San Francisco State University has announced that its foundation will stop investing in companies that make money from weapons manufacturing, a move that’s being celebrated by pro-Palestinian activists as a win for their campaign to push divestment from Israel.
In an email to the campus community last week, the vice president for university advancement, Jeff Jackanicz, said the updates to San Francisco State’s investment strategy came together after months of discussions this summer. Involved in the working group were Students for Gaza activists, the foundation’s investment committee, faculty representatives, and San Francisco State administrators. The university already had some social-justice language in its investment policies; the changes will add to those commitments.
The foundation will no longer invest in companies that generate 5 percent or more of their revenue through weapons manufacturing. The work group has also suggested revisions to the foundation’s investment policy statement “to include a core commitment to advancing human rights.” A final vote on that policy update is slated for the foundation board’s December meeting.
In addition, San Francisco State’s announcement said the foundation will update its website to publicize information on the makeup of its investments. Those changes — which put the foundation “on the leading edge of disclosure,” according to the university — are expected by the end of September. As of June, the endowment at San Francisco State, part of the California State University system, was worth $163 million. The university enrolls around 22,000 students.
Noam Perry, a strategic research coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee, a progressive Quaker organization that worked with Students for Gaza activists at San Francisco State, said he believes this is the most significant step a college has taken over the past year toward divestment from the war in Gaza. Many colleges have recently sold their investments in fossil-fuel companies, and some institutions have never invested in weapons manufacturers for religious reasons.
“It’s more than a commitment,” Perry said. “It’s actually that we see the implementation happening.”
In the campus message, Jackanicz, the San Francisco State vice president, gave credit to Students for Gaza for pushing the institution toward action.
The group established an encampment on campus for two weeks this spring before students came to an agreement with the San Francisco State administration. President Lynn Mahoney announced on May 13 that the university would support a move toward divesting from weapons manufacturers and improving disclosure of its investment strategies. The protesters shifted their encampment to a “day camp.”
That resolution was a relative success for the student protesters at San Francisco State: They achieved three out of four of their demands, including divestment from weapons manufacturing, full disclosure of investments, and a condemnation of a proposed state bill that critics say would chill free speech. The fourth demand called on the university to declare the “illegal occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the U.S-Israeli genocide on Gaza.”
Students for Gaza had originally called on SFSU to “divest from all companies and partnerships which actively participate in the colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” including academic relationships.
Max Flynt, a student organizer with Students for Gaza, said Perry, the local organizer, told activists that their goals were rather broad.
“What we worked down to is still historic,” Flynt said. “Obviously, we would prefer if our universities weren’t run like businesses.”
Flynt hopes that the proposed language around human rights — the measure that will be voted on in December — will force divestment from companies that have contributed to the violence in Gaza but aren’t weapons manufacturers.
Chris Marsicano, an associate professor of educational studies and public policy at Davidson College, said specificity is key in divestment campaigns, and a focus on weapons manufacturers, as opposed to companies that do business with Israel, helps avoid charges of antisemitism.
“This is the playbook,” Marsicano said. “Going from big ‘divest from everything’ protests to ‘divest from a couple of things,’ and then everybody walks away, if not happy, at least moderately content.”
It remains to be seen whether other colleges will follow suit. So far, administrators have strongly opposed divestment from Israel or additional disclosures related to colleges’ endowments. Even if other institutions take the same approach as San Francisco State, they’ll still have to contend with the argument that dropping holdings in weapons manufacturers will make no difference to the companies’ bottom lines — and, therefore, to human rights.
A spokesman for San Francisco State said the foundation’s investments in companies that make weapons were likely insignificant.
While agreeing that campus divestment is likely to be a drop in the bucket for weapons manufacturers, Marsicano said its value is in the political reverberations of a stream of headlines announcing that an institution has divested from the war in Gaza.
“No company wants to be seen as a liability for a government,” he said. “And so the pressure will absolutely continue as long as students are able to build some level of small victories.”
