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UC President Mark Yudof: “The U.S. has not made any declaration regarding the State of Israel and, therefore, we will not bring a recommendation before the Board to divest from companies doing business with the State of Israel.” |
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UC President Mark Yudof — who the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has called “an unabashed Israel supporter” and who has previously compared the UC to a cemetery — has weighed in against UC Berkeley’s divestment initiative, laying out a bizarre formula for UC investments that sets the bar so low it would have prevented UC divestment from South Africa during the apartheid era.
Under the Yudof doctrine, the UC Regents would only divest from a
foreign country if the United States government had decided that the
country had engaged in acts of genocide. Apparently that is the only
standard under which Israel can continue to escape scrutiny by the UC
Regents. But the policy has implications beyond the Israeli occupation
of Palestine, for under this rule the UC Regents would not be able to
modify its investment policy in order to alleviate a host of other
social harms, such as the occupation of Tibet, slave labor, human
trafficking, any government practices that are racist, sexist,
homophobic and otherwise dehumanizing. It clearly leaves much to be
desired in the human rights arena.
Worst of all, it seems that the Yudof
doctrine has no potential to prevent harms before they occur, as it
would not allow divestment from genocide until it had actually
happened. Indeed, the Yudof doctrine would have even barred divestment
from Nazi Germany until it was too late — unforgivably ignoring any
warning signs before the fact, and limiting the preventative positive
impact divestment measures with proper vigilance can have.
On top of arbitrarily limiting investor activism to genocide, the
Yudof doctrine leaves the decision to the unreliable political whims of
Washington DC — which, nearly a century later, has yet to even
recognize the Armenian genocide.
The Yudof doctrine — which contradicts UC history, since UC divested
from South Africa for apartheid over two decades ago — also neglects
the fact that the US government’s position on foreign relations often
lags behind the consensus of the human rights community on what is
socially just and ethically imperative.
The US Congress did not pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act
until 1986, even though the bill was first introduced by Ron Dellums in
1972. Though apartheid had been in place since 1948 and Nelson Mandela
had been in prison since 1962, President Ronald Reagan vetoed the law
for political reasons, since the United States was a close economic
partner of the apartheid regime in South Africa, trading upwards of
$1.6 billion per year. Yet despite the clear moral imperative for
divestment from South Africa at the time, under the Yudof doctrine
divestment would have been forbidden not only because apartheid was not
genocide, but also because the US government had yet to express its
disapproval. Leaving moral judgments to politicians is an idea so bad
its dangers can only be understated.
Under the Yudof doctrine, even if the international community had
come to a consensus that Israel was engaging in genocide against the
Palestinian people, the UC Regents would dodge the question so long as
the US government lacked the political will to confront it. That
scenario is not inconceivable given the lengths to which the US has
gone to whitewash its relations with repressive governments like the
Shah’s Iran, Pinochet’s Chile, and, of course, Israel’s apartheid.
Oddly, the Yudof doctrine does not even respond to UC Berkeley’s
divestment resolution, which did not suggest divestment from the
Israeli government or from all companies in Israel — even though such
expansive measures were justified given the nature of Israel’s
egregious wrongs. Instead it narrowly applied widely held norms on
socially responsible investing to divest from 2 specific American
corporations that had been shown to profit from Israeli war crimes and
occupation. Under the Yudof policy it seems that the UC would not
divest from a company for any activity in Israel whatsoever, short of a
genocide recognized by the US government. The Yudof policy in effect
creates a safe haven in Israel for corporations to profit from human
rights abuses or any other undesirable corporate behavior — even if the
same egregious activity would be cognizable under any other sound
investment policy.
UC investments are overseen by a Board of Regents, who are unelected and unaccountable
to the people of California. Instead, they are political appointees of
the governor and heavyweight businessmen. Its members include Russell
Gould, the President of Wachovia Bank, who joined Yudof in issuing the
statement, and investment banker Richald Blum (husband of California
Senator Diane Feinstein). Suffice it to say that these are not people
known for their moral authority or their willingness to act against
injustice in spite of powerful interests when the public good demands
it. Many of the problems with the Yudof investment doctrine stem from a
corrupt University governance system that students, faculty, and
workers have been protesting against for the past year, amidst layoffs,
budget cuts, tuition hikes, and furloughs.
Nevertheless the Yudof policy sets a new low for UC investment
policies in general, but in particular, continues to deliberately turn
a blind eye to the violence of Israel’s apartheid system against
Palestinians struggling for their freedom and equality.
Nothing short of genocide, apparently, can move the UC Regents to
act against Israel. Under that formula, let us hope that the UC will
never have to divest from Israel — current warning signs of precisely such a disaster notwithstanding.
About the author:
Yaman Salahi is currently a first year student at Yale Law School.
Before law school, he majored in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley he was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Cal Students for Equal Rights and a Valid Education (CalSERVE).
He also blogs at KABOBfest and Borderline Crimes.
Yaman Salahi Blog