF arms manufacturers and suppliers – did not meet these criteria. “The ACSR does not see a demonstrable, shared understanding within the academic community of the current issues underlying the divestment request,” he wrote. “ACSR received comments from some student groups, faculty, and staff in support of Jewish demands for justice. But opposing views within our community have also been expressed. The recent uproar on college and university campuses is only a reflection of the controversial nature of these complex and emotionally charged issues.

In a statement to Save on May 24 and posted to its Instagram on May 25, J4J called the committee's reasoning “less than satisfactory.” “The committee cites a lack of consensus on this issue within the academic community, but does not cite a measure it used to determine this and does not support this reasoning with data,” he wrote.

The ACSR also pushed back on the potential impact of disinvestment. “Although divestment might have symbolic meaning for some members of the academic community, ACSR believes that this symbolic gesture would not change much, if anything, about the situation that concerns Jews for Justice,” wrote the committee. “In general, the ACSR does not advocate using changes in investment strategy for purely symbolic gestures. »

J4J expressed its disagreement with the ACSR's findings. “Even if the monetary impact of divestment is 'very small,' as the report suggests, we still believe that any complicity in genocide and apartheid is completely unacceptable and must be addressed immediately,” he wrote to the newspaper. Save.

ACSR also wrote that it does not recommend that the College adopt J4J's second request for ESG standards for all investments and a public and proprietary list of what the College “would like.” not invest in.” The committee noted in part the difficulty of establishing common values ​​and guidelines for ESG investment restrictions. “While ACSR is deeply interested in the intersection of values ​​and investment strategy, as reflected in its mission, the committee is hesitant to say more about ESG investing because the college does not have an exhaustive list of specific, clearly defined institutional values,” it says. a writing.

“The ACSR considers that what could be broadly termed “ESG factors” are taken into account, where appropriate, as one factor among many others within the framework of the ACSR. [fund] manager selection process,” he continues.

In its statement, J4J writes that it believes it is the responsibility of the Order to take public ethical positions. “The committee's refusal to recommend that the Investment Office provide the academic community with a set of public guidelines ensuring the Investment Office's commitment to global citizenship is deeply shameful,” he wrote.

The ACSR approved J4J's request to increase transparency of the College's investment portfolio, to the extent that the Office of Investments can provide it. “ACSR also suggests that the Office of Investments could be clearer about how it makes investment decisions, particularly to members of the academic community who may not be familiar with the world of investments” , they wrote.

Finally, the report did not recommend that the Faculty Steering Committee establish CCSR as a standing committee, which was J4J's third request. The ACSR was a standing committee from its inception in the 1970s until 2018, when the Faculty Steering Committee decided that the ACSR no longer needed to meet regularly because the College primarily invested in hedge funds and did not did not hold direct shares in publicly traded companies, according to the report. The report expresses ACSR's belief that the 2018 reasoning is still valid and that the committee does not need to meet regularly.

In its statement, J4J agreed with the report's reasoning. “In conversations with various faculty members, we realized the ineffectiveness of standing committees outside of direct calls for policy changes,” he writes.

“We want to be clear that our fight for divestment does not end with this report,” he continued. “We look forward to presenting our case for divestment to the board and continuing to defend what we know is right until divestment is won.” »