‘DIVEST’: College endowments turn into flash point of student protests

The turmoil at Columbia University ratcheted up early Tuesday when protesters barricaded themselves inside the campus’s Hamilton Hall, with students planning to stay inside until the school divests financially from Israel.

The rising tensions have put particular focus on Columbia’s campus in New York City. But at pro-Palestinian protests and demonstrations nationwide, campus activism is focusing intensely on university endowments — the vast financial holdings that fund anything from financial aid to new buildings.

From Boston to California, students are calling on universities to cut ties with Israel’s economy, and especially with the country’s war in Gaza — effectively seeking to make academic institutions use their financial weight to show support for Palestinians. It’s part of a movement — broadly known as BDS — that calls for boycotts, divestments and sanctions of corporations or institutions supportive of Israel, sometimes even in tangential ways.