Pitzer College to release financial information demanded by pro-Palestine students
Pitzer College will disclose information about its financial investments, officials said Friday, as pro-Palestinian students continued to call for the institution to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support its actions in Gaza.
In a memo released Friday, May 3, Pitzer officials said President Strom C. Thacker and Board of Trustees Chairperson Donald P. Gould agreed to the financial disclosure after meeting with three undisclosed students and a faculty member that morning.
Pro-Palestinian students at Pitzer, part of the Claremont Colleges consortium, continued to occupy a campus encampment Friday similar to those established at universities across the nation to protest the Israel offensive in Gaza.
Similar to demands made by students at their sister campus in Claremont, Pomona College, pro-Palestinian students at Pitzer are pushing for divestment from Israel and disclosure of funds, according to a joint release from Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine and Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace.
According to the groups’ statement, the agreement reached with Pitzer includes releasing information on its holdings in military and weapons manufacturers, the first such disclosure in the college’s history.
The information will be released publicly by June 30, the college said.
Pitzer also agreed to “a review of the Board of Trustees policy on endowment disclosures and what additional information could be disclosed to Pitzer students and staff on an ongoing basis,” the college said in its memo.
This information will be reviewed during the summer and released no later than Sept. 30, officials said.
In a separate statement released Friday, Gould said “taking positions on any number of contentious geopolitical issues” is not in the college’s best interest.
“Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict specifically,” Gould said, “the board has deliberately not taken actions that could imply the college has adopted an institutional position on the conflict.”
But “information without action” is not enough, Claremont SJP and JVP said in their joint release.
“Until Pitzer College concedes to the … demands of disclosure and divestment, students will continue to escalate,” the groups said.
Pomona College students, meanwhile, said in a news conference Friday they’re leaving the door open to resuming protests if their own college’s leadership ignores a faculty-backed petition to divest in Israel.
Earlier in April, a protest at the college led to the arrest of 20 students. Since then, student-led pro-Palestine protests from Columbia University in New York to UCLA have resulted in more than 2,000 arrests nationwide.
On Thursday, the majority of the Pomona College Faculty voted in solidarity with students to “divest from corporations complicit with war crimes and other human rights violations committed by the Israeli government in Israel/Palestine,” according to a news release from Pomona Divest from Apartheid.
The matter now heads to Pomona College administration for consideration.
Students at Pitzer College showed no signs of dissolving their encampment Friday.
For eight days, the Claremont SJP and JVP Gaza Solidarity encampment has been occupying the lawn used by Pitzer College for commencement ceremonies. About 25 tents remained on the lawn Friday.
Students had taken to rallying outside the McConnel Center adjacent to the lawn to express their demands.
A student representative for encampment organizers, Ezra Levinson, said students and faculty demonstrating feel “called” to speak up and act in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
“We believe it is against Pitzer’s mission and against the mission of any educational institution to be invested in these institutions (in Israel) while there is a scholasticide in Gaza,” said Levinson. “There are no universities still standing or functioning in Gaza.”
The number of those supporting Palestine at Pitzer shows “the sense of responsibility outweighs any fears we might have” about university retaliation, Levinson said.
On April 11, students and faculty on Pitzer’s College Council, which serves as a democratic process for the university, voted for an academic boycott of Israel, according to a college news release.
Thacker vetoed that decision, citing in an April 11 news release that it was contrary to Pitzer’s commitment to academic freedom and creating a safe learning environment for all.
“A key role of a liberal arts college is to educate students to think critically, listen actively, and develop their own informed views,” Thacker said. “We must always promote academic freedom, even when it is denied to others.”
Commencement for Pitzer College is slated to begin Friday, May 10, and no plans or preparations to deviate from that date have been provided by the officials despite the presence of the encampment.