How realistic are campus protesters' divestment demands?

Some University of Ottawa students who have settled into an "indefinite" encampment on campus are pushing for the school to divest from companies they say have ties to Israel and the conflict in Gaza, but some experts say that isn't so simple.

Pro-Palestinian activists have set up encampments at university campuses across the U.S. and Canada, demanding school administrators disclose investments and pull funding from companies contributing to the Israeli military.

The student-led human rights advocacy group Integrity Not Spite Against Falastin (INSAF) followed suit on April 29 with a sit-in on Tabaret Lawn at the U of O. INSAF lists 14 companies it wants the university to divest from, some with operations in Israel and others that have conducted business with the Israeli military or government.

The group singled out the companies from among the 260 equity holdings that make up the university's long-term portfolio, which was last updated and published in December 2022. The university did not disclose how much the school has invested in each company.

"We want to have that updated list," said INSAF representative and organizer Yara Mahmoud.

"For now, we're here indefinitely. If those demands are met, then the encampment is taken down."

But getting that kind of real-time disclosure is not so simple, said U of O Telfer School of Management vice-dean Darlene Himick, who studies how universities have acted to divest themselves of fossil fuel companies.

Universities and the investment managers who handle their portfolios are constantly updating them, so it would be hard to say whether INSAF's 2022 list is current, she said.

"In the investment world, it's a while ago," Himick said.

The apartheid precedent

Even successful divestment movements take time, said Mattie Webb, a Yale University postdoctoral associate who wrote her PhD on the anti-apartheid movement for the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

In the 1970s, students began pushing for similar action from their schools over South Africa's policy of apartheid for the segregation of white and non-white people. 

By 1988, they pressured over 100 universities to divest billions of dollars from companies such as Ford, General Motors and IBM, said Webb. 

"This really crippled the apartheid regime. It made South Africa increasingly isolated," she said.

But Webb said several of the factors that made anti-apartheid activism successful are absent in the pro-Palestinian movement.

Universities could divest from over 350 companies tied to South Africa in the 1980s, and the country had few trade partners it could turn to afterward. Webb said closer to 100 companies are similarly tied to Israel today, and the Israeli government still has the financial support of world powers including the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Anti-apartheid activists also spent years building coalitions with unions, educators and religious groups. While pro-Palestinian activists called for divestment in 2010 and 2014, Webb said the movement that's grown since Oct. 7 is "still in its infancy."

Student safety U of O's 'absolute priority'

The Uof O did commit to the divestment of its fossil fuel holdings in 2022, following years of student protests. The school planned to divest all direct holdings by the next year, with a secondary goal to divest all indirect holdings by 2030.

Himick couldn't confirm whether the school followed through on this, but said indirect holdings would take longer to divest from because they're likely to impact pension plans, so investors would have to balance ethically motivated decisions with the needs of pensioners.

"One of the ways they've done it is to blend climate change into finance," she said. "Maybe … it's financially beneficial to consider it, and I would say that [attitude is] on the increase."

In a statement to CBC, Uof O spokesperson Jesse Robichaud did not say whether the school would break up the encampments or call police on the protesters, nor did the university respond to a request for an interview about its holdings.

"We will continue to act in accordance with our policies and regulations to ensure the safety and well-being of all members of our community and allow them to move around freely on our campuses," Robichaud wrote. "This is our absolute priority."

The university has previously warned students that encampments would not be tolerated.