UW Board of Regents fails the test of justice

In response to nearly a year of sustained campus organizing, the UW Board of Regents (BOR) voted March 12 against divesting from companies complicit in Israel’s ongoing policies of colonial occupation, racial apartheid, and genocidal warfare. Technically, the BOR did not even vote on divestment. They voted against the formation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) that would have advised the board on the ethics of university investments and recommended measures based on the committee’s findings.

In short, the BOR voted against their professed pursuit of evidence-based decision-making. They voted against research and study. Only Rogelio Riojas and Keondra Rustan, the student regent, voted to consider an ACSRI.

The process leading up to last Wednesday’s vote was extensive. All five elected senates at UW — the three Associated Students of UW (ASUW) undergraduate senates on the Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell campuses; the tri-campus Graduate and Professional Student Senate; and the tri-campus Faculty Senate — passed resolutions in support of divestment. Carefully researched to align with UW’s stated commitments to ethical investment, the formal proposal for divestment was submitted to the BOR in June 2024.

Against the resolutions passed by the elected student and faculty bodies, alongside letters of support from more than 50 RSOs and 4,200 signatures on a community petition, the BOR officially rejected the proposal after months of unexplained delays.

In defending their vote against forming an ACSRI, board chair Blaine Tamaki and others repeatedly expressed concerns about the “divisiveness” caused by the proposal. In justifying her abstention, faculty regent Alexes Harris explained that forming an ACSRI, in her view, was not “the appropriate means at this moment.” She also noted that it took about 25 years before the divestment campaign against South Africa gained momentum. As in that case, we apparently need to be patient and build “a collective will to work together.”

Harris’s invocation of the global campaign to divest from apartheid South Africa was ironic. That effort took a long time because those in positions of power made the same false arguments that the majority of BOR are making today. For far too long, they claimed that divestment was too divisive, that universities ought to remain neutral, and that divestment would not make a difference.

In the name of unity, universities and corporations refused to cut ties with a racist regime in South Africa. In the name of unity, today’s UW BOR is refusing to establish an ACSRI to research the ethics of investing in companies profiting from colonial occupation and genocidal warfare.

Forty years ago, Students Against Apartheid organized collectively to pressure the UW BOR to take a principled stand for justice. Those student activists stayed the course, even after their “shantytown” on campus — a symbolic representation of Black life under apartheid — was torn down, doused with gasoline, and nearly set afire by right-wing students.

Apartheid in South Africa was a “divisive” issue because many individuals and corporations benefited from upholding white supremacy. Back in 1986, anti-apartheid organizers named and shamed regents Mary Gates, Edward Carlson, Hunter Simpson, David L. Cohn, and Janet Skadan for their personal interests in companies linked to apartheid South Africa.

History may be repeating itself.

Regent Tamaki claimed last week that he had “to fairly apply the rules to the facts of this case.” But could he be impartial and judicious when, according to his financial disclosures from 2024, Tamaki had $560,000-$1,349,995 personally invested in companies profiting from Israel’s war machine? Perhaps he should have recused himself from the proceedings altogether to comply with the Ethics in Public Service Act.

We are indeed living through a divisive moment, but it is precisely in these moments that we need to take a principled stand for justice. We cannot hide behind a facade of unity to refuse to investigate whether or not UW’s financial investments are facilitating and supporting injustice. If it took decades for UW to divest from apartheid South Africa, should we expect the BOR to take action only by the year 2050? How many Palestinian lives and homes will be destroyed before then?

Palestinians, who have been waging an anticolonial struggle for collective survival for nearly 77 years, understand that, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, "‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’"

The BOR should reconsider immediately the March 12 vote. We cannot wait.

Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine

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