Students are teaching us the power of financial activism

Divestment is rarely easy. In fact, like much of our financial system, the process of even understanding investment portfolios, and then making changes to said portfolios, is too often convoluted and opaque by design. It’s a process only a select few are expected to have the language for (Index funds? Private equity???) and therefore have the power to influence. So to call for institutional divestment is to accept a level of messiness and pushback, even from those who may agree with the underlying call for justice.

So knowing the complex realities of investment portfolios… are divestment campaigns worth it? Are they “strategic?”

In a word: yes.

In four more words: we are witnessing history. 

When movements draw attention to and leverage financial assets as a part of their organizing, they challenge the uber-capitalist premise that the realm of big money is something that should be left to the financial professionals (and/or the ultra-rich). Financial activism is radically effective in that it reminds us of our ability to reclaim where, how, and to whom our money flows.

Because at the end of the day, concentrated pools of wealth are indeed everyday people’s money, engineered away from everyday people’s pockets  — through our taxpayer dollars, spending, and collective labor. 

Making the case for ending American university financial ties with Israeli military operations and the corporations complicit in genocide is outside the scope of this quick reflection. But I’ll quote student protestor Naina Agrawal, 21, a history major at Yale: “Divestment is an important tactic because it aims to retract social license from industries that profit from extraction and exploitation […] What business does a school have profiting from the same fossil fuel companies and war profiteers that are killing its students’ communities?”

Other financial activist tactics beyond divestment are at play as a part of the Boycott, Divest, & Sanction movement. In December 2023, for example, Starbucks’ market value dropped a whopping 10 percent in correlation with an international boycott. It began when consumers learned that Starbucks union workers were being disciplined for sharing #FreePalestine posts in the midst of ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza. They used the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks in about five thousand posts, garnering over 42 million views, according to the TikTok data center. That’s correlated with an $11 billion loss for the company.

College-age students occupy the center of Generation Z, which currently has an age range of twelve to twenty-seven. From tweens to late twenties, they’re culture makers — who value authenticity, diversity, and social awareness — and market movers — representing an estimated $450B in spending power, that’s expected to increase by 48% by 2030. According to a survey of 4,000 Gen Z consumers, the majority say their spending decisions are informed by their values, and one in five abandoned a brand in the last year based on a negative reputation for sustainability and ethics. Both their spending power and influence on other generations will only continue to grow, so, from even the most stringent fiduciary risk perspective, to ignore their demands is increasingly foolish.  

In this moment, more and more people across class, generation, and identity are recognizing the collective power of their financial activism. They’re putting eyes on the ties between financial decisions and state-sanctioned violence. Complicity in human rights violations, to any degree, should be taken as a material business risk to be addressed head-on, rather than a disruption to be quelled quietly.

As a student of social change theory (who’s spent way too many hours researching historical tactics of global nonviolent activism campaigns), the bravery and resolve of students to unapologetically call on their institutions to “disclose and divest” gives me hope, personally.  

I’m sending a hardy congrats to the students at Brown — who just yesterday reached a deal with the University to put the endowment divestment proposal to vote at an upcoming October board meeting. And to everyone else: don’t let them tell you it’s just too complicated.

We’re done leaving money and power on the table.

-J