I hear the word “divestment” a lot in the news but I fail to understand what it means and how is it important in the conversation of recent events.
In: Economics
Its part of BDS – standing for Boycott, Divest, Sanction.
its the name and also core demand of a political movement on the political left. They identify as anti-imperial, meaning that to them the source of all/most conflict and problems in e.g. the middle east can be traced to The West and its bad influence over centuries of conquest, imperial control and profiteering.
This is take to a sometimes radical degree, when they demand people stop affiliating with Israel over multiple degrees, e.g. Boycott a local McDonalds, because it also has franchises in Israel.
With universities it often takes the form of non-cooperation in research, not sharing results or partaking in transnational studies (e.g. a study on obesity in 30 countries, with every university performing trials in their home nation). Sadly, sometimes it ends in weakest-link attacks, e.g. threats agains israeli academics teaching abroad or attacks against jewish schools, because someone ther must be Israeli or habe family there.
BDS ist often seen as a large umbrella for antisemism, offering plausible deniability and funding.
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