Opinion | The Uyghur genocide university divestment movement is here – The Washington Post
In 1977, a group of students at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., successfully persuaded the school s board of trustees to divest all holdings of companies that did business in South Africa in order to protest Nelson Mandela s imprisonment and the policy of apartheid. Although the small school removed just $39,000 in stocks, by 1988, 154 more colleges had followed suit. The divestment movement became a key plank in the anti-apartheid movement, which helped speed the fall of that oppressive system.
In 2021, students in universities across the country are organizing to protest China s ongoing genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., may have just scored the movement s first big success. On Oct. 18, the student government association unanimously passed a resolution calling on the university to divest any and all of its financial holdings connected to Xinjiang atrocities. In response, university officials told student leadership, and confirmed to me, they have commissioned an independent audit of endowment holdings for anything related to mass internment, forced labor, mass surveillance or other crimes committed against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China.
All universities should have a commitment to avoid being complicit in mass atrocities, student senator Gerald Sharpe, who introduced the resolution, told me. This method works. This is just the beginning.
Indeed, I remember it well! I was part of this movement, and I would be happy now to join up to take it to Nike, the NBA and the other corporate miscreants who are willing to overlook the concentration camp or two if it gets in the way of their bottom line. Perhaps this movement could lead my small and formerly cute university to being cute again. But seriously — if USD is Catholic in any sense, it should join Catholic U. in taking this morally compulsory stance.