[Marxism] Dershowitz targets Hampshire College

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/13/hampshire
War of Words on Investments in Israel

A pro-Palestinian student group and Hampshire College disagreed Thursday 
as to whether the Massachusetts institution’s withdrawal of investments 
from an index fund represented a rebuke of Israel, and a major first for 
the divestment movement. Any hope that this might stay a quiet campus 
disagreement — probably a slim hope given the topics involved — has 
evaporated with dueling press releases, media coverage from the Middle 
East and the entry of Alan M. Dershowitz into the dispute.

Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor and well known supporter 
of Israel, threatened to unleash a campaign against the college, and 
issue a call for donors to withhold contributions, unless Hampshire 
resolves any ambiguities and clearly states that it rejects student 
efforts to divest from the Jewish state. “What they have to do is make 
it impossible for the students to plausibly be able to declare victory,” 
said Dershowitz, whose son went to Hampshire.

“They want me on their side, they want the anti-Israel students on their 
side, they want everybody on their side. But unfortunately the 
divestment campaign is a zero-sum game. Both sides can’t win, and 
Hampshire let the anti-Israel students win and they will pay a heavy 
price for that. Unless they withdraw it, they withdraw it and they make 
it clear they have rejected these efforts to divest from Israel.”

The students dominated the headlines on Thursday when, in a press 
release, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter hailed Hampshire 
as “the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from 
companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation 
of Palestine.” The student group celebrated having successfully 
pressured the college to divest from six companies with connections to 
Israel’s military operations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hampshire officials acknowledge they initiated a review of the specific 
State Street fund in question in response to a petition from Students 
for Justice in Palestine. However, Hampshire maintains that it 
transferred assets to another fund after finding much broader violations 
of its policy on socially responsible investing, including unfair labor 
policies, environmental abuse, military weapons manufacturing and unsafe 
workplace settings. In all, Hampshire says it found more than 200 
companies in the fund that fell short of its standards. “[T]he decision 
expressly did not pertain to a political movement or single out 
businesses active in a specific region or country,” the college’s 
statement says.

As an analogy, Ralph Hexter, Hampshire’s president, said, “There might 
be a court case that the higher court sustains the ruling but the 
principles are entirely different. Not that we thought that way. This is 
not a policy decision; I can’t say that enough. The investment committee 
expressly rejected the idea that we were acting in any way [in regards 
to] a certain country or region or political position, but rather 
because it came to our attention — it happened to be through this 
[Students for Justice in Palestine] petition — that this fund contained 
many, many companies that were problematic, in a whole host of regions.”

Hexter acknowledged the court analogy was likely imperfect, and one 
imperfection is that when a higher court upholds a lower court’s ruling, 
but for different reasons, judges usually go out of their way to make 
the distinctions clear. That’s not quite what happened at Hampshire, at 
least initially. In the group’s press release, Students for Justice in 
Palestine quote Hexter as saying, during the February 7 board of 
trustees meeting when this was decided, “that it was the good work of 
SJP that brought this issue to the attention of the committee.” Hexter 
said the quote was accurate.

“What I referred to was their good work at doing undergraduate-level 
research and bringing it to the appropriate subcommittee of the board. 
It didn’t rely on their work, but it’s the kind of praise that I think 
you give to students for using the processes of the college,” Hexter 
said. While he expressed disappointment in the students disseminating 
“such a partial and biased version” of what happened, he also pointed 
out, “Remember, they are students.”

“We reject in our actions any singling out of a country, we thought 
that’s entirely inappropriate and it never occurred to us that this 
would be taken as divestment from Israel because that wasn’t the 
question before us,” said Hexter. “We’re in an awkward position that 
people are claiming falsely what this is and all I can do is deny it.... 
I can tell you personally as president that I am definitely opposed to 
divestment from Israel.”

In 1977, Hampshire was the first college to call for divestment in South 
Africa.

Matan Cohen, a spokesman for Students for Justice in Palestine Hampshire 
College, and a sophomore, said of Hampshire’s written clarification, “I 
will use the word curious but I would not say I’m surprised.... We all 
know how much pressure will be put on Hampshire to take this decision back.”

“We’ve identified, actually in fact and it’s true, other companies that 
do horrible things,” said Cohen. “They had to divest from all 200 to 
divest from these six.... How can you say it’s not about this area if 
you say first of all that it was SJP’s good work that brought your 
attention [to the fund]?” asked Cohen, a student from Israel.

“I think that Hampshire divested because we have pushed them. The 
majority of students on the campus support it, and we pushed them to 
make this decision and to divest from this occupation. It’s a shame to 
me that they’re not willing to fully own it.”

Dershowitz said of Hampshire, “They found an easy way out. ‘Yeah, we’ll 
divest from the six companies but we’re also going to divest from 200 
others’.... Not a single Fortune 500 company would pass muster under 
Hampshire policies.”

“I think it’s a very simple story ... a cowardly college administration 
that doesn’t want to say no to anybody, wants to talk out of both sides 
of its mouth to me and out of another side of its mouth to anti-Israel 
students,” he said. “They were looking for an excuse to be able to 
divest from those six companies but to do it in a broader way, but they 
were under-inclusive. They didn’t look at the rest of the portfolio.”

Hexter said Hampshire examined only one fund because officials had 
reason to believe it was problematic. Also at the February 7 board 
meeting, the board of trustees voted to revise its 1994 policy on 
socially responsible investing — after that’s completed, Hexter said, 
the review will continue. “We would then expect to have a continual 
methodology of making sure that all of our investments are always in 
compliance with our policies. It’s not good management to have this out 
of whack.”

Students for Justice in Palestine waited until Thursday to publicly 
declare victory in part so it could collect endorsements from prominent 
figures. As one example, David Theo Goldberg, director of the University 
of California Humanities Research Institute, is quoted in the group’s 
online press kit as saying, “I fully endorse the reasonable and 
courageous decision of Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest 
all investments that support the Israeli occupation and oppression of 
the Palestinian people.” In an interview Thursday, Goldberg said, “It’s 
commendable that even at the wider level, they would have taken a stance 
against companies doing business with repressive forces in questionable, 
unjust, unethical ways. I think that the companies doing business with 
the repressive forces in Israel and Palestine should be included.” But, 
he said, “I’m for divesting in the other 194 if they engage in unjust 
activities in other parts of the world.

“That’s not lacking cleverness given the political climate, to go for 
the broader general principle as a way of getting at the particular. 
Whether it’s a way of getting at the particular or not that’s driving it 
is an open question, obviously subject to debate by those more privy to 
the decision than I.”

— Elizabeth Redden

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