Our investments are killing Palestinians. We have to separate.

Joshua Glucksman '24.5, Merih Etgu '26 and Phoebe An '27 are members of the Middlebury Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) divestment campaign.

Since early October, Israel has invaded Lebanon, killing 2,367 people and wounding 11,088, monitoring the one-year anniversary of its genocide in Gaza, whose death toll is likely to exceed 100,000, and beginning the ongoing siege of the northern Gaza Strip, which is a United Nations envoy has described it as “A genocide within a genocide.”

Last spring, the college committed to financial transparency and began codifying divestment from weapons production as part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. This coincided with an overwhelming Student Government Association (SGA) referendum in which 90% of students supported transparency in foundations and 80% supported a move away from weapons production and war profiteering.

It was under these circumstances that four students presented before the Resource Committee of the Middlebury College Board of Trustees and Advisory Board yesterday afternoon. The SJP requested that the Resources Committee vote to begin divesting a list of 45 companies classified under “weapons and military equipment” by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). At the same time, we called for this divestment to be codified with Middlebury's investment firm, Investure, to ensure that no future investments would be made in companies profiting from war.

Unfortunately, Middlebury remains complicit in the devastation of the Middle East through its investments in companies that profit from death. The college's announcement last May, titled “A Commitment to Shared Educational Values,” stated, “Middlebury does not invest in guns or gun manufacturers,” but we were deeply misled on technical grounds. In fact, 1.1% of our endowment's approximately $1.6 billion is invested in AFSC-designated companies. That's about $18 million. This deception is based on methodology. While the defense industry is a category in major industry taxonomies, to be designated as a defense contractor, companies must be solely dedicated to manufacturing weapons. However, a majority of the companies we have flagged for divestiture, such as General Electric, one of the world's largest arms companies, are classified as “aerospace companies” because of their other products.

Still, negotiators agreed to work with a list of 25 companies as a show of goodwill, hoping that a shorter list would lead to quicker action. These companies receive the highest priority for divestiture activities under the AFSC rating system. However, despite this cut, the board refused to take further action, prompting negotiators to return to the 45-company list. Because of their inaction, the Board of Trustees continues to allow its financial muscle to invest in companies whose products continue to destroy the Palestinian people.

How can we reconcile that the college’s mission statement purports to “promote necessary inquiry, justice, and choice?” [students] “Practicing ethical citizenship” with their refusal to take concrete divestment measures supported by the vast majority of students? It's clear that our values ​​must come first: after all, the foundation's true purpose is to “provide sustained financial support to Middlebury to fulfill its mission.” Education funded by genocide is anathema to the exercise of ethical citizenship. How can we first focus on solving the world's problems when injustice exists here, on our own campus? The answer right now is that we as an entire student body can hold the board accountable to withdraw from the war.

Part of this support requires an understanding of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Palestinian-launched movement is a nonviolent tactic supported by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and based on the success of similar efforts in the fight against South African apartheid, a regime from which Middlebury activists successfully led divestment in 1986 has been a dynamic part of the Palestinian liberation struggle for almost two decades and has gone through many campaigns, including the current camp focus on foundations.

We know from Middlebury's divestment history that change does not happen overnight, but that the process must begin nonetheless. For example, Middlebury's commitment to phasing out fossil fuels will take 15 years, but this phase-out is an investment in Middlebury's future. Likewise, eliminating war profits will ensure that in the future we do not benefit from civilian deaths, environmental destruction, or the destruction of universities, as is happening in Gaza. Middlebury must secure a legacy that is not funded by a continuous cycle of violence.

Valid concerns about divestment and its impact on the financial health of students and staff are important to our intersectional struggles as a community. The sale of our foundation assets should never be at the expense of wages or financial support. We know this concern is real, as 45.5% of respondents to Middlebury's staff survey felt it was necessary to find a second source of income to make ends meet. However, this reflects a deeper problem with the university, because even as it rejects divestment in the name of profit-making, our institution still does not pay its workers a livable wage. Therefore, the fight to withdraw from the war should not be confused with Middlebury's much deeper problem of the devaluation of academic and non-academic work.

In divestment debates today and throughout history, the common concern expressed is that if someone doesn't buy a stock, someone else will. We urge you to keep in mind that the purpose of a global divestment movement is not just financial, as some of the key benefits of divestment are to raise public awareness, so that moral actors far outweigh divestment from stocks immoral. Do not be fooled by moral apathy or the nihilistic logic that would be comparable to an Israeli telling the Palestinian, “If I don’t steal.” [your home] someone else will do it.” As an elite educational institution, our influence is a link in a chain of global movement, as was the case with the divestment of higher education investments from South Africa, tobacco, Sudan and, most recently, fossil fuels.

As we write this article, the Israeli aid blockade on Gaza continues. The northern Gaza Strip is surrounded by occupation forces who have cut off all internet and telecommunications connections. They burn wounded children in hospital tents, shoot those who leave their shelters in search of food, and carry out ethnic cleansing in Jabalia. We are currently faced with the serious question of what world we want to live in. As children, many of us were told, “You are the future” and “You will change the world.” We are no longer children; The future is now. As students of the humanities, we ask: Is this consistent with any definition of humanity?

Editor's Note: This article has been updated for online publication to better reflect the description of the defense industry in the context of divestment.