Did Divestment Protests Succeed at UBC?

Two months-long student encampments, a student referendum, a two-day student strike and a 12-day student hunger strike have not persuaded the University of British Columbia’s board of governors to denounce Israel’s military response and divest from the institution’s financial ties to the country.

Those financial ties add up to less than 0.3 per cent of the pooled investments that make up UBC’s endowment fund.

The student protest movement, led by a coalition of pro-Palestinian, human rights and social justice groups of students, staff and faculty on campus, has succeeded in capturing public attention and broad student support.

But it has so far failed to budge the university’s position.

Divestment has been a central organizing point since Israel retaliated against Hamas’s attacks on kibbutzim near the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 1,200 people and kidnapping another 251. In the intervening time, Israel has killed at least 64,000 Palestinians, many in military operations — and some from famine and malnutrition.

Protesters, who have held at least 20 demonstrations on campus over the last 18 months, have also called on UBC to cut ties with three Israeli universities, end police presence on both UBC campuses and acknowledge Palestinians’ right to exist and self-determination.

There are precedents for students making big demands of the university.

Past protests against the university’s connections to a Chilean mine under a brutal dictatorship, and calls for divestment from South African apartheid and fossil fuel companies, also included sit-ins, referendums and at least one hunger strike.

These actions were at least partially, if not totally, successful in achieving their goals.

In 2020 the university divested from fossil fuel companies under pressure from a student and faculty campaign, and it released statements condemning both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

This time around, instead of a bang, students received a bureaucratic whimper.

On April 4, a week after demonstrations were held outside a board of governors meeting, UBC announced it would develop a human rights investment framework that will align with the university’s fiduciary duty — work that’s been ongoing since late 2024.

Its statement made no mention of Israel or Palestine and did not commit to an implementation deadline.

“Input from the campus community has played an important role in developing our commitment to and actions towards responsible investment,” UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey told The Tyee via email, responding to a question about whether this development was in response to pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Nevertheless, the university’s pledge, which takes steps towards fulfilling a request made by the students’ union in late 2022 and by divestment coalition protesters last year, is a belated step towards progress in the eyes of divestment movement supporters.

“The April 4th statement is the first time the UBC administration has publicly announced plans to divest from international human rights violations. It demonstrates the power of a sustained student movement,” wrote Sarah, a student protester with the divestment coalition, in an emailed statement to The Tyee. Sarah declined to have her last name published.

John Roosa, a UBC history professor and a member of UBC Faculty for Palestine, was more skeptical, noting the university has not stated which human rights would be included in this investment strategy.

“We ask how exactly UBC is going to implement their commitment. Students have been disappointed so many times by UBC’s empty promises that trust is hard to maintain,” Roosa said.

Given that UBC president Benoit-Antoine Bacon has already denounced the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, Roosa said he doubted whether UBC divestment would actually happen. Instead, he urged the university to make its investment framework simpler: divest from war.

“If UBC is developing a general framework for ethical investing, then it should pledge not to invest in military contractors,” he said.

“That’s more about a commitment to a more peaceful planet, and to say we shouldn’t be profiting from warfare.”

A tale of two divestments

The mid-to-late 2010s saw near simultaneous movements for university divestment from two different areas, with two different conclusions: fossil fuels, and companies tied to Israel and its ongoing occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

Both have been steadfastly documented by the Ubyssey, the Vancouver campus’s student newspaper, which published a comprehensive history of student divestment calls dating back to 1978 demands to divest from a Chilean mining company during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

In January 2014, the Alma Mater Society, UBC Vancouver’s student union, held a referendum on UBC divestment from fossil fuels. About three-quarters of voting students said yes.

But it still took five years and a 100-hour student hunger strike before the university’s board of governors agreed to a full divestment from its $1.7-billion fossil fuel holdings in early 2020.

At the time, UBC tied its decision to divest directly to the hunger strike.

“We are pleased that earlier today the students chose to end their hunger strike following our agreement to ensure that our community and the public is informed of the actions the university is taking as a leader in sustainability and climate action,” UBC vice-president of student affairs Ainsley Carry wrote in a statement at the time.

In February 2015, a year after the fossil fuel divestment referendum, the Alma Mater Society held a referendum on supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, known as BDS, against Israel, calling on the university to divest from companies supporting “Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza.”

These included technology company Hewlett-Packard, construction equipment giant Caterpillar and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

By 2015, similar BDS support motions had already passed at York University and what is now known as Toronto Metropolitan University.

After listening to presentations from Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and from Hillel BC, which promotes Jewish life on campus, the Alma Mater Society’s executive decided to encourage students to vote no on BDS.

A majority of students voted yes anyway. But the total number of votes fell below quorum, so no action was taken. Another referendum attempt to gain student support for BDS also failed in 2017.

By 2022, the Alma Mater Society’s tune had changed. The students’ union passed a motion urging UBC’s board of governors to divest from companies that were “violating Palestinian human rights,” while encouraging the university to develop a human rights or environmental, social and governance principles investment strategy.

In November 2023, UBC’s Okanagan campus students’ union passed its own divestment motion. And in April 2024, the UBC Okanagan Senate condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

But UBC president Bacon told a federal parliamentary committee in May 2024 that his administration has “long rejected” the BDS movement. He also agreed with Liberal MP Anthony Housefather’s statement that protest chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are antisemitic.

After the UBC board of governors ignored the divestment coalition’s requests to address them directly, coalition members began a 12-day hunger strike.

During a Vancouver-campus press conference on April 3, participants announced they had ended the strike.

UBC had no issue divesting from Russia when they invaded Ukraine, Sarah told the crowd gathered for the press conference.

But UBC’s Ramsey told The Tyee that divestment from Russia was legally required.

“As a result of continued sanctions announced by western governments (and Russia’s responses), non-Russian investors cannot buy or divest holdings in Russian-based companies due to complete trading halts,” Ramsey told The Tyee by email, adding UBC has no investments with Russia, Belarus or their state-owned companies.

Firings, crackdowns

As demonstrations have unfurled at UBC, some of the more public protesters have faced stiff consequences. Sessional faculty member Sean Tucker says he was fired last year because of his pro-Palestinian activism, while UBC staff member Nathan Herrington, who wears a kaffiyeh, was detained by RCMP for 30 minutes in February during the Invictus Games swimming event on campus, before being released without charges.

There have also been two lawsuits related to accusations of antisemitism by the on-campus pro-Palestinian movement and, by extension, UBC itself.

In one case a former contractor with Hillel BC, an independent Jewish student group on campus, made and posted stickers imitating the student union-affiliated Social Justice Centre, claiming they loved Hamas.

There have been security crackdowns on campus, too. While students have been allowed inside the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre to protest outside the board of governors meeting room in the recent past, when The Tyee attended the most recent board of governors meeting on March 28, the building was locked down by campus security.

Only those who pre-registered to attend the meeting were allowed inside. While chants from protesters who blocked off the centre’s main entrances could be heard from inside the meeting, they were not acknowledged by the university administrators, staff or students present.

Campus RCMP also showed up and watched the protest from inside and outside the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre. Some protesters have previously noted the presence of the controversial Critical Response Unit, formerly known as the Community-Industry Response Group, on campus in response to BDS demonstrations.

As a result, protesting on campus now has a new face. One that’s hidden by a bandana, sunglasses, kaffiyeh or medical mask. Names, if given to journalists at all, are often fake.

Sarah told The Tyee she is concerned about the online harassment, stalking and doxxing that could result if her full name were made public.

At the April 3 press conference, Sarah also noted that students, particularly international students and Black, Indigenous or other students of colour, have greater fears of being labelled a terrorist and seeing their student visas withdrawn.

Watching the ongoing disappearance and planned deportation of international students who supported pro-Palestinian protests in the United States shows these fears are not totally unfounded, says UBC history professor Roosa.

After all, it was unheard of in the post-Second World War United States, too, until Donald Trump’s second term.

“That kind of thing can happen in Canada,” Roosa said. “With a change of power, who knows what could happen? They could be expelled from UBC. Again, the American playbook could play out here.”

Earlier this year, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre referred to pro-Palestinian protests as “Hamas riots” and said that international students who commit crimes in Canada should be deported.

Organizations like Canary Mission have online reporting tools to collect information on academics, students and others who have participated in pro-Palestinian events, which Canary Mission labels anti-American, anti-Israel and antisemitic. One UBC professor The Tyee asked for an interview declined, in part due to concern they would end up on Canary Mission’s website.

Another organization, Betar USA, told CNN it is sharing the dossier of information it has collected on protesters with the U.S. government.

“It’s been amazing for me to see how many students are willing to take those risks,” Roosa told The Tyee.

But without concrete action from UBC beyond a promised nebulous framework at some point, it is too early to determine whether the risks have paid off, he added.

“Students have felt compelled to act by their awareness of an injustice. Their actions have already been valuable for raising awareness on campus about the injustice.”

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