Neutrality isn’t an excuse to neglect calls from students and faculty alike.
Six months after a previous request for divestment was denied, the Queen’s University Faculty and Staff for Palestine (QFS4P) have announced a new petition calling for the University to divest from all corporations or institutions complicit in or profiting from “genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” The previous request was heard under Procedure 2 (Special Requests), which is now under review, suspending requests indefinitely.
In response to the petition, the University didn’t specify when the review would be completed or if they’d reconsider divestment.
With over $150 million invested in companies related to the violence in Palestine, divestment remains a financial challenge. However, the statement from the University shows a complete lack of consideration or willingness to compromise.
Even with financial complications, history proves divestment is possible. In ’87, Queen’s divested $23.3 million from companies linked to South African apartheid, but only after nearly a decade of student protests, and Queen’s was among the last universities in Canada to do so.
In 2024, the University of Waterloo agreed to be more transparent regarding the companies it invests in and to divest from corporations related to the conflict in Gaza. Though it’s uncommon for Canadian institutions to divest from corporations without government direction, it’s still possible.
Given the range of Queen’s investment portfolio, removing a handful of companies won’t significantly impact the University’s financial viability.
Queen’s decision not to divest is more likely linked to its commitment to institutional neutrality, something Principal Patrick Deane believes is an important safeguard to academic freedom. Though these safeguards are important, the university is missing an opportunity to open a dialogue with its students about ethical financing.
Most students don’t understand how their universities’ finances work, or where their tuition dollars are going. Turning questions of divestment into matters of academic freedom closes the door to an important discussion about creating a more sustainable funding model for the university.
It’s frustrating to see students demand divestment without offering concrete solutions for how to replace the funding those investments once provided; criticism alone rarely drives real change. Yet it’s just as disheartening to watch the administration dismiss petitioners outright instead of engaging in an honest conversation about the University’s financial priorities and ethical responsibilities.
Divestment is complicated, but without a proper response, students, faculty, and staff are left wondering what’s motivating the administration’s financial decisions. Without considering petitioners and activists, Queen’s misses the opportunity to shape more ethical models of institutional investment, or at the very least, open the conversation.
Tags
Divestment, QSF4P, University Affairs
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Zee
I’m disappointed to see reporting on this topic from the editorial board that is so biased. The response of the university was a full review of the divestment proposal including several weeks of community consultations (that anybody could sign up to be a part of or submit to in writing), discussion with the board of trustees, and review of their investment portfolio. That process exists to expedite divestment requests, the goal of its institution was that if their was a case that was as much a priority to the queen’s community as divestment from South African apartheid it wouldn’t take another 10 years for it to happen. The result of QUAD going through it was that it simply was not a priority for the queen’s community at large. An extremely vocal minority does not a majority make. They submitted an application for divestment review to the university’s process voluntarily but many of the same people involved in that proposal are refusing to accept its outcome. It seems dishonest to submit a proposal through a formal process and then refuse to abide by the result.
The document you’ve linked of companies “related to the violence in Palestine” doesn’t differentiate between businesses operating in the West Bank or Gaza and any business that operates in the state of Israel. Bezeq is on the list for *providing telecommunications service to Palestinians in the West Bank*, and it seems extremely likely that if they didn’t do that, they would equally be on the list. Nothing about the list is academic, professional, or strategic; it is an attempt to legitimize the viewpoint that anyone who accepts Israel’s ‘dirty jew money’ should be punished, and the Queen’s community made it clear as a part of the last divestment review that they did not agree with that perspective.
Ross Campbell
On the contrary, it’s critical that the disinvestment debate is kept alive. Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. The Israeli army has killed tens of thousands of men women and children over the past 2 years in Gaza alone, and is currently starving millions of people there with a siege that lets in almost no food. Over 400 people starved to death as a result of an intentional Israeli policy. What aid there now is supplied by the appalling GHF, which essentially acts to lure desperate people to for meagre rations, only to be shot down by the Israeli forces and US mercenaries. Dozens are being killed every day at these obscene so-called humanitarian aid sites. Israel has also killed thousands in Lebanon, Syria and and Iran, and several recently in Qatar. This is with the active or tacit support of most Western governments including Canada. Israel is an out of control rogue state, with clear ethno-nationalist apartheid policies, and this has become increasingly obvious over the past two years. The vast majority of people in the world, including a growing majority of young people and a growing number of Jews see this now ever more clearly. These same Western countries also supported the brutal apartheid system in South Africa in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s as a perceived bulwark against communism, and economic, academic and cultural sanctions were an important way of bringing about democratic change in the country so that it could rejoin the community of civilized nations. The UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s recent report on corporations that profit from the illegal Israeli occupation and the genocide is an important resource for developing the disinvestment strategy. This university will eventually disinvest, but only after a fight. And then, along with all the powerful people and liberal institutions of the crumbling “international order”, as former Queen’s student Omar El-Akkad titles his recent must-read book “One day, everyone will have always been against this”.