NEW YORK — A Columbia University investment committee on Friday rejected demands to divest from Israel, a focus of the anti-Israel protests that rocked the campus after the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel.

The campus coalition of anti-Israel activist groups, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, had repeatedly called on the university to divest its massive endowment from Israel, similar to demands from protesters at other US universities.

“Full financial divestment from Zionist occupation, apartheid and genocide,” the group listed as its first demand in a missive earlier this year. Protesters regularly chanted “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” at rallies on and around the Manhattan campus.

Following up on those demands, activists filed three proposals calling on Columbia to divest last year.

The proposals called on the university to divest from entities that violate human rights; to demand that companies the university has a stake in “cease any activities that are complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians”; and to divest from Israel and all entities connected to “violations of human rights and international law in Palestine.”

The university’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), a group that advises the university on ethical and social issues related to endowment investments, rejected the proposals, according to documents posted on the university website on........

© The Times of Israel