Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) board of trustees announced last week that it has voted against a proposal to divest from Israel presented by the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter (RSJP). The board’s rejection comes in the wake of the group’s three-day occupation of a campus building last May, when it called for the nonprofit college and museum to divest as part of a larger movement across academic institutions in the United States. 

Five RSJP representatives met with the board’s Investment Subcommittee and administrators including President Crystal Williams in October, a spokesperson for RSJP told Hyperallergic. During the meeting, the representatives proposed the institution sever its financial ties to companies linked to Israel’s war on Gaza and other anti-Palestinian violence and discrimination, according to a divestment proposal document shared with Hyperallergic. 

As of June 2023, RISD’s endowment stood at $396 million. A spokesperson for the school declined to comment on the institution’s endowment or disclose what percentage is invested in companies linked to Israeli interests. 

“The reason why we create art and seek to understand it in a thoughtful and complex way is because we collectively believe that it holds a real bearing on global society,” RSJP’s divestment proposal reads. 

“If we as an institution do not put into practice our ability to effect influence as global changemakers, we render hollow RISD’s fundamental value of the power of art and design and the power of an art institution to do good in the world,” the proposal continues.

In a statement emailed to RISD community members and posted on the art school’s website, the board of trustees said RSJP’s proposal did not meet the criteria outlined in its Statement on Divestment. Those criteria, adopted in May 2015, stipulate that while its duty is to “achieve the maximum possible return” on investment, “in rare circumstances … the Board of Trustees may also in its sole discretion take political and social considerations into account.” 

For divestment to occur under these guidelines, a proposal would need to “implicat[e] an issue of importance to RISD as an institution and to its constituents as a whole, and not solely to a segment of its constituents,” and “would be likely to have a meaningful impact on the resolution of that issue.” 

According to the RSJP’s divestment proposal, 800 of the school’s over 2,000 students signed in favor of their demands, including disclosure and divestment, in a petition in fall 2023. The group also called for a third-party student referendum vote. Some universities, including Columbia University and Pomona College, rejected disclosure and divestment demands from students, despite referendum votes indicating that most of them were in favor of such actions. 

In May, the SJP chapter of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and Faculty for Justice in Palestine were successful in pushing the school to commit to a full disclosure of its investments. The school also vowed to create a student-led Ethical Investment Workgroup that would work with the board of trustees to divest from entities connected to human rights abuses. 

During the occupation of the second floor of RISD’s Providence Washington (Prov-Wash) building last May, which RSJP renamed “Fathi Ghaben Place” in honor of the Gazan artist who died after Israeli authorities blocked his travel for medical treatment, students held art-making sessions and teach-ins. The action was disbanded following expulsion warnings. 

RISD’s board of trustees has divested before: Nearly a decade ago, the board unanimously voted to withdraw its investments in fossil fuel industries, two years after, students from the group Divest RISD staged a sit-in, the Portland Press Herald reported.

RSJP’s divestment proposal also calls for the institution to back out of any investment in the “exploitation of natural resources,” referencing the Hague Regulations of 1907, which limits an “occupying state” from using the resources of the “occupied population,” according to Amnesty International. The student organization additionally called for RISD’s divestment from weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies tied to Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.

In an Instagram post this week, RSJP alleged the administration did not engage with them in good faith, claiming that “several trustees” did not attend on short notice. 

“As long as the administration refuses to divest, they are participants in the violence,” RSJP told Hyperallergic. “We will not rest until our demands are met.”