We are “Whitman Alums for a Free Palestine,” and last semester we started a No Donation Pledge with the goal of supporting Whitman Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in pushing Whitman to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies complicit in genocide, ethnic cleansing and colonial oppression. Our pledge has since gathered nearly 600 signatures and counting from a wide range of alumni who refuse to donate in any way to an institution that has failed so spectacularly to take even the most basic moral stand.
Now that school is back in session, we, as alumni, feel the need to reiterate in a more public forum our support for student activists, as well as communicate in the bluntest possible terms our disappointment in our alma mater. The College’s financial ties to active atrocities rooted in American imperialism demonstrate how Whitman has failed to move beyond its own colonial history and live up to its own standards.
Last year, Sarah Bolton and the Whitman Trustees responded to student demands with a wholly inadequate and halfhearted statement. The administration continues to hide behind the illusion that their silence makes Whitman students safe, or that equity is in any way compatible with genocide.
The Whitman endowment, as Bolton states, “is made up of gifts from alumni and others over generations.” This is why we feel that it is our prerogative as alumni to explain to the administration that our financial support is conditional, and by remaining complicit they have lost both present and future donors.
Furthermore, Whitman’s lack of financial transparency makes it impossible to take the admin’s contradictory claims seriously. How can exposure to these stocks be both “very minimal” and “indirect,” while at the same time stating that reducing that exposure could represent a “meaningful risk”? Bolton cites the fiduciary duty as one of the main reasons to reject the student’s divestment proposal, yet absent from her response is any justification for maintaining the risk associated with these investments.
Other institutions and banks increasingly consider investment in Israel as itself a financial risk, and concern for the stability of the Israeli economy has led Moody’s to downgrade Israel’s credit rating, stating that the prospect of future downgrades looms and “the risks remain skewed to the downside” (1). Not only is Whitman financially tied to Israel, but its decision not to divest is wagering the College’s finances on the failure of the BDS movement, the future stability of Israel and the success of their genocide.
We would like to stress the point that this is not simply a war or an “activity we disagree with”; this is a genocide. You are either for genocide or against it, and the college’s reluctance to take a stand that would only affect 2 percent of the endowment (according to President Bolton) demonstrates either moral cowardice or administrative incompetence.
As alumni, we are not only concerned with how our donations/tuition dollars are hypothetically spent in Israel. We are concerned about the implications of supporting Whitman itself as an institution unwilling to do the bare minimum. Whitman does not have the right to exist in a bubble or to hide away from the global implications of its actions (or lack thereof). We are not just fighting for divestment, but also for the soul of our school.
We take this stand because of the Whitman professors and mentors who taught us to think independently and critically. As alumni, we feel it is our responsibility to remind Whitman of its self-professed values because we believe that Whitman has no future as an institution and as a community if it refuses to be held to a high ethical standard. The school’s reputation will always be tied to its ability to change.
We invite any like-minded alumni to redirect any funds that might have gone to Whitman to the GoFundMe set up by Mosalam Abu zaanona, a Whitman student whose family was displaced in Gaza or to any of the resources on Operation Olive Branch.
