Josh Marshall had a post on TPM about how UC Riverside negotiated with its encampment and agreed to look at removing Sabra Hummus from its cafeterias. This set me off.
When I first heard that the protest encampments were demanding their universities disinvest from Israel, I vaguely thought they had picked the wrong target. Going back to my Vietnam War protest days, we weren’t demanding things of our universities. We were demanding something of our government - End The War! To be sure some radicals of the day were doing “teach-ins” to expose the “complicity of the universities with the war machine”. But the central demand was on the government.
Over time divestment became a more frequently used strategy. Divest from the apartheid regime of South Africa. BDS on Israel. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
South Africa had no influential political force in US politics. And its moral dimension was much clearer. Not the case with Israel.
But IMHO, the central demand of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators ought to have been ending unconditional military aid to Israel. That’s a demand of the government, not the university. Bernie Sanders and several Congresspeople have been calling for that. Biden has now taken a first step in that direction.
But now it seems to these protesters that there is nothing to be done to influence government policies. Divestment strategies have more appeal because they are closer to home and therefore more attractive targets, I suppose.
But by focusing on university complicity rather than government policy, this movement has taken its eye off the ball. They’re talking about HUMMUS???? Jesus H. Christ, how ridiculous can they make themselves?
It’s not that I have no support for their pro-Palestinian position. I myself have resisted buying a SodaStream. But that’s an individual stance. Like recycling. It isn’t politics on the scale that we need to be focusing on. If the entire UC system banned Sabra Hummus tomorrow that would absolutely do bupkis toward ending the war.
Elite universities are hedge funds attached to real-estate empires run by right-wing billionaires with lucrative research arms enmeshed with the military-surveillance state and a side hustle in education that make their vast holdings tax free.
"The endowments constitute a powerful incentive for administrators to shield the composition of their holdings from public scrutiny, especially that of knowledgeable students and faculty. The use of public resources for private capital accumulation is a kind of paradigm of the System writ large that the authorities are at pains to conceal."
Is the implication that elite private universities also receive public funds?
As non-profits, private universities enjoy tax benefits related to the money they make themselves, as well as for donors who can deduct donations as charitable donations. There have been cases in the education privatization field where donations to ostensibly non-profit entities were linked to benefits to the donor from the non-profit's transactions.
Josh Marshall had a post on TPM about how UC Riverside negotiated with its encampment and agreed to look at removing Sabra Hummus from its cafeterias. This set me off.
When I first heard that the protest encampments were demanding their universities disinvest from Israel, I vaguely thought they had picked the wrong target. Going back to my Vietnam War protest days, we weren’t demanding things of our universities. We were demanding something of our government - End The War! To be sure some radicals of the day were doing “teach-ins” to expose the “complicity of the universities with the war machine”. But the central demand was on the government.
Over time divestment became a more frequently used strategy. Divest from the apartheid regime of South Africa. BDS on Israel. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
South Africa had no influential political force in US politics. And its moral dimension was much clearer. Not the case with Israel.
But IMHO, the central demand of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators ought to have been ending unconditional military aid to Israel. That’s a demand of the government, not the university. Bernie Sanders and several Congresspeople have been calling for that. Biden has now taken a first step in that direction.
But now it seems to these protesters that there is nothing to be done to influence government policies. Divestment strategies have more appeal because they are closer to home and therefore more attractive targets, I suppose.
But by focusing on university complicity rather than government policy, this movement has taken its eye off the ball. They’re talking about HUMMUS???? Jesus H. Christ, how ridiculous can they make themselves?
It’s not that I have no support for their pro-Palestinian position. I myself have resisted buying a SodaStream. But that’s an individual stance. Like recycling. It isn’t politics on the scale that we need to be focusing on. If the entire UC system banned Sabra Hummus tomorrow that would absolutely do bupkis toward ending the war.
Is it this?
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Arun Gupta
2d ·
Elite universities are hedge funds attached to real-estate empires run by right-wing billionaires with lucrative research arms enmeshed with the military-surveillance state and a side hustle in education that make their vast holdings tax free.
Yeah. I just found it again myself.
Also, please say more, I don't follow thIs:
"The endowments constitute a powerful incentive for administrators to shield the composition of their holdings from public scrutiny, especially that of knowledgeable students and faculty. The use of public resources for private capital accumulation is a kind of paradigm of the System writ large that the authorities are at pains to conceal."
Is the implication that elite private universities also receive public funds?
As non-profits, private universities enjoy tax benefits related to the money they make themselves, as well as for donors who can deduct donations as charitable donations. There have been cases in the education privatization field where donations to ostensibly non-profit entities were linked to benefits to the donor from the non-profit's transactions.
Sorry, but rich Jewish donors are the very heart of the issue, not capitalism.