Israel, South Africa, and Divestment
The narrative is sometimes implicit, but often explicit, and often runs something like this: South Africa was a brutal apartheid states that granted different legal rights to people based on their race, color, and origin. This practice of apartheid was morally abhorrent. The world, prodded by the student calls for divestment from companies doing business in South Africa, were convinced, and soon made South Africa a pariah. The South African government, now isolated, had little choice but to capitulate, abandoning apartheid and giving way to a freer, if no less economically bleak, future for the Black majority.
This is a nice narrative. It is a story of triumph over evil through activism. Apartheid was unquestionably (from our perspective) evil, and it highlights the catalyzing role that simple college students could make in advancing justice in the world. If, through their demonstrations and encampments, those students occasionally crossed lines of acceptable student conduct, so be it - the cause justified the means. University divestment was a feel-good moment, especially when it was followed so quickly by the collapse of the apartheid regime.
This is the narrative that informs college students currently protesting for divestment from Israel. Israel, they claim, runs an apartheid state, applying different laws to Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza than they do to their ordinary citizens. Israel has enshrined a legal “right of return” that fast-tracks citizenship for Jews. Its continued occupation of the lands seized during the 1967 War has led to almost sixty years of military rule over its Palestinian occupants. Surely, this is as evil as South Africa. Once Israel is recognized for the pariah state that it is and isolated can true justice and dignity for all flourish. The first step to achieve this outcome is to force universities to divest their holdings of companies doing business in Israel.
Although the two narratives have a superficial similarity, the situations are radically different and allow for little comparison. Many who are more expert than I have written on how “apartheid” is misapplied to the Israeli situation; how Israel has tried, unsuccessfully, to give Palestinians a state of their own; how by supporting terrorist activity Palestinians have created an impossible situation for them and Israelis alike; and how history has shown that even unilateral withdrawal, such as Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, cannot provide a lasting answer.
Here, though, I want to focus solely on the comparison between the student protests in the 1980s for divestment from South Africa and those today for divestment from Israel. I too demonstrated in the 1980s for what appeared to be an unambiguous moral stand. Only recently, though, did I think to go back to the files to refresh myself on the process and context. A review of that process continues to draw a sharp distinction between those demonstrations and the modern ones.
Every college that participated in divestment from South Africa (there were a total of around 155 such colleges out of around 6,000 accredited four year institutions) found its own way to do so, although many of them acted in lockstep with each other. I recently was able to find the public records around Brown University’s divestment activities, so I will largely confine myself to the information in that archive.
The student protests against investment in South Africa had a much wider context. South Africa’s racist constitution met condemnation from the earliest days of the United Nations. The U.N. actually suspended South Africa in 1974, and did not readmit it until the apartheid regime ended in 1994. The International Olympic Committee banned South Africa from the Olympics between 1964 and 1988. Corporations too began to reassess their relationship with South Africa. In 1977 a voluntary code of conduct, The Sullivan Principles, was developed and administered by a consulting firm, Arthur D. Little. The Sullivan Principles were based on the assumptions that international investment in South Africa should increase, as taking money away from the country would hurt those most vulnerable and that companies doing business in South Africa have a responsibility to promote liberal and non-racist policies within their workplaces. It was thought that economic engagement had the best chance of changing the system.
Arthur D. Little certified corporate compliance with the Sullivan Principles by putting companies into one of four categories: committed to the principles and making acceptable progress; committed to the principles but still working on compliance; non-respondents; and endorsers of the principles although with no operations in South Africa.
The Sullivan Principles and their implementation were critiqued as too generous to the companies doing business in South Africa, but they were foundational to the way that investment in South Africa was approached. By the time activism started on college campuses, there was already wide consensus that the South African apartheid regime was bad and that we should be doing what we can to change it. This consensus often drew on the Sullivan Principles as a concrete, measurable (at least in theory) framework.
At Brown University, around the time students began calling for full divestment, the University had already divested from holdings in companies that had not signed the Sullivan Principles. The Corporation (Brown’s Board of Trustees) had additionally passed a resolution in October, 1985, that (1) urged the formation of two committees, one faculty and one Corporation, to further examine the issue and “report as soon as possible on what we at Brown can do to adopt positions that are not only morally sound but also practical in helping to end apartheid and to reduce human policies", and (2) directs the University to continue to press those companies in which it is invested to press them to comply with the Sullivan Principles. This statement coincided (although not coincidentally) with a joint statement signed by the presidents of many elite universities, including Brown, that they are “committed to discussing long-term partnerships with South African universities and organizations that share a dedication to a non-racial, democratic society in South Africa.” In a student referendum in which 25% of those eligible voted, 83% supported total divestment. In a statement, President Swearer emphasized that “most would agree that the key issue is whether [divestment]…would enhance or undercut efforts to end apartheid.” He notes too the need to establish “specific benchmarks for assessing success or failure in ending apartheid.”
During the period between October 1985 and February 1986 the committees established as a result of the Corporation’s action produced a series of reports and recommendations. In its meeting in February 1986, the Corporation affirmed its opposition to apartheid and issued a resolution calling for the divestment of most companies that Arthur D. Little did not certify as committed to and in compliance with the Sullivan Principles. The resolution goes on to specify a number of exceptions (e.g., news and humanitarian organizations) and then also commits to “assist in the education of nonwhite South Africans to assume leadership in a democratic society” through (in part) engagement with South African foundations and universities. It also calls for revisiting the issue two years later.
By the time that the February 1988 meeting happened, Brown was down to holding only about $4 million in investments in companies that did business with South Africa, and all apparently adhered to the Sullivan Principles. At that meeting, the Corporation decided not to liquidate those stocks. “A decision by Brown to completely divest would have no impact on South Africa, and that whatever impact it may have as a symbolic expression is decisively outweighed by additional financial costs, reflected in less financial aid, smaller salary increases, and less support for educational programs,” a committee noted. The students barely noticed. Only in the beginning of the 1989 school year did they notice that they didn’t notice, but it even then they gave it not too much notice.
On their face, the campaigns for divestment from South Africa and divestment from Israel look similar. In the eyes of the protestors, both countries have a rotten, “apartheid”, core, and both should be isolated until they reform. Both demand civil disobedience in order to get results. In reality, though, the campaigns, specifically as they are playing out on college campuses, are quite different, and comparing them is enlightening.
For the South African campaign, the targeted companies were carefully screened according to a set of transparent principles. The list was administered by a neutral third-party, a consulting firm. The process was certainly not perfect, but it was relatively clear and uniformly applied. There was an infrastructure for the identification of bad-acting companies. The current campaign against Israel is helter-skelter with no neutral or clear principles for identifying “offending” companies.
Behind the South African divestment campaign was always a desire for constructive engagement. The point was to actively help to make things better, not wash our hands of the moral problem. There was widespread recognition that the situation in South Africa, and its solution, was complicated. (This was a prescient recognition, given the continuing issues in South Africa even more than thirty years after apartheid ended.) When compared to the situation in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank those complications pale.
The discussion of divestment from companies doing business in South Africa also had clear “exit” benchmarks. That is, transparent criteria for getting off of the divestment list. These benchmarks were not simply about never doing any business related to South Africa. Any serious campaign for divestment from companies that do business in Israel must articulate much clearer guidelines for what companies can do to get off such a list.
In the South African campaign, there was virtually no moral debate. Nobody supported apartheid, and nobody felt personally offended or attacked by the relatively peaceful “shantytowns.” Due to its complexity, the situation on Israel is vastly different. Nobody likes to see the Palestinians live without self-autonomy or civilians in Gaza die. Nobody likes to see Hamas and a multitude of other Palestinian terrorists indiscriminately fire rockets into Israeli cities and murder Israeli civilians. Believing that simply isolating Israel will force an end to this terrible situation is, at best, both naive and dangerous.
Universities acted together in an emerging consensus. University presidents committed themselves together to act on the issue of South Africa, primarily by doing what the university does best, research and education.
Finally, it is worth noting that at least in Brown’s case (and in many others, as far as I can tell), divestment from companies that do business in South Africa was never complete. When this was revealed, there was no moral outrage; interest had waned. But it didn’t matter: apartheid fell of its own accord a few years later. The student divestment campaign was a nice way for students to signal their virtue; vent moral outrage; and train for future activism. It did little if anything to make things better for real people.
People will legitimately disagree over the means and motives of those who currently call for divestment from Israel. The vast majority of Americans oppose divestment from Israel, with a significant proportion even supporting bans against college demonstrations for it. What we should not be disagreeing about, though, is the equivalency between the divestment campaign against companies that did business in South Africa and those that today do business in Israel. There is simply no equivalence.