Swarthmore and Leftism

interesteddad
Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:15:10 +0000

I am not aware of any “anti-Israel” sentiment at Swarthmore College. I wouldn’t pay much attention to occasional noise about divestiture campaigns. I suspect that, over the years, various spinter groups of students have made noise about divesting from just about every imaginable type of company.

Here is a lengthy PDF with the guidelines the Swarthmore Investment Committee uses when considering whether to join or initiate shareholder motions and/or divestiture. If you have any questions that aren’t covered here, such as on the small anti-Israel campaign (just 218 signatures), you could e-mail Suzanne Welch (VP Finance and she would point you to a contact on the investment office. They would be thrilled that you are interested enough to ask.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/finance_investment_office/CIR_proxy_guidelines.pdf

The most recent activities have been filing a shareholder motion (Lockheed) and partipating in other (Home Depot) to extend same-sex partner benefits.

In all honesty, the endowment investment committee has bigger fires to fight right now. I don’t see a climate for initiating a lot of investment related political statements.

I can’t find any indication that they two alumni pushing this issue have ever met with Swarthmore’s Board. However, this article has extensive quotes from Suzanne Welch on previous campaigns:

[Swat Alums Start Israel Divestment Campaign :: The Daily Gazette](daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed)

Interestingly, when Swarthmore’s Board voted to divest from South Africa in the 1980s, the Board refused to take the reduced income as a hit to the future generations relying on the endowment:



The Board felt that the extra cost should not be absorbed by the endowment, since “if it’s the current generation who want to make that decision, they should be willing to pay the cost… The people who were opposed would stand aside as long as that was the case.”

This meant that the rough cost of not investing in these companies was quantified—between one million and two million dollars in each year of the policy, according to Welsh—and was treated as a line item on the budget that had to be accounted for, making those funds unavailable for other needs.



This approach means that no new divestiture effort has a prayer of passing in the forseeable future. It would, in effect, require additional budget cuts to offset the lost revenue and nobody has any stomach for the the next layer of budget cuts. Not happening.