Linda E. Rappaport, chair of the Board of Trustees, and Steven H. Bloom, chair of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees, issued a school-wide email on Wednesday acknowledging a report made by the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR).
The report is an update on the ACIR’s ongoing work, which includes developing strategies for managing The New School’s investments while considering social, environmental, and corporate governance issues.
The investment committee will now review the report “in order to make informed decisions and recommendations regarding its proposals,” according to the email.
The ACIR will be present during this month’s investment committee meeting to continue the dialogue on the topic between them and the investment committee.
The report includes “detailed findings on the divestment motions, including historical context for past decisions, recent events leading up to last spring’s votes, and the moral case for the proposed divestment.”
While the investment committee holds fiduciary responsibility for managing the endowment, the ACIR is responsible for voicing the New School community’s’ call for divestment from companies benefitting from war.
The ACIR reviewed thirteen companies — including BAE Systems, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed — and advised divestment. Currently, the ACIR is monitoring the following five companies: Alphabet (Google), CACI International, Cemex, HPE (HP), and AXA.
In a community message from the ACIR, New School students were invited to ask questions and voice opinions in an open discussion over the next two weeks about the completed report. The meetings will be held via a Zoom meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 25, and Tuesday, Oct. 1.
The initial motion to favor divestment was in the spring of 2024 when “The New School’s interim Executive Vice President for Business and Operations met with members of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” They concluded that consulting advisors would make a report identifying the endowment’s holdings in companies implicated in the conflict, as requested by the students. The report revealed that the endowment included AXA, the Boeing Company, Caterpillar Inc., and ten other companies.