demands among protesters vary at each University but nearly all have called for some form of divestment from Israel the movement started with Palestinian activists inspired by International sanctions put on South Africa that helped bring about the end of Apartheid and while divestment has a long history the practicality of doing it is complicated for highered institutions Dany Bahar is a senior fellow at the Brookings institution and an associate professor at Brown University who corporate board just yesterday agreed to meet with student protesters and vote on their divestment proposal he joins me now to explain why universities are so opposed to the demand Dany Bahar thank you so much for joining me uh a really complicated conversation to have uh as we know Brown is going to vote in October on whether to divest how feasible is this and how difficult is it for a college to move its investments into funds that are I suppose morally and socially responsible well you know nobody really knows uh the exact portfolio that universities have and I'm not sure that the protesters are asking for such a wide definition in terms of investment of the investment because they're not talking about any other conflict in the world and there are plenty of them and you know that there's many firms act in many countries like there's a lot of activity with China they're not talking about that so I think I think they're particularly focus on the case of Israel and there I think I want to claim that it's it's it's feasible in the sense that it's there's really nothing to divest from and I think this students protesters are overestimating significantly the amount of investment that universities have in Israel um and I think when they open the books if they're allowed to open the books they're going to be quite disappointed because there's really nothing much the best fir because it's a very small economy with very few firms actually in the stock market and I can't expand on this but but I think they're going to be quite disappointed actually yeah I mean some of the calls that we've heard anyway being on the ground at demonstrations particularly surround you know defense funds um funding of weapons and and Military funding and the like you're saying though that there's not all that much to invest in in Israel in order for these schools to pull out right look I mean I think we can think of different buckets and you know I don't think the protestors have done the the the the due diligence of explaining ex exactly what what do they mean by that and and maybe they will but if they're talking about direct investments in publicly traded firms in Israel of any industry there's about 120 uh firms that that are listed in in all of the US uh stock market exchanges that are Israeli out of about 9,000 Securities that's a very very very tiny amount then I would be frankly very surprised if any of those firms show up in any of the portfolios of O of these uh universities or for for what for what it's worth for any portfolio of the average American so so there I don't think that there's going to be a lot of space there there's not going to be big surprises if they're talking in a very maybe kind of a second bucket a much broader h definition of of divesting from any firm that has any activity in Israel I mean I I think that that's a really an over-the-top uh request H you know Israel is the Israel economy is quite integrated in the world um not only with the US also with Europe by the way Europe is not the us but Europe is the main trading partner of Israel um and and you know if we're thinking about the Googles of the world and and meta and Amazon that most of them have like a foreign R&D Center in Israel there are about 300 foreign R&D Center in Israel a lot of these firms invest in Israel to get you know to benefit from The Innovation that happens in the country of of what it's called the startup Nation maybe a better call than divestment is maybe to ask universities to invest in pal in the Palestinian territories for the Palestinians to increase their opportunities and and I think that that's a very loable um goal and I don't see anybody speaking about that so if we really want to move towards finding a solution I I think the answer is to invest not to divest Dany Bahar Dany Bahar is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookie Institute he's also an associate professor at Brown University thank you so much for adding some context to this thanks for having me [Music]