UC Berkeley continues to invest in weapons manufacturing 5 months after student referendum | Student Life

The ASUC’s divestment referendum calling for UC Berkeley to divest from companies producing military weapons has seen no movement since it was passed in April.

ASUC President Margaret Solomon shared in an email that the ASUC plans to establish a committee to sustain divestment efforts. The committee will focus on “sustaining a continuous effort to divest and aligning the ASUC’s long term priorities with these efforts.”

Solomon said she and Graduate Assembly President Chrissy Shively discussed the referendum during a Tuesday meeting with Chancellor Rich Lyons and Chief Financial Officer Kelly Sparks.

In April’s ASUC elections, 74.81% of students voted in favor of the referendum, which advocates for the disclosure and divestment of all the UC Berkeley Foundation’s material holdings in companies producing mass surveillance and military weapons technology.

Solomon said in the email that she “emphasized how the genocide has affected our students’ lived experiences and families back home” at the Tuesday meeting.

Solomon said if UC Berkeley begins the divestment process, it could trigger a “chain reaction of other campuses doing the same.”

This comes after five ASUC officials said in a joint post with Berkeley Stem 4 Palestine in May that they had been denied a public meeting to present the divestment recommendation to Lyons and the UC Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees.

The Foundation operates as an “independent fiduciary body,” campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in an email. Additionally, the Foundation’s fiduciary status prohibits it from using endowed funds for “political activities,” according to its website.

In her email, Solomon said the ASUC has not been invited to meet with the Berkeley Endowment Management Company, a subsidiary of the Foundation that manages the endowment, regarding the divestment referendum.

In his email, Mogulof pointed to the Report on Divestment Evaluation issued by the Foundation in 2024, in which the Foundation decided not to divest from companies producing military technology.

The 2024 report outlines the trials the 2026 divestment referendum could face should the Foundation proceed with evaluation of the referendum.

In order for the foundation to consider divesting from a company or a group of companies, five criteria must be met. First, the company must be found to be directly causing social injury or violating national or international law; second, the concern about the company’s behavior must be widely held across the campus community; and third, divestment will reduce social injury.

If those criteria are met, the committee may then use two additional criteria to determine whether to adopt the divestment proposal: first, if the trustees have already attempted to effect a change in the company’s behavior and, second, if the company has failed to change its behavior.

The Foundation’s Environmental, Social and Governance Subcommittee created a Divestment Evaluation Task Force in 2024, which was assigned with making a recommendation on divestment.

The task force found that across a list of 300 companies in the sectors of surveillance, weapons production and mass incarceration, the Foundation’s only material holdings were in weapons manufacturing, accounting for approximately $15 million of the $3 billion endowment managed by the Foundation in 2024.

Ultimately, Divestment Evaluation Task Force members were evenly split on whether weapons manufacturing companies cause social injury or violate national or international law. A majority found that support for divestment was not broadly and consistently held across the campus community. A majority voted that divestment would not clearly diminish social injury.

The 2024 report concludes that divestment stands as a “collective action” and that the Foundation’s Board of Trustees “remain bound to the requirements of the Foundation’s policies and fiduciary obligations.”

Solomon shared in the email that she and Shively spoke with Lyons and his chief financial officer about the “moral obligation” the campus and student body hold to divest “because it is our duty as a public university.”