Elite University Trustee Steps Down Over Vote On Israel Divestment

A trustee at Brown University announced his resignation on Sunday over the school’s vote on Israel divestment.

The university’s highest governing body, “The Corporation,” will vote on the divestment during its October meeting, which was decided after an agreement was made between administrators and “encampment organizers” in April, according to the Brown Daily Herald. Joseph Edelman, a trustee since 2019, noted that Brown’s plan to hold a divestment vote in the first place was based on “weakness towards student activists,” not facts and values.

“I find it morally reprehensible that holding a divestment vote was even considered, much less that it will be held—especially in the wake of the deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Edelman said in the letter published by the WSJ. “On Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was invaded and brutally attacked by Palestinian terrorists.”

A Brown University spokesperson defended the decision to hold the vote, claiming that Edelman did not understand what led to the divestment vote.

“While we value the service of our former trustee, he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the decisions that led to the upcoming vote on divestment,” Brown University Vice President for News and Strategic Campus Communications, Brian E. Clark, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The vote shows the university’s attitude towards the campus’ growing issue of antisemitism, Edelman wrote in the letter. He also criticized the university for allegedly rewarding the student activists instead of punishing them for disrupting campus activities and “promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown.”

“I consider the willingness to hold this vote a stunning failure of moral leadership at Brown University,” Edelman said in the letter published by the WSJ. “I am unwilling to lend my name or give my time to a body that lacks basic moral judgment. I hereby resign from the board of trustees.”

Multiple “anti-divestment” students at the university are planning on fighting against the divestment vote on Monday by presenting a 39-page memo to the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM), noting that Israel does not meet the ACURM’s requirements for “social harm,” according to the Brown Daily Herald.

“Far from a direct response to current activism, Brown is following an established process that is nearly a half-century old,” Clark told the DCNF. “This long-held process is built on the principle that Brown has an obligation to examine and investigate claims challenging its moral responsibility. Our process allows any University community member to submit a divestment proposal for examination, and does not pre-determine the merit or outcome. As an educational institution, Brown is and must be a campus that confronts and interrogates difficult questions.”

Edelman did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.