http://Under anti-divestment laws, a majority of states will be required to sever business ties with Brown should the university vote to divest from Israel.
Brown University will face “immediate and profound legal consequences” should its governing body vote next month to divest from companies with connections to Israel.
Although the university’s president, Christina Paxson, has previously rebuffed student-led divestment efforts, her administration agreed last spring to have the Corporation, as Brown’s governing body is known, vote on the divestment proposal, known as Brown Divest Now, as part of an arrangement with anti-Israel encampment organizers.
In turn, the student protesters agreed to clear out their encampment on the university’s Main Green and not stage protests through commencement. The Corporation — which is run by 12 Fellows and 42 Trustees — is slated to vote on the measure during its October meeting.
Just the agreement to take a vote on the matter was controversial enough that one trustee, a prominent New York hedge fund manager, Joseph Edelman, resigned from his post, slamming the upcoming vote as “morally reprehensible.”
In his resignation letter, which he published in the Wall Street Journal, he criticized the administration for choosing to “lend credence” to “antisemitic voices” and choosing to “reward, rather than punish, the activists for disrupting campus life, breaking school rules, and promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown.”
He continued: “Brown’s policy of appeasement won’t work. It’s a capitulation to the very hatred that led to the Holocaust and the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7.”
Just hours later, the president of Brown University, Ms. Paxson, published a letter in response, claiming that Mr. Edelman “misunderstands and mischaracterizes the decision behind the October vote” and that the decision reflects the university’s commitment to giving “fair and due process to formal claims challenging its ethical responsibility.”
