On Thursday, five students will present a divestment proposal to a select group of Corporation members as the first step in the agreement between protesters and administrators that ended the encampment on the University’s Main Green.
The proposal, which was released during a hunger strike in February, is a “Critical Edition” of a 2020 report from the Advisory Committee on Corporation Responsibility in Investment Practices that calls for the University to divest from “companies identified as facilitating human rights violations in Palestine.”
The meeting follows a five-day encampment for divestment on the Main Green by over 100 students. After negotiations, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 agreed to allow students to present their proposal in front of a group of Corporation members in May. The governing body will hold an official vote during its meeting in October.
The five student presenters are Niyanta Nepal ’25, Hisham Awartani ’25, Eli Grossman ’24, Victoria Antonetti GS and Aboud Ashhab ’25. They were selected among students who were involved with activism in support of divestment.
Awartani is one of the three Palestinian college students who was injured in a November shooting in Burlington, Vermont, The Herald previously reported. Nepal, the president-elect of the Undergraduate Council of Students, ran on a pro-divestment platform and won election in March with 63% of votes.
Grossman, Antonetti and Ashhab have been heavily involved with campus activism surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas, and Grossman and Antonetti were lead authors of the Critical Edition of the ACCRIP report.
University administrators have maintained that Brown is not directly invested in weapons manufacturers, and that it selects external investment “managers whose values are aligned with the Brown community,” according to the Investment Office.
In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Grossman told The Herald that they hope to communicate to the Corporation “the expectations from our community for what we consider a fair vote be,” citing the meeting’s importance in “rebuilding trust between the Corporation and the community.”
The five students, who spoke at the conference, said they felt that the University’s past decisions, such as Paxson’s refusal to accept the Brown University Community Council’s recommendation to drop the charges against the 41 students arrested at a December sit-in, have damaged the community’s trust in Brown’s democratic structures.
The five students will also try to ensure that information communicated at tomorrow’s meeting will be shared with Corporation members who won’t be present, Nepal added.
They were not able to share which members of the Corporation will be in attendance.
Regarding the Corporation vote in October, “we’re confident that we’re going to win,” Grossman said.
Kathy Wang is the senior editor of community of The Brown Daily Herald's 134th Editorial Board. She previously covered student government and international student life as a University News editor. When she's not at The Herald, you can find her watching cooking videos or writing creative nonfiction.
Julia Vaz is the managing editor of newsroom and vice president on The Herald's 134th Editorial Board. Previously, she covered environment and crime & justice as a Metro editor. A concentrator in political science and modern culture and media, she loves watching Twilight (as a comedy) and casually dropping the fact she is from Brazil.
