30 Years Since South Africa: Tell NYU to Divest for Human Equality Once More!
Divestment is a non-violent strategy employed by universities, religious communities, civil society organizations, and governmental bodies around the world to pressure corporations that demonstrate a lack of accountability, ethicality, and respect for the rights and dignity of others. This includes corporations that contribute to violence, oppression, and ecological destruction. New York University has established a precedent of commitment to social justice in 1985, when it divested from companies involved in Apartheid South Africa; and again in 2014 when the University Senate created a committee on divestment from fossil fuels in response to student demands. We are calling on our university to divest from companies that fail to meet our ethical standards. This includes divesting from corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine and fossil fuels. By investing in these corporations, we are failing to uphold our commitment to freedom and equality of opportunity in all aspects of social, economic, cultural, and academic life, the very idea our university was founded upon. Modeled after the anti-Apartheid student movement, the divestment movement for justice in Israel-Palestine has been growing in university campuses across the country. In 2009, Hampshire College was the first university to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation. Over the past three years, students across the University of California system have brought resolutions to divest from the Israeli occupation before their student senates. Such resolutions have passed in UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis and UCLA. Ongoing Campaigns for Divestment at Private Universities include Stanford and Northwestern. |
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Above: NYU Student Senate Resolution on divestment from South African Apartheid (1985), and an NYU student flyer advertising a coalition against Apartheid.
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