Obviously fuck these laws. And even if these laws state that universities cannot legally divest, they should divest anyway and say 'fuck you, take me to court'--but, with that aside, what are the actual details of these laws?
I know it varies state to state, but in PA, for example, where the UPenn encampment was raided this morning, the university says "Penn remains unequivocally opposed to divestment, and it is unlawful for institutions receiving funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."
From what I can tell, there's just a 2016 law that states that the government of PA essentially can't do business with entities that have divested from Israel--but how does that legally prevent the entity from actually doing so on their part?
I keep seeing this claim that "It's illegal to divest, so we as a university can't do so. Tough luck." Not only is it ethically BS, but it seems to be a straight up lie, too?
I've read PA's amendments to their state contractor procurement law, aka the anti-BDS statute in PA. Unless PA gives institutional grants to UPenn under "procurement" process then they're completely full of shit. If they are contracting with some part of UPenn for research or something then whatever, just have the Penn researchers work with a university somewhere else. It's fucking inane and almost certainly complete bullshit.
What would this entail if that were the case?