Top hedge fund manager Joseph Edelman to step down Board of Trustees of Brown University The protest is in response to an upcoming vote on whether the Ivy League school should divest from its investments in companies that have business ties with Israel.
Edelman, who founded Perceptive Advisors, which specializes in health care and biotech, Written in the Wall Street Journal The school has shown “weakness” in bowing to radical left-wing student protesters and is instead “promoting anti-Semitism.”
The board vote next month was agreed upon as part of a deal reached to end months of rallies on campus against Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre.
“As a member of the Brown University Board of Trustees, I disagree with the upcoming divestment vote on Israel,” Edelman wrote.
“I am concerned about what Brown’s willingness to hold such a vote indicates about the university’s attitude toward rising anti-Semitism on campus and the growing political movement that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel.”
Self-proclaimed human rights activists claim investors should pull their money out of companies doing business in Israel in the same way the West isolated South Africa's apartheid government.
Anti-Israel protesters say Jerusalem will be forced to agree to a Palestinian state under the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” movement (BDS).
But Edelman, whose firm manages about $10 billion in assets, took aim at Brown's leadership for promoting “political and economic warfare” following last year's terror attack carried out by Hamas that killed 1,200 people.
“I find it morally reprehensible that a divestment vote was even considered, and even more reprehensible that it would be held — especially in the wake of the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he wrote in his editorial in the WSJ.
“I don’t want to suggest that there was any real principle behind the decision that Brown made to hold the divestment vote: It was a decision made not based on facts or values, but out of weakness toward student activists,” the Stern School of Business alumnus said.
“Israel, like all countries, has a moral duty to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and it is doing exactly that. This shows that of all the countries in the world, only Israel is expected to exercise restraint because war will tragically result in the loss of civilian lives.”
“University leadership, for some reason, has chosen to reward rather than punish activists who disrupt campus life, break school rules, and promote violence and anti-Semitism at Brown.”
Brown University spokesman Brian Clark said: “While we value the service of our former trustee, he has fundamental misgivings about the decisions that led to the upcoming vote on divestment.”
Clark said any member of the university community can submit a proposal for divestment, but that does not “pre-determine the eligibility or outcome.”
“As an educational institution, Brown is and should be a campus that confronts and interrogates difficult questions,” he said.
The anti-Israel protesters are demanding that Brown divest from its $6 billion endowment fund any of the 10 companies it supports, including Airbus, Volvo and Boeing, and an end to the school's “alleged complicity in the oppression of Palestinians.”
They are also demanding a comprehensive due diligence process for any investments the fund makes in the future.
The Brown Divest Coalition has struck a deal with college administrators that will see the vote held this October in exchange for an end to months of pro-Hamas protests on the Rhode Island campus.
The deal angered billionaire real estate tycoon Barry Sternlicht, and he stopped donating to his foundation.
Brown's chief investment officer, Jane Dietz, has increased the value of the endowment fund by 70% since she took her position in 2018.
But he revealed in an interview According to the school's website, meeting the protesters' demands would be nearly impossible because “only 4% of the endowment is directly invested by Brown” while the rest is managed by third parties such as hedge funds or private equity firms.
“In the 1980s, endowments typically owned stock directly, so if you wanted to sell your shares of Coca-Cola to express your wish that Coca-Cola cease doing business in South Africa, it was a simple process.
“Endowments these days invest primarily through outside managers,” Dietze said.
The complexity of modern-day endowment investing means the Browns can't cash out some funds For many years.
These funds are a major source of funding for major colleges, helping to finance university programs or scholarships.
Rhode Island’s 2016 anti-BDS law does not apply to private institutions like Brown University.
Protests have also occurred at other top colleges across the U.S. since the Oct. 7 massacre, as pro-Palestinian activists attempt to pressure university leadership to end all ties with Israel.
UPenn president Liz Magill and Harvard supremo Claudine Gay were forced to resign following an unfortunate testimony before Congress in December in which they refused to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s rules.
