24 Attorneys General Are Urging Brown Not to Divest From Companies Doing Business With Israel

24 Attorneys General Are Urging Brown Not to Divest From Companies Doing Business With Israel

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin announced that he and 23 other state attorneys general sent a letter urging Brown University to reject a proposal that the university divest from certain companies because they do business with Israel, thus triggering anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) laws in several states:

“Nearly three-fourths of the states have laws that prohibit them from contracting with, investing in, or otherwise doing business with entities that discriminate against Israel, Israelis, or those who do business with either. Arkansas’s law places our state among those aggressively combating antisemitic conduct, and it has survived federal court challenge," he wrote in his letter. 

"Others have discovered to their detriment that those laws have profound financial consequences, and we would strongly counsel you to learn from those past examples. When Ben & Jerry’s, a subsidiary of Unilever, recently attempted to boycott Israel, the application of state anti-BDS laws led to the divestment of hundreds of millions of dollars in Unilever stock by state pension funds, and eventually, the termination of the Unilever CEO," the letter continued. 

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After protests on campus last spring, Brown's Corporation agreed to schedule to vote on the issue in October; a billionaire donor to Brown University said he is pausing his giving — due to the Ivy League institution’s deal with pro-Palestinian protesters.

“If adopted, the Brown Divest Now proposal will have immediate and profound legal consequences. We urge the Brown University Corporation to reject this antisemitic and unlawful proposal that stems from the violent threats against Jewish students at Brown last spring," wrote Griffin this week. 

Brown University President Christina H. Paxson, who according to the AGS "in previous years had rejected calls to implement other BDS proposals," has promised that the Brown Divest Now proposal will be on the agenda at the October 2024 business meeting of the Brown University Corporation, adding that the “Corporation is fully committed” to voting on the measure and that the vote “will not be delayed or deferred.”

The Brown Divest Now proposal calls on Brown to divest from companies, including Textron, Safariland, Volvo Group, Airbus, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola, and RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon and United Technologies) because they do business with Israel.

Brown has refused to respond to questions about the letter.

Act 710 of 2017 prohibits the State of Arkansas, its agencies, and its colleges and universities from contracting with or investing in any entity engaged in a boycott of Israel. The full Eighth Circuit upheld that statute against a challenge brought in Arkansas Times LP v. Waldrip.

Joining Griffin in the letter are the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. All signing the letter are Republican.

 

READ THE LETTER BELOW