After a demonstration in early February in which Bowdoin College students camped out in a school building to demand the school pull its investments from arms companies supporting Israel in its war against Gaza, administrators have agreed to make a one-time disclosure of the parts of its endowment that are invested in 10 specific defense and aerospace companies.
But the school has declined to end its investments in those companies, as the students had demanded.
The demonstration last month led to the school shutting down the student center where the students had set up their encampment. The school also suspended some of the participants and the student organization that coordinated it. While there have been other demonstrations on Maine college campuses against the war in Gaza, Bowdoin’s was one of the most disruptive.
The protest came after a student group called Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine launched a petition in April 2024 requesting that the college take a public stand against Israel’s “brutal and ongoing assault on Gaza,” which students approved the following month.
It included several specific demands, including that the school disclose its investments in arms manufacturing and refrain from putting future investments into arms companies involved in Israel’s war.
The petition also asked for the Board of Trustees to re-establish an independent committee to oversee the social responsibility of the college’s investments — which the board did.
That committee began its work in September, and late last week, school officials said that it ultimately made three of its own recommendations: maintain the endowment’s current investment practices, maintain the current investment committee structure and increase the clarity around how the endowment operates and supports the college.
In the committee’s report, the school’s investment office estimated that 0.08 percent of the total endowment is in the companies named in the student referendum, including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and RTX (Raytheon).
As part of the report, school officials also said that 50 percent of the college’s operating budget is funded by its endowment and therefore could not be divested based on political viewpoints.
“The ACIR noted that using our endowment to make political statements on world affairs introduces the risk of losing access to the best investment managers, which in turn jeopardizes the future performance of the endowment and its critical support for all that we do,” said board chair Scott Perper and school President Safa Zaki.
They went on, “This risk is not hypothetical — our contracts with our investment funds prohibit us, or any of their investors, from picking and choosing which investments they make. If we insisted, we would be excluded from the fund.”
The college has not adopted any of the students’ other requests.
In addition, the college has placed the organization Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine on temporary suspension following the encampment. Its members will be unable to engage in any activities, including postering and reserving space on campus, under the banner of the organization. Suspensions for eight individual students involved in the demonstration have been lifted, CBS 13 reported last week.
