Opinion
What campus protesters get wrong about divestment
Resisting magical thinking about how financial markets work would help them better direct their efforts today.
The EconomistOne-third of Ivy League graduates end up working in finance or consulting. So perhaps it is unsurprising that campus protesters are providing investment advice: they want university endowments to get rid of assets linked to Israel.
At Columbia University, for instance, a coalition of more than 100 student organisations is demanding that administrators divest from companies that “publicly or privately fund or invest in the perpetuation of Israeli apartheid and war crimes”. Another longer-running campaign by green types hopes to push fossil fuels out of portfolios.
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