Brown University trustee resigns in protest of school’s upcoming Israel divestment vote

(JTA) — A Jewish member of Brown University’s governing board has resigned in protest ahead of a vote next month on whether the school will divest its endowment from companies linked to Israel.

Joseph Edelman, a New York hedge fund manager, called the decision to proceed with such a vote “a stunning failure of moral leadership” in his resignation letter, a version of which he published in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Edelman said the divestment vote, agreed to as part of a deal with pro-Palestinian student activists, represents an unacceptable concession to forces that call for Israel’s destruction and are responsible for rising antisemitism on campus.

“The university leadership has, for some reason, chosen to reward, rather than punish, the activists for disrupting campus life, breaking school rules, and promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown,” Edelman wrote.

Edelman’s firm did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Brown's response to the resignation

A spokesperson for Brown University said Edelman acted on a “misunderstanding” of how the school had reached its decision to hold a vote this October.

“Far from a direct response to current activism, Brown is following an established process that is nearly a half-century old,” spokesperson Brian Clark told Bloomberg News. “This long-held process is built on the principle that Brown has an obligation to examine and investigate claims challenging its moral responsibility.”

Brown was one of numerous campuses roiled by pro-Palestinian encampment protests during the spring semester earlier this year. At many other universities, the encampments were dismantled by police, but at Brown, where administrators successfully negotiated with student activists, things ended differently: In exchange for a peaceful winding down of the encampment, the university agreed that its governing body, the Brown Corporation, would hold a vote on divestment.

Unlike many other campus activists who called for a total boycott and divestment from Israel, the Brown students proposed a narrower divestment focused on companies with ties to Israeli security forces.

Edelman, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes at $2.5 billion, has donated more than $5 million to the university through his family foundation, according to public tax records. The foundation has also made significant donations to numerous conservative causes, including the Tikvah Fund, a right-wing Jewish think tank.

His rebuke of Brown makes him the latest in a wave of university donors publicly protesting the way administrators have handled campus tensions over the Israel-Hamas war and a climate Jewish students have said is hostile. Other donors have canceled or withheld major contributions. Robert Kraft, for example, suspended his giving to Columbia University and later announced a $1 million donation to Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish institution, to help students transferring to the school.

Protest over the war in Gaza has renewed at schools across the country as the academic year has begun, and Brown has faced threats over is upcoming vote. Last month, attorneys general from 24 states issued a warning to the school that a decision to divest from Israel would trigger legal action and possible financial penalties that could jeopardize the school and its roughly $6 billion endowment.

Universities have for decades resisted efforts by activists aligned with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. Rabbi Josh Bolton, director of the Hillel that serves Brown, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this year that he expected the board to vote against divestment. 

“Brown is not going to divest from Israel. Brown was never going to divest from Israel,” he said in the spring.