On Monday, Oberlin College students submitted a proposal to the Board of Trustees to divest from military contractors and arms manufacturers. Nearly 50 student organizations have expressed support for this proposal.

The proposal lists over 100 corporations worldwide that are invested in nuclear weapons, cluster munitions, land mines, and more. The proposal was co-written by five students: College third-year Kisa Biely, College fourth-year Pelham Curtis, double-degree first-year Sam Hale, College second-year Emma Kellenstein, and College third-year Juwayria Zahurullah.

“We implore the trustees to examine Oberlin’s financial link to war, weapons manufacturers, and military contractors,” the proposal reads. “Committing to divestment will set a precedent for social change, something Oberlin has been doing for nearly 200 years. … Our demand is [the] immediate and complete divestment [of Oberlin’s endowment] from the companies listed in this Proposal.” 

Last spring, Students for a Free Palestine submitted a proposal for the Board to divest from 130 companies that directly fund attacks which international courts have described as a “plausible genocide,” companies that provide military equipment or border security to Israel, and companies that do business within illegal Israeli settlements or aid the maintenance and expansion of Israeli settlements into Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalam. 

As the Review reported last spring (“Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine Meet with Board of Trustees, Discuss Divestment from Israel,” The Oberlin Review, March 15, 2024) the Board uses a three-part criteria to decide whether to accept a proposal: whether Oberlin’s investment finances the materials which exacerbate the cited injustice; whether divestment is likely to have an actual, financial and/or reputational impact that may change the behavior of the entity specified for divestment; and if the divestment is acceptable to the Oberlin community based on the Board’s “best understanding.”

The Review also reported when the Board rejected this proposal last fall. The Board decided that it would refrain from taking a position where feelings “run deep on all sides” — in reference to Israel’s ground invasion of Palestine following Hamas’ attacks Oct. 7, 2023.

Biely, a co-writer of the new proposal, said that the proposal’s language specifically addresses this concern. It asks Oberlin to take a general humanitarian stance that is “anti-war and anti-violence” instead of a more focused position on the Israel–Palestine conflict. 

“The last divestment proposal was rejected on the basis of divestment, implying that the College is taking a ‘clear institutional stand on one side of a fraught and contested issue,’” the new divestment proposal reads. “In a move to address this, the scope of this proposal has been widened … in order for Oberlin to claim true neutrality.” 

This new proposal asserts that “Oberlin must be completely disassociated from all conflict.” 

Last fall, the Board of Trustees also cited financial concerns about the proposal’s potential to “substantially limit” the College’s ability to uphold its financial responsibilities to students, staff, and faculty. The Board’s statement noted that Oberlin’s portfolio invests in “broad market indices” that fuel their ability to provide scholarships and financial aid to students, and to adequately compensate their faculty and staff. Further, the Board explained that Oberlin’s endowment is not invested in specific companies; rather, it is invested in funds that aren’t controlled by the College. As such, the investment office is not allowed to disclose which companies the funds invest in, as that is the intellectual property of the fund managers.

Acknowledging such fiduciary concerns, the new divestment proposal asks that if the Board is unable to materially divest, then it should “consider a public statement declaring their commitment [to] reviewing [the College’s] divestment from arms manufacturers, much like the 2016 fossil fuels divestment declaration.” 

Biely said that they added this alternative so that it is more likely for the Board to approve the proposal, noting that a lack of alternative options in the past proposal made it more difficult for the Board to approve. 

“Action itself is incredibly significant,” she said. “But at the same time, saying that Oberlin as an institution will begin to try and move away from arms manufacturers is important.”

Zahurullah emphasized the importance of upholding the College’s “moral integrity” over the potential financial issues the proposal may cause.

“There is no denying that divesting from weapons manufacturers would pose a financial loss to the College,” Zahurullah wrote in an email to the Review. “[But] at what point will we begin to value the moral integrity of our institution over its annual revenue? When future generations look back on this contentious time for higher education, will we be able to say that Oberlin College did not capitulate to the wills of fascists because we were more concerned with protecting our financial interests?”

Last year, the divestment proposal was sent to the Board amid a wave of student protests and demonstrations demanding that the Board divest from companies that do business with Israel. Last spring, about 200 students joined a global movement to erect encampments on their campuses in protest against their administration’s investments in these companies. Following the end of the full encampment, students at Oberlin held multiple teach-ins, rallies, and demonstrations with the aim of educating community members about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and also agitating to pressure the Board of Trustees to divest from Israel.

This year has seen a decrease in student activism on Oberlin’s campus regarding the Israel–Palestine conflict compared to last year. 

“After the last year and a half of student activism on campus, there’s been a really significant decrease in people’s willingness and ability and capacity to engage with more concrete action,” Biely said. 

She said that such burnout from community members is understandable to a degree, and that this new divestment proposal was structured with this in mind.

On July 1 of this year, the Oberlin Board of Trustees will also be under new leadership. Current Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan, OC ’84, is being replaced as chair by Charles S. “Chuck” Birenbaum, OC ’79. 

“This change in leadership allows the Board an opportunity to set a new precedent of change and progress,” the divestment proposal reads. “We urge the Board to take advantage of this new start to commit to standing up for peace and empowering the voices of our student body.”

Zahurullah’s hope is that the change of the chair of the Board will move the Board in a different direction.

“The recent change in leadership will pull the Board of Trustees out of their current pattern of complacency and inaction,” she wrote. “We feel that many of the conversations we have had with them over the past year have been blighted with passivity, as they congratulated us for our commitment to institutional change while insisting that now is not the right time or that there is nothing that can practically be done.”

This coincides with major shifts in our national political landscape. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has exercised extreme federal scrutiny on colleges and universities across the country. In early February, the Department of Justice announced the formation of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, in response to an executive order signed by Trump days earlier. 

While the executive order is officially established to target antisemitism on campuses, Al Jazeera reported that it has laid the ground for several federal infringements on students and faculty’s liberties, and the control higher education administrations have over their own institutions.

Curtis claimed that “the Board of the administration at Oberlin is very scared … about the shift in rhetoric and in policies.” They cited the administration’s decision to adhere to the Ohio statehouse’s bathroom bill as an example of Oberlin being quick to capitulate to conservative lawmakers’ demands at the expense of the rights and liberties of students and community members.

As part of this crackdown on antisemitism on campuses, Harvard University is now facing up to $2.3 billion in frozen federal funding and the loss of its tax-exempt status after they rejected the Trump administration’s demands earlier this week, citing that they were both unlawful and an infringement on academic freedom. The administration’s demands included greater control of university administration and “audits” of Harvard’s academic programs and viewpoints among students, faculty, and staff. Harvard became the first university to refuse to comply with the administration’s demands. In its wake, there is the fraught question about whether colleges and universities can function while standing up against the Trump administration’s call for federal oversight of higher education institutions. Such questions and concerns are inevitably bound up in how Oberlin’s Board of Trustees decides to respond to this new divestment proposal. 

“Harvard University’s historic move to resist intimidation from the current administration paves way for institutions across the country to reclaim their integrity,” Zahurullah wrote. “If there ever were a wave of dissent significant enough to push Oberlin College toward meaningful action, it would be what we are witnessing now.”