Boeing, to put it mildly, has not had a good 2024. Among its concerns, parts keep flying off of its commercial planes, and (as of April 11th) the value of a share of its stock has declined from $257.28 to $173.36 since January 1st. However, one of the concerns that the leaders of Boeing will not be losing sleep over is the quixotic and non-binding resolution passed by WashU’s Student Union (SU) for the university to divest from the embattled aerospace company. As it is generally not a good idea to “divest”/sell while a stock is performing poorly, and the prospect of having to “sell low” is the dread of any investor (amateur or otherwise), many people were quite confused by SU’s 17-4 vote to divest. However, since the vote occurred, we at the Danforth Dispatch have been talking to people as to help explain why SU passed such a resolution.
First of all, SU’s motivations seem to have nothing to do with the finances of a potential “divestment,” but instead with contemporary social politics, ranging from Climate Change to Palestine. While the shift in progressivism away from economic causes towards social causes is well documented (and SU is definitely progressive), it still may be puzzling as to what the investments of a private university have to deal with the geopolitics of the Middle East. However, the argument made by the activists is that Boeing, which WashU invests in, engages in the production of munitions, some of which are used in active geopolitical conflicts, such as the war between Israel and Hamas, or the ongoing Indian counterinsurgency in Kashmir1. Furthermore, some of the activists stated that Boeing was also complicit in “Climate Change2.”
In researching for this article, I interviewed two students opposed to the measure, but who were present at the SU meeting and opposed the motion. These two students, who asked to remain anonymous, stated that the divestment vote was also a proxy for the BDS movement, a movement that seeks to impose sanctions and a boycott on Israel (and has nothing to do with the K-pop band BTS). As the State of Missouri includes an anti-BDS clause in all of its contracts (preventing organizations that support the movement from contracting with the State), and WashU works very closely with the state (with Governor Parsons even attending the opening of a WashU neuroscience center), a straightforward pro-BDS is viewed as both pointless and too alienating, even for the student-activists who run SU. Thus, the SU motion against Boeing was supported (by the activists and SU) as a substitute, due to Boeing production of munitions some of which are sold to Israel.
Indeed, this can be seen in the language of the pro-divestment activists themselves. As even WashU’s left-wing newspaper, Student Life, reported, one of the pro-divestment speakers said that investment in Boeing was “funding genocide,” in direct relationship to the current conflict in Gaza. Furthermore, SU Senator Emaan Sayied, who supported the resolution, explicitly stated that her vote was to ask “[his] institution [WashU], one with over $12 billion in an endowment, to stop contributing to genocide,” in relation to the war between Israel and Hamas.
While the debate surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict is much quieter on campus than it was last semester, the recent vote by SU shows that the issue has not gone away. Furthermore, the vote shows that the organs of the university, which ostensibly exist to facilitate student participation in the administration of the school, have been captured by far-left ideologues, who are interested in passing non-binding resolutions demanding that the university make bad investment decisions (ie: selling Boeing stock while it is at a low), rather than actually contributing to the preservation of WashU.