Last Wednesday, the University announced that its Corporation rejected a proposal to divest from 10 companies alleged to “facilitate the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” The decision comes after years of sustained activism and provides administrative finality to a contentious issue that continues to divide our campus. In response to the decision, the Undergraduate Council of Students announced that they would hold a referendum “demanding student seats on the Brown Corporation and expressing a lack of confidence in current leadership.” The council’s proposal is deeply misguided and fundamentally misunderstands Brown’s role as an institution of higher education, not a democracy.
In April, the Brown Divest Coalition, which authored the divestment proposal, reached an agreement with the University to end its week-long, unauthorized encampment on the Main Green. In exchange, organizers for divestment and counter-organizers would be provided an opportunity to present their case directly to a subset of the Corporation and to the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management, which offers non-binding recommendations to the Corporation. This was a fair and inclusive process that brought in testimony from over 3,800 community members. Citing ACURM’s charge that divestment “requires a causal link between the investment … and the associated harm” and prohibits “recommend(ing) any action that advances a position on social or political questions,” the committee decisively voted 8 to 2 against the measure.
While critics of the ACURM decision rightly point out that the committee’s mandate poses a high barrier to divestment, its charge was fully known to the organizers when they agreed to the deal. Both BDC and the students against divestment had a chance to make their case, and BDC failed to make a compelling argument for direct social harm.
The response to the decision was disappointing. The following day, BDC posted a graphic with the words “FUCK YOU CPAX, FUCK YOU BROWN CORP, FREE PALESTINE.” More consequentially, the Undergraduate Council of Students announced a vote of no confidence and a referendum to demand student representation on the Corporation.
It is incredibly ironic for demands for democratic representation to come out of UCS, a coalition that in the spring was elected from a record-low voter turnout of only 21%, and faced criticism for violating election rules about running on tickets. While students should and must have a place in shared governance at our University, we have famously seen what happens when students are the only voices in charge. A recent example of this was when, two years ago, the Undergraduate Finance Board burned through a $1.2 million surplus, leading to a historic club funding shortfall.
The proposal also ignores the reality that shared governance is alive and well at Brown. For two years, I had the privilege of serving as a member of the University Resources Committee, where I along with faculty, staff, and students across the University worked to approve our $1.83 billion budget. Indeed, students from all degree programs serve on committees across the university from the Title IX Council, College Curriculum Council, Student Conduct Board, Commencement Speakers Committee, Dining Council and many more. To criticize “a lack of shared governance” at the University because a single vote did not go your way is not only hypocritical but also in bad faith.
The Corporation acts according to its fiduciary responsibility to deal with complex, weighty, and often confidential matters. Students, by nature of their short tenure here on College Hill, do not have the long-term vision or investment to ensure Brown’s continued success over decades. Instead of recognizing strategic missteps, UCS, whose president ran on a pro-divest platform, has instead chosen to double down to draw attention away from its own failures. In doing so, they distract from UCS’s actual role in pushing for tangible quality-of-life reforms at the University.
I empathize with the students who so fervently fought for divestment. It’s easy to feel powerless when watching events from across the world, but there is a real disconnect between the situation in Palestine and the protesters’ demands which, if actualized, would make zero difference for Palestinians. In fact, in the 6 months between the deal and the Corporation’s decision, things have only gotten worse. While Brown does not have the power to stop the violence, if protesters instead channeled their moral outrage into solutions within our grasp, we could make a tangible difference in the lives of Palestinians. In that same six months, we could have demanded that Brown foster collaborations with universities in the West Bank, we could have advocated for Brown to host displaced Gazan college students as we did for Afghan refugees, or we could have pushed for a real Palestinian Studies Department.
In choosing to center radical voices such as Brown Students for Justice in Palestine, which declared on the anniversary of Oct. 7 that the deadly pogrom was “a historic act of resistance,” I fear this movement has lost its way. In an Oct. 10 post, the Brown Palestinian Solidarity Caucus declared that “Brown is a genocidal institution.” These blanket condemnations completely abdicate our responsibilities as moral actors to act according to our values. If you truly believe that Brown is a genocidal institution, then why wouldn’t you, with your tuition dollars, divest from Brown?
The mission of the University is to “serve the community, the nation, and the world” by “preserving knowledge and understanding in a spirit of free inquiry.” This mission statement does not imply a democratic subservience to the whims of its students, but rather a commitment to providing opportunities for critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving. The Corporation made its decision. It’s time we end this long shouting match and find more productive outlets for our outrage.
Tas Rahman is a staff columnist at the Brown Daily Herald writing about issues in higher education. When he's not coding or studying biochemistry, you can find him hiking and enjoying the great outdoors.
