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?

  • ReadFanon [any, any]16•1 month ago

    I wonder if keeping one penny stock in some shitty Israeli startup that does nothing would be enough to circumvent anti-BDS laws in the technical sense?

    I know that not a single cent should go to Israel but if they're going to make it legally impossible to not be a part of BDS or they're using that to hide behind policy then it seems logical to be like "Um no, Sweaty, we don't participate in BDS - we own 3 shares in a startup named Tel Aviv New Horizon Pet Cryogenics."

    I think it would be a good one for case law, speaking as a layperson, because what are they going to do about it - mandate the minimum amount of business that people must necessarily engage in with Israel or something? It's hard to imagine that would hold up on court.

    • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]11•1 month ago

      What will happen is the judge will say: "You are de facto divesting, therefore you're in violation of the law. Next!"

      Contrary to popular belief, judges aren't robots, and they're given broad power to do basically whatever the fresh fuck they want. Don't like it? Sue us again in the next level up court. Don't like it? Sue us again in the next level up court, you foolish plebeians.

      And if you get all the way to the Supreme Court, they might decide they don't give a shit. Case closed. It's the law now. Next!