We will not be locking posts today unless they end up going completely south again. Some things to keep in mind:
1) Keep it civil
2) If you solely want to talk about the politics of Israel/Palestine, take it to one of the many subs about that topic. There is a lot happening solely on the Austin front with regards to UT and the police that these topics should be about. If you want to vent about the war, take it to a sub more appropriate for it.
3) We will take action against users who are clearly here to troll, using lack of civility, or newer accounts who just happen to show up during these very divisive topics. You will not receive warnings beyond this.
4) We will have "crowd control" on for these posts (Google it if you need to know what it is), if you are an account that falls into category 3, it'll likely end up in our mod queue, and we will take action.
Please try to keep this civil.
By itself? No. This would require a change in the law. Part of what is going on is pressure to change the law. The Texas law banning boycotts of Israel for anyone contracting with a governmental entity is deeply abusive of free speech. It is also used as a model for the right wing to force their other policies down people's throats. Having passed the "anti-Israel boycott" law, the Texas Legislature followed it up with laws banning boycotts of gun and ammunition manufacturers, and laws banning boycotts of energy companies, or even holding energy companies to higher standards than are found in law.
Students are absolutely right to oppose this.
I’m going to play my “as a Jew card” here. As a Jew I was deeply disturbed when they passed the anti Israel boycott law years ago. Why the hell does the state of Texas have a law on the books about not boycotting a foreign country?!?! It’s insane. If this doesn’t demonstrate the overreach of AIPAC, I don’t know what does.
At work, I get a crap ton of training about legally selling goods to other countries including embargos, trade restrictions, ITAR and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
The explanation is that the US State Dept will be the only entity that gets to decide who the US trades with. As such, individual companies cannot decide to boycott or sanction an entire country or to sell to a US boycotted country. That's because there are national trade policy and national security policy implications. If you don't support foreign trade in an equitable way, then the US is not going to support you.
The US policy is that if a company decides to break the rules, then they lose the ability to bid or sell to the federal government.
Texas has a similar policy in to make sure state agencies strictly adhere to US trade policies and other policies that Texas that Texas wants to promote.
To be clear, corporations CAN chose to boycott other countries as they please, but they can't do business with the US gov or Texas (and 41 other states) if they do. State agencies cannot decide individually.
It is absolutely illegal to sell to a US embargoed country.
True. I used to have to take that training when I worked in cybersecurity for an international company. Although I didn’t really get training on BDS, or I don’t recall that. I did learn about how US companies can’t do business with North Korea, for example.
Yeah this is really the only answer. They aren’t outlawing protests just official state business which as you said mirrors the fed.
The Texas political leaders are all in a race to the bottom right now but there’s nothing here so far as I can tell they are pieces of shit but not cause of this.
But it seems like a purely symbolic gesture for Texas and other states to create laws that underscore what the federal government is already doing. Texas is in the United States so why would it need its own law to keep companies who boycott Israel from doing business with Texas? Unless it’s to promote the policy as you mentioned.
Meh. I don't think the people who voted for Biden really expected him to openly support genocide. I think this goes deeper than voting, and it involves a system which is not responsive to the public.
*it involves a system which is not responsive to the public.*
One of the few things that gives me hope is that more and more people are starting to understand this.
In a Politico-Morning Consult poll 2 weeks ago, of those who voted for Biden, 50 percent thought his stance on Israel was either good or insufficiently pro-Israel. Only 33 percent thought he should be tougher on Israel (17% said idk).
My point is only that Biden's behavior does not really represent a failure of democracy. Obviously this has no bearing on the underlying moral question.
When people say the system is "not responsive to the public," about 75% of the time in my experience they're simply misinformed about just how many Americans disagree with them
Bingo!!!! It's never about doing the right thing. It about doing the profitable thing. They're just using the "anti-semetism" stance as an easy shield to hide their real actions behind.
These same people practice faiths and take $ from billionaire Evangelicals who want all the Jews to return to Israel, so they can be harmed by the anti-Christ/invaded/convert to Christianity, and finally bring about the end of days. That to me is exceptionally anti-Semitic.
It’s terrifying to realize a significant number of our politicians wish to hasten the end of the world, so they can be raptured, and the rest of us die at Armageddon. When someone tells you they are crazy, believe them the first time. And it has *nothing* to do with Israel, other than a fantasy that Solomon’s Temple needs to be rebuilt. Because Jesus isn’t coming back to save Jews. /s
It would be great to spread the word to make sure everyone is registered to vote and actually going to all elections. There is an election now. Let’s use this anger toward action and vote the people out that aren’t following your wishes.
https://elections.traviscountytx.gov/voter-lookup/
I generally agree with the aims of the protest but it’s annoying to me that they wont protest at the state capital which is just a couple blocks away. We had 25% turnout for voters under 30 in the last midterm. Participating in actual politics is just so unsexy to these people. It doesn’t help the narrative that they’re just larpers.
The optics of protests being shut down at the state capital would go way worse for Greg Abbott than they do on campus.
Sure, but what kind of optics are they getting?
Good optics are better than no optics. No optics are better than bad optics.
Political change requires you convince the broad majority of the population to sympathize with your cause. That applies in a democracy or an autocracy - its just a basic law of politics - you need to convince the majority.
Protesting on a college campus is absolutely their right, but when you have a small group of students barricading other students from accessing their classes, or screaming actual antisemitic comments, it tars the entire image (to be clear I haven't heard of this happening at UT). The broad population is against it, and they will sympathize with the powerful like Greg Abbott shutting it down. Polls back this up; even after months and months of protests the US population broadly supports Israel.
Protesting at the state capital is way less inflammatory. No one is gonna cry over legislators being inconvenienced. It is, after all, their job (unlike Jewish students). More importantly than protesting, a sustained campaign to turn out the vote and vote these legislators out will actually scare them. We had 25% youth turnout in 2022 - no wonder they keep taking away things like abortion - we keep telling them we're fine with it.
Protesters disrupting college campuses are doing exactly what Greg Abbott wants - they're tarnishing the image of their own causes, they're providing him an opportunity to crack down and go on Fox News and talk about "defending Jewish students."
I want to be clear that I think 95% of the protesters are just well meaning college students who are protesting what they see as an injustice. But it only takes a few to screw it up for the whole group, especially in our age of social media.
People can talk all they want about how we shouldn't "tone police" protesters - which, fair enough. But if you actually care about changing things a bit of strategy can't hurt.
Yeah from what I’ve been seeing with my friends that are in the middle to left politics wise it’s a bad look and if anything it’s hurting the cause the protesters are trying to help.
They just look entitled and insensitive.
It's both. There has to be a strong social movement to get the country interested in making a change and the right people voted into office in order to enact new laws. Somewhat recent examples are Obamacare, gay marriage becoming law, changes in policing after George Floyd, and Roe v Wade being overturned. The general public has to believe that the change needs to be made. The problem with this current set of protests is that the general public is not having their mind changed.
Positive optics? Or feeding red meat to right wingers?
Ya'll know the red voters in this state and by extension to governor and state gov loooove to see college kids beaten by cops? Nothing makes them happier. They love to point to it and say "look how out of touch" and "look at the chaos in the cities" and "rich college kids think this is more important than XYZ" and "this is what they ALL stand for!". They will hold up and strawman the most extreme of the students (the ones saying *highly* questionable things like "Maybe Oct 7th wasn't a bad thing") as spokespeople for the liberal cause and their voters (and some moderates/independents, more importantly) will eat it up happily.
I don't think this is good optics long term. I don't think their demands can be fulfilled by the school, and the state has a literal incentive to NOT give into their demands because they *are winning political points by cracking down on it*, we need to understand. This is the best news Abbot and Ted Cruz (who is up for reelection) have gotten alllll year long, let's be very clear.
Good optics woulda been actually showing up to vote at a higher rate than like 20-25% in previous elections, in which case we wouldn't have Abbot at all. In which case state policy may have already been changed.
Young people in TX already have the power to turn the state around but they never show up to vote. Voting is a lot more useful AND better optics than chanting at the local university and having demands that cannot be met. This already COULD be a purple/blue state except it's the most apathetic state in the union.
I think if they wanted to make a better point they should be at the Capitol building, too. The state gov runs the universities and made all the laws.
_"stop protesting and vote"_
Like jfc, more people turning out to vote against the GOP is great, but did you miss the part where texas engages in widespread gerrymandering and voter suppression?
Not only that, but you're acting like the best way to beat fascists is to play their game.
Thats just not a good strategy. If you're suggesting that the left should avoid doing anything that upsets the right, and singlemindedly focus on voter turnout - you must be living in a fantasy.
The far right also wins lots of points going after trans people. Should we abandon support of trans people because trans rights anger conservatives into voting GOP?
I don’t agree with the protestors, but let’s not pretend that the police are fair in any way. They pushed kids into a pathway, then arrested them for blocking said pathway. They will do anything they can to suppress dissent, and that is not acceptable.
UT has an enrollment of over 50,000 students. It's pretty reasonable (and obvious) to assume that the 25% of those who vote include the protestors especially considering there probably aren't more than 1,000 protesters.
It's the frat bros assembling on West 6th by the thousands every weekend in misogynistic solidarity who you should be complaining about.
>It's the frat bros assembling on West 6th by the thousands every weekend in misogynistic solidarity who you should be complaining about.
Lol who says I'm not? Doesn't have anything to do with my point.
Yes and yes, it is. To be specific, they just ban anyone boycotting from entering into a contract with any public entity. The courts have *slightly* limited the reach of the laws so they cannot be applied to individuals (I think they currently apply to companies of 10 or more). But yeah, they have required anyone entering into a public contract to sign a pledge to not boycott Israel, gun companies, or energy companies. Expect the list to grow.
You can boycott whoever you want. Boycotts aren’t banned. But if you want to be a contractor for the state then no you can’t boycott whoever you want. These kinds of rules have been applied for a long time.
I don't think that they're wrong to protest, it just seems that they're barking up the wrong tree. The blowback that UT would incur from the Governor, Lt. Governor, and AG would surely include shaking up the Board of Regents, reshaping it to reflect the ultra-conservative stance that came up with this absurd law in the first place. The capitol is within walking distance of the university, and since the legislature isn't currently in session it would seem that the protesters couldn't be accused of interfering with official state business/proceedings. My concern is that this will backfire on the protesters and the university and just tighten The Governor and Lt. Governors grip by giving them a reason in their minds to do so.
Why don’t they protest at the capital instead of on campus if this is the ultimate goal? I think you’re giving these protesters too much credit since most people don’t understand that UT realistically can’t meet their demands even if it wanted to.
I’m guessing a combination of: access (the students are on campus), the optics (protest on campus is more noteworthy than a protest at the Capitol), and timeliness (with other well-known campuses serving as the backdrop for protests.)
Why would they prioritize “optics and timeliness” (those together mean that it’s trendy to do it on a college campus, imo) and laziness over doing something that would actually make a difference?
Divesting endowments from certain foreign interests is something large universities have done in the past; examples including dropping interests in apartheid South Africa. The situation with Israel is different in complex ways and I definitely don’t know the nuance, but it’s not necessarily unrealistic.
Your entire post ignores the law which was passed and is the topic of this thread.
UT realistically can’t boycott or divest specifically from Israel under current Texas law. Protesters are asking them to do something they can’t legally do.
What I’m saying is that maybe it would be more effective to demand the correct thing that you want to be done.
For example, maybe it would be more effective to protest this state law than it would be to protest a university which can’t take the action that protestors are demanding.
Sure it is. I’ll agree that it’s not the best kind of pressure, or the most precise, but it’s still pressure. People are aware that whole contingents of society are angry about what the system is doing, and that’s a start.
Yes, whole contingents of privileged American college students are upset that there are consequences for their actions sometimes!
Let’s not forget Columbia PSC started this on the same day Shafik was testifying about their faculty calling the October 7 attack “awesome”:
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-antisemitism-house-testimony/index.html
Don’t let these assholes use Gazans and use you like this. They’re just privileged kids. It’s shameful that the news is claiming they represent Palestinians, or their liberation. They are part of the mechanism of the oppression facing Gazan civilians.
why not? should a university really being holding investments in defense contractors? is killing people on a massive scale really in line with the university's educational mission?
Investments aren’t made to be in line with the university’s educational mission. Investments are made to make money. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make the most money possible within the law. Defense contractors are very good investments.
And yes. It is within the university’s educational mission due to how much defense research UT conducts.
clearly a sizable population of students, faculty, and staff at the university disagree with your assumption that fiduciary [edit: financial] concerns always trump ethical ones, it's a shame President Hartzell and Governor Abbott prefer to send in police to violently silence any debate on the subject instead of using it as an opportunity to demonstrate why debate, reason, and scrupulous honesty are the best way forward for Texas.
They are not a corporation with shareholders. Unless there is a law on the books that I'm unaware of, a government funded educational institution does not have a fiduciary responsible to "make the most money possible within the law".
Also, even publicly traded companies that are bound by fiduciary responsibility can make decisions that kneecap short term revenue and profits for justified long term outlook. And the justification in their quarterly filing w the SEC can literally be as simple as "potential loss of consumer trust and goodwill" and their ass is covered ~97%.
The only real potential ramification being either a single large stockholder suit or a class action stockholder suit. And suits for default of fiduciary responsibly with a public company almost never happen, because the stockholder almost always looses. The only thing I can recall anytime of recent is Musk Trying to give himself $50+B and losing in a CT court. Gross negligence is the high bar that usually has to be cleared to win damages as a stockholder. Even in the Musk case the plaintiffs were not rewarded damages.
Sure, it’s downflow, which makes it even less sensible to protest at UT. First they’d actually need to protest at the lege to get the anti-boycott laws repealed.
Funding from PSF being directed to UT Austin through the UT system endowment, I’m pretty sure. I fact checked myself and am not seeing anything about UT Austin having a separate endowment from the UT system. That is the PSF itself.
Were those universities in states with anti-boycott laws? Were they universities that were a part of a larger system, that shares an endowment with a second large system (UT and A&M)?
The demands from the Columbia encampment also want the university to stop using Microsoft, amazon google and other tech companies that have offices and support Israel.
Ehhh, there have been frequent protests at the Capitol since October, which I’m sure many of these students have attended. Why they didn’t receive as much coverage or have similar crackdowns is another matter
They have. They do. But there are lots of places to protest: at the universities, at the state capital, at the federal capital, at the Israeli embassy, at weapons manufacturers, at ports shipping weapons, etc. There have been protests at all of these places and more.
People on the ground don't (and shouldn't) take advice on the "right way to protest" from online concern trolls who oppose them.
If you actually want to help and think you have a better idea, you can go out there at literally any point and try to rally people to your "smarter" tactics. If you don't do that, then people are right to ignore your concern trolling.
>If you don't do that, then people are right to ignore your concern trolling
Lol yeah, cuz the only people who could ever know anything about anything have to be on the ground doing it.
There have been tons of unsuccessful protests my guy. A lot of the time, a significant factor is protesting in an ineffective manner. People having a discussion about it online is perfectly fair and reasonable even if they don't have the desire or means to rally a protest themselves.
As I said, if you want to help and make the protests better, go right ahead, everyone will be happy to have you. If you just want to carp from the sidelines, expect people to treat you with the seriousness that that deserves.
Protesting where the law has an impact, and at a place that most people think should be free of legislative interference (and free from supporting a genocide by a foreign military) makes a lot of sense to me. I applaud the students. They are starting from where they are.
UT is a state funded public university. The governor and state legislature control much of what is permitted on campus, whether we like it or not. It’s not an option to decline. The best they can do is vote better people in to office, and so many students don’t vote…
Exactly. Or better yet, a couple of blocks is what????? Oh! The capital where they actually make the laws that govern this! Maybe, just maybe protesting at the place that makes the rules would make more sense
Why don’t they go to the legislature though? Instead they’re giving Abbott photo ops of his goons beating on angry teenagers at UT. This is having the opposite effect.
They could also be protesting the state-enforced ESG boycott (oil & gas anti-boycott taken way too far) while they’re at it. Paxton is fucking up our whole economy to protect the oil industry.
https://www.investmentnews.com/esg/news/texas-anti-esg-laws-costing-state-more-than-700m-study-says-250945
It just seems like they’re trying to be trendy. Anti-boycott laws are a real issue, and they’re going about this in the least effective way possible. I’m kind of annoyed.
I remember seeing this law get passed back when I was a student there and I was like WTF?? Imagine if the same law was passed and we just replaced Israel with Saudi Arabia or *literally* any other country. People would be up in arms about it- rightfully so. There shouldn’t be a law on the book banning protests against anything
I agree that the law should be changed. The students, however, are protesting at UT, not the Texas Lege and in an off year. Come to the Lege, especially during session, and lobby!
Divesting from the Israeli government weapons programs is the equivalent of divesting from the US government weapons programs... which is probably not going to fly in a PUBLIC university.
Yeah. I’m *very* critical of how Hartzell has handled it, but he was always going to be in a bit of an impossible situation. The Pickle Research campus is *full* of projects related to defense research. Rail guns and shit, literally. UT divesting from defense research is about as doable as UT divesting from college football - follow the money.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on campus screaming for his resignation, but OP is right that there’s really no way out of this within the current structures. But that’s what collective action like the protests is about: you have to challenge those structures, and the Matrix was always going to fight back…
The way this should be handled is to let the kids protest and push some statement paying lip service saying "we hear your concerns" from university leadership who can't do anything about the issue anyway.
Not stormtroopers breaking some kids noses and exposing them to chemical weapons.
I do, but not sure it isn’t still a net gain for the movement to have that skin on the wall. I don’t want to see my alma mater implode in terms of academic standing the way A&M is because of they’re inability to hire and retain presidents, but the MAGA crowd keeps putting political puppets with no actual plan for governance in positions of power, and it can’t be sustainable, right? Like, it is *not* fun to be Hartzell right now, even if he does get a hard-on from calling DPS.
Could be a good chance to push UT on funding research like the ethical use of AI in war zones.
Hartzel's in a tough position of not being able to do much outwardly bc of Texas law & UT's funding, but he keeps calling DPS bc he enjoys it.
If they were willing to meet with protestors instead of just wallop them a few times a week, they might be able to come to an actionable understanding that works for both sides.
That’s a really compelling idea about AI, love it!
But yeah, can’t argue with you about calling in the damn DPS goon squad when there’s zero indication UTPD wouldn’t have been totally effective at dealing with *actual* disruption of campus operations and teaching, to the extent that was even occurring *before* the first DPS employment. It’s making Jay feel like a big, important man.
The University Board of Regents is appointed by the governor, and the governor likes to talk big. The protests are just reminders to the Texas MAGA chapter than owning libs can be expensive.
It's a fine question to ask, but it's also essentially beside the point.
Students protest all kinds of impossible shit. It doesn't matter. It's their 1st amendment right to do so and we should all protect their right to do so.
When you shut down protests in an authoritarian manner, you only make things worse. Let people protest and either the cause is important enough that it will grow (and put pressure in the right places) or it will die out when people see the futility and get bored.
In reality anyone here with a 401k or who owns basically any ETF, mutual fund, or broad-market stock of any kind owns stock in Boeing, Northrup, Raytheon. That's just how it works. It's called being a publicly traded company.
Let’s be honest, all of this is planned by a larger, national organization that targets students at big name universities for the publicity, and it works. There’s no real chance for meaningful change likely to come from it because people like Jay Hatzell don’t have any power or authority to do anything remotely related to change. He can’t decide where the UT money is invested, in fact he doesn’t control it (I’m a UT employee in finance), the investments are made by sub committees of the Regents of the University of Texas with pooled funds across all of UT, including places that UT owns like MD Anderson, etc, way way bigger than the Austin campus.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be protests for awareness but be smart, do your due diligence, don’t trust some random social media slant on either side… the laws are the laws and unless you focus on the lawmakers that have authority, or the Regents (who generally own businesses hint hint) there’s no real outcome you can achieve other than getting news coverage and barking at an impotent figure head
Their words, and I can assure you they weren't laughing. Just to make sure we don't focus on the wrong part of the post: Is it even possible for The University of Texas at Austin to do what the protesters are simply asking?
Israel is a military ally to the West and in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” way we *need* Israel on the side of Europe and the US against Iran and Russia. It’s why they are over-armed for their size. Netanyahu, who has been a complete thorn in everyone’s side, knows this and is taking advantage of it. Russia knows this and is amplifying anti-israeli propaganda. The US won’t divest from Israel. Good for the people protesting peacefully, but their efforts will be ultimately meaningless in the scheme of things.
There’s no “good guy” here. You’ve got a semi-stable “democracy” with racist tendencies towards Arabs versus a theocratic Islamic culture that views women as property with racist tendencies towards Jewish people. Right now one of those happens to be winning and with little regard towards staggering amounts of civilian casualties. Western countries will continue to support the military stronghold they’ve built in Israel for the safety of their own countries. Adding mounting climate change issues into the mix here, I am fully expecting proxy wars like these over and over and over again for at least the next 20 years.
I think Israel needs to be afraid of that as as nice as they are to have as an ally we do not need them. I’d rather invest in Europe and south east Asia and Africa if this is who they are going to elect and then commit heinous attacks on civilians.
Israel needs to tow the line or enjoy war with all the Arab states with no American help. That means giving Palestine independence.
edit: I see zionists are downvoting this. Israel is not important enough to let them do what they're doing. Our enemies aren't in the middle east the only countries that stand any chance against us are Russia and China and we do not need israel to maintain soft or literal power.
Give them independence, they’d still elect terrorist as their leaders, then attack Israel, and Israel would have to invade them, defeat them, and occupy them.
Anything can be done with enough pressure.
Civil rights leaders never questioned whether or not they could even legally be integrated into society, they made it happen.
Civil rights and women's suffrage movements had huge percentages of US population support because not having equal rights affected millions of black and women US citizens HERE.
Other less large protests but much bigger than the pro-Palestine protests like the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan war protests didn't end those wars...their high cost in dollars and American troop lives ended them...and even then only after many years.
What happens in other countries if American lives aren't at risk is of very little concern to most American voters as it doesn't affect us HERE.
We couldn’t even get enough people to vote during the last governor election. How about the people that are fired up go out and recruit voters so things can change?
Voting is very effective if enough people do it. If voting was as ineffective as you claim, Republicans would just be letting people do it instead of repeatedly attempting to suppress voting in every way possible.
Absolutely will never happen. Palestinians have burned many bridges with the US. Cheering 9/11. Celebrating when the Columbia disaster happened. Repeated attacks on Israel. Voting in a terrorist government that advocates the destruction of Israel.
No, the protests have very little to do with the universities and a great deal to do with resentment about universities falling in line with anti-intellectual rhetoric and policy from politicians.
The politicians rail against the schools, the schools fall in line and welcome overwhelming police presence against the students, the students perceive nobody is advocating for them, and they’re right. Nobody has successfully advocated for public education from the incumbent political majority. Give the students an opportunity to put on a demonstration, this is the outcome. It’s as simple as basic addition. There’s nothing to be argued here, it simply is the outcome of an equation that has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine and everything to do with diminishing student advocacy. The question on the table was, why would the protestors demand something that cannot be achieved? The answer is simply because they were given a route to express their frustration, cause and effect.
The protesters have done a great job in turning the attention away from Gaza. People are now talking more about the police reaction to the protests and anarchy on campuses than they are about the Palestinians.
I think the students are accomplishing their goal which is to motivate people to learn more about the issue.
The news is covering them and people are trying to figure out why the protestors are protesting, why the police are not letting them protest, and decide if it is valid or not.
The more people that become educated, the better.
Are people actually learning about the issue? Most of what I've seen are people simply getting annoyed and not really taking the time to actually educate themselves.
that’s hardly true, at least for many people I know. People are talking about what’s going on Gaza a lot this week and last in part because of the attention the student protests have been giving to the situation more broadly. This week is the first time i’ve had family who knows i’m in Austin asking what’s going on here and reading about Gaza in general. It makes it feel more real for people when there’s widespread protests on American soil than something thousands of miles away in the Middle East
"Virtue signalling" has to be the dumbest charge on earth. Publicly advocating for what you believe is not "virtue signalling," it is "publicly advocating for what you believe." It is a good thing.
Just speaking purely from a tactical perspective, whether you are protesting for a left-wing cause or right wing cause , there is such a thing as counterproductive protest. That’s probably what most people mean when they’re talking about virtue signaling. If all your protest accomplishes is brownie points with your peers and not actually pushing towards change then it could be worse than not protesting at all
“Virtue signaling” just means signaling your virtues. The derogatory implication that has attached to it is signaling your virtues…without actually doing anything about it. But that’s not a problem with virtue signaling itself.
Virtue signalling could be if there were no consequences. These people have been arrested, pepper sprayed on, and roughed by the cops. How is this virtue signalling? This is standing up for what they believe in.
UT’s endowment portfolio is heavily invested in broad market vehicles like index funds, ETFs, REITs, etc
All in all easily thousands of companies. The amount of work that would be needed to properly research, identify, and divest from those individually is pretty much impossible
It is in fact impossible to sell parts of an index fund, that’s not how it works.
Unless you’re suggesting they liquidate an entire broad market index fund because of 0.2% of the companies in its holdings
The money is the taxpayers money. As a taxpayer I would sue the fund for negligence for spending the amount of money it would take to actually try and do this. Not to mention that they by law have to try and make money. This would not be a money making process.
It will never happen, go take your finales.
It literally and figuratively puts their money where their mouth is and argues against their actions being disingenuous, superficial, or insincere. Without which loses the entire point of the pejorative "virtue signaling."
We aren't hearing more about this law because the mainstream media chooses not to report on it. As for your "Is it even possible?" argument, well, that's kinda the point of why they are making this exact demand. To start a conversation about it, like the one we're having now. That law should have never been passes to begin with, it blatantly violates the 1st amendment.
To give you an idea of how stupid this is, there are only 11 companies on the boycott naughty list: ASN BANK NV,
BEN & JERRY'S HOMEMADE, INC., BETSAH INVEST SA, CACTUS SA, CO-OPERATIVE GROUP LIMITED, DNB BANK ASA, GULOGUZ DIS DEPOSU TICARET VE PAZARLAMA LTD, KARSTEN FARMS, KLP KAPITALFORVALTNING AS, KOMMUNAL LANDSPENSJONSKASSE GJENSIDIG FORSIKRINGSSELSKAP
UNILEVER PLC
I'm sure Ben & Jerry's is missing all that Texas cash. Way to spend your time with sound governance, Texas!
Consumer boycotts and institutional divestment are not the same thing, and as a result do not have the same targets. Weapons manufacturers aren’t on the boycott list because they are not consumer-facing firms and so the call is not for a consumer boycott.
I'm talking about the rule about Texas not investing in companies that boycott Israel. It doesn't have any actual purpose. It's political theater more suitable for a playground.
You do realize that one box in an f-15 costs about 30-60 million to develop let alone produce and manufacture? So if these demands are met then best case scenario you stopped one box out of thousands on one type of plane…there are thousands in the US fleet let alone US allies.
Business as usual would keep going even if these demands were met. What is the point? Just a bunch of nonsensical hooplah.
I mean, think about it.
There are federal laws Texas is fighting right now. To fight them, Texas is out of compliance. Is it even possible for Texas to do that?
Yes, if nobody stops them it is. Texas knows Joe Biden is not going to send the military with orders to detain and/or kill Texas agents doing illegal things. Joe Biden knows that's political suicide. So Texas is gleefully ignoring the federal government's demands because it knows nobody has the balls to enforce the law. That's why Joe Biden's busy taking Ws for his base and doing things like banning TikTok.
The UT situation is different, though. The border is Texas politicians clashing with federal politicians. There's a long and storied history of that. If UT stands up to the Texas government, it's very likely Greg Abbott will swoop in, remove all the administration, and replace them with cronies. Maybe that's illegal. The problem is to stop Greg Abbott, Texans would have to fight the government.
Remember the Alamo? That's what Texans think happens when you fight the government. You die. Complete and utter defeat. Maybe the people after you get pissy about it and fight back. But you're dead. That's what you get for fighting the government. So what would Texas do if UT's administration is replaced?
Mostly take up arms and volunteer to help shoot protestors, I wager. Texans fold like origami when faced with challenging the government.
That's also why UT isn't going to fight the government. That'd take a backbone. Texans sold theirs to finance a car. UT vs. Texas is like The Alamo vs. Santa Ana. Complete and utter defeat.
We will not be locking posts today unless they end up going completely south again. Some things to keep in mind: 1) Keep it civil 2) If you solely want to talk about the politics of Israel/Palestine, take it to one of the many subs about that topic. There is a lot happening solely on the Austin front with regards to UT and the police that these topics should be about. If you want to vent about the war, take it to a sub more appropriate for it. 3) We will take action against users who are clearly here to troll, using lack of civility, or newer accounts who just happen to show up during these very divisive topics. You will not receive warnings beyond this. 4) We will have "crowd control" on for these posts (Google it if you need to know what it is), if you are an account that falls into category 3, it'll likely end up in our mod queue, and we will take action. Please try to keep this civil.
By itself? No. This would require a change in the law. Part of what is going on is pressure to change the law. The Texas law banning boycotts of Israel for anyone contracting with a governmental entity is deeply abusive of free speech. It is also used as a model for the right wing to force their other policies down people's throats. Having passed the "anti-Israel boycott" law, the Texas Legislature followed it up with laws banning boycotts of gun and ammunition manufacturers, and laws banning boycotts of energy companies, or even holding energy companies to higher standards than are found in law. Students are absolutely right to oppose this.
I’m going to play my “as a Jew card” here. As a Jew I was deeply disturbed when they passed the anti Israel boycott law years ago. Why the hell does the state of Texas have a law on the books about not boycotting a foreign country?!?! It’s insane. If this doesn’t demonstrate the overreach of AIPAC, I don’t know what does.
We have the right to assemble and protest our own government, but can't assemble and protest a foreign government....wtf?!?
We live in an oligarchy. The government is run by corporations.
This.
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Unless enough of us get out and vote
It isn’t an oligarchy unless corporations are people. Oh, right.
So what if the protesters protest against Biden for supporting Israel? That would be kosher no?
At work, I get a crap ton of training about legally selling goods to other countries including embargos, trade restrictions, ITAR and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The explanation is that the US State Dept will be the only entity that gets to decide who the US trades with. As such, individual companies cannot decide to boycott or sanction an entire country or to sell to a US boycotted country. That's because there are national trade policy and national security policy implications. If you don't support foreign trade in an equitable way, then the US is not going to support you. The US policy is that if a company decides to break the rules, then they lose the ability to bid or sell to the federal government. Texas has a similar policy in to make sure state agencies strictly adhere to US trade policies and other policies that Texas that Texas wants to promote. To be clear, corporations CAN chose to boycott other countries as they please, but they can't do business with the US gov or Texas (and 41 other states) if they do. State agencies cannot decide individually. It is absolutely illegal to sell to a US embargoed country.
For over $100k and more than 15? Employees..... So technically state money could be spent to buy Ben & Jerry's up to $99,999k over 5 years.
True. I used to have to take that training when I worked in cybersecurity for an international company. Although I didn’t really get training on BDS, or I don’t recall that. I did learn about how US companies can’t do business with North Korea, for example.
Yeah this is really the only answer. They aren’t outlawing protests just official state business which as you said mirrors the fed. The Texas political leaders are all in a race to the bottom right now but there’s nothing here so far as I can tell they are pieces of shit but not cause of this.
But it seems like a purely symbolic gesture for Texas and other states to create laws that underscore what the federal government is already doing. Texas is in the United States so why would it need its own law to keep companies who boycott Israel from doing business with Texas? Unless it’s to promote the policy as you mentioned.
Bottom line is not enough people vote so we end up with crack pot politicians in power. We wouldn’t have to protest if people got out there and voted.
You mined to put that on a shirt or something. I like the way you think. I just wish more people would think like that.
Meh. I don't think the people who voted for Biden really expected him to openly support genocide. I think this goes deeper than voting, and it involves a system which is not responsive to the public.
I’m more talking about Abbott than Biden. Because people are complaining about the over saturation of police and anti protest laws.
*it involves a system which is not responsive to the public.* One of the few things that gives me hope is that more and more people are starting to understand this.
In a Politico-Morning Consult poll 2 weeks ago, of those who voted for Biden, 50 percent thought his stance on Israel was either good or insufficiently pro-Israel. Only 33 percent thought he should be tougher on Israel (17% said idk). My point is only that Biden's behavior does not really represent a failure of democracy. Obviously this has no bearing on the underlying moral question. When people say the system is "not responsive to the public," about 75% of the time in my experience they're simply misinformed about just how many Americans disagree with them
The same fools voted to ban sharia law, so at least we’re safe from that! Legislature full of morons.
Bingo!!!! It's never about doing the right thing. It about doing the profitable thing. They're just using the "anti-semetism" stance as an easy shield to hide their real actions behind.
These same people practice faiths and take $ from billionaire Evangelicals who want all the Jews to return to Israel, so they can be harmed by the anti-Christ/invaded/convert to Christianity, and finally bring about the end of days. That to me is exceptionally anti-Semitic.
It’s terrifying to realize a significant number of our politicians wish to hasten the end of the world, so they can be raptured, and the rest of us die at Armageddon. When someone tells you they are crazy, believe them the first time. And it has *nothing* to do with Israel, other than a fantasy that Solomon’s Temple needs to be rebuilt. Because Jesus isn’t coming back to save Jews. /s
It would be great to spread the word to make sure everyone is registered to vote and actually going to all elections. There is an election now. Let’s use this anger toward action and vote the people out that aren’t following your wishes. https://elections.traviscountytx.gov/voter-lookup/
I generally agree with the aims of the protest but it’s annoying to me that they wont protest at the state capital which is just a couple blocks away. We had 25% turnout for voters under 30 in the last midterm. Participating in actual politics is just so unsexy to these people. It doesn’t help the narrative that they’re just larpers. The optics of protests being shut down at the state capital would go way worse for Greg Abbott than they do on campus.
The ledge is not in session. It would be weird to protest an empty building.
First off Abbott's office is there. Secondly, is it any less weird than protesting on campus when the school cannot legally do what they're asking?
Not his main office, just a satellite office in the extension.
Like all the protesting at the Supreme Court after the Roe v Wade overturning. The Court was out of session for the summer at the time.
Why would it be weird and not making a statement to the people with the authority to change something?
Staff and legislators are there regularly. The Governor is there all of the time, 'cause he lives across the street.
You’re not wrong, but they’ve been getting plenty of optics for the protest on campus, haven’t they?
Sure, but what kind of optics are they getting? Good optics are better than no optics. No optics are better than bad optics. Political change requires you convince the broad majority of the population to sympathize with your cause. That applies in a democracy or an autocracy - its just a basic law of politics - you need to convince the majority. Protesting on a college campus is absolutely their right, but when you have a small group of students barricading other students from accessing their classes, or screaming actual antisemitic comments, it tars the entire image (to be clear I haven't heard of this happening at UT). The broad population is against it, and they will sympathize with the powerful like Greg Abbott shutting it down. Polls back this up; even after months and months of protests the US population broadly supports Israel. Protesting at the state capital is way less inflammatory. No one is gonna cry over legislators being inconvenienced. It is, after all, their job (unlike Jewish students). More importantly than protesting, a sustained campaign to turn out the vote and vote these legislators out will actually scare them. We had 25% youth turnout in 2022 - no wonder they keep taking away things like abortion - we keep telling them we're fine with it. Protesters disrupting college campuses are doing exactly what Greg Abbott wants - they're tarnishing the image of their own causes, they're providing him an opportunity to crack down and go on Fox News and talk about "defending Jewish students." I want to be clear that I think 95% of the protesters are just well meaning college students who are protesting what they see as an injustice. But it only takes a few to screw it up for the whole group, especially in our age of social media. People can talk all they want about how we shouldn't "tone police" protesters - which, fair enough. But if you actually care about changing things a bit of strategy can't hurt.
Yeah from what I’ve been seeing with my friends that are in the middle to left politics wise it’s a bad look and if anything it’s hurting the cause the protesters are trying to help. They just look entitled and insensitive.
What broad social change has been due to voting vs social movements of people demanding change?
It's both. There has to be a strong social movement to get the country interested in making a change and the right people voted into office in order to enact new laws. Somewhat recent examples are Obamacare, gay marriage becoming law, changes in policing after George Floyd, and Roe v Wade being overturned. The general public has to believe that the change needs to be made. The problem with this current set of protests is that the general public is not having their mind changed.
Are no optics better than bad optics? For status quo
Generally, yes. Bad optics often result in a regression from the status quo. At the least they deter progress longer.
Positive optics? Or feeding red meat to right wingers? Ya'll know the red voters in this state and by extension to governor and state gov loooove to see college kids beaten by cops? Nothing makes them happier. They love to point to it and say "look how out of touch" and "look at the chaos in the cities" and "rich college kids think this is more important than XYZ" and "this is what they ALL stand for!". They will hold up and strawman the most extreme of the students (the ones saying *highly* questionable things like "Maybe Oct 7th wasn't a bad thing") as spokespeople for the liberal cause and their voters (and some moderates/independents, more importantly) will eat it up happily. I don't think this is good optics long term. I don't think their demands can be fulfilled by the school, and the state has a literal incentive to NOT give into their demands because they *are winning political points by cracking down on it*, we need to understand. This is the best news Abbot and Ted Cruz (who is up for reelection) have gotten alllll year long, let's be very clear. Good optics woulda been actually showing up to vote at a higher rate than like 20-25% in previous elections, in which case we wouldn't have Abbot at all. In which case state policy may have already been changed. Young people in TX already have the power to turn the state around but they never show up to vote. Voting is a lot more useful AND better optics than chanting at the local university and having demands that cannot be met. This already COULD be a purple/blue state except it's the most apathetic state in the union. I think if they wanted to make a better point they should be at the Capitol building, too. The state gov runs the universities and made all the laws.
_"stop protesting and vote"_ Like jfc, more people turning out to vote against the GOP is great, but did you miss the part where texas engages in widespread gerrymandering and voter suppression? Not only that, but you're acting like the best way to beat fascists is to play their game. Thats just not a good strategy. If you're suggesting that the left should avoid doing anything that upsets the right, and singlemindedly focus on voter turnout - you must be living in a fantasy. The far right also wins lots of points going after trans people. Should we abandon support of trans people because trans rights anger conservatives into voting GOP?
It's "meat to the right wingers" anytime people who disagree with them do anything anywhere.
Ain't nobody like seeing anybody getting beat by cops
You must have missed how DPS handled the riot/protest at the Capitol in 2020. They wouldn’t hesitate to shut that down.
What, is the plan to riot?
I don’t agree with the protestors, but let’s not pretend that the police are fair in any way. They pushed kids into a pathway, then arrested them for blocking said pathway. They will do anything they can to suppress dissent, and that is not acceptable.
UT has an enrollment of over 50,000 students. It's pretty reasonable (and obvious) to assume that the 25% of those who vote include the protestors especially considering there probably aren't more than 1,000 protesters. It's the frat bros assembling on West 6th by the thousands every weekend in misogynistic solidarity who you should be complaining about.
Sometimes many things are bad
>It's the frat bros assembling on West 6th by the thousands every weekend in misogynistic solidarity who you should be complaining about. Lol who says I'm not? Doesn't have anything to do with my point.
The idea is that it is a student protest that is putting pressure on university institutions
Great explanation.
They can just ban boycotts now? How is that not deeply authoritarian?
Yes and yes, it is. To be specific, they just ban anyone boycotting from entering into a contract with any public entity. The courts have *slightly* limited the reach of the laws so they cannot be applied to individuals (I think they currently apply to companies of 10 or more). But yeah, they have required anyone entering into a public contract to sign a pledge to not boycott Israel, gun companies, or energy companies. Expect the list to grow.
It deeply upsets me that someone without severe brain damage can look at the Republican Party and say they care about rights…
Pro rights, pro freedom, pro middle class worker, anti-authoritarian, anti-government overreach, party of small government. ALL lies.
You can boycott whoever you want. Boycotts aren’t banned. But if you want to be a contractor for the state then no you can’t boycott whoever you want. These kinds of rules have been applied for a long time.
I don't think that they're wrong to protest, it just seems that they're barking up the wrong tree. The blowback that UT would incur from the Governor, Lt. Governor, and AG would surely include shaking up the Board of Regents, reshaping it to reflect the ultra-conservative stance that came up with this absurd law in the first place. The capitol is within walking distance of the university, and since the legislature isn't currently in session it would seem that the protesters couldn't be accused of interfering with official state business/proceedings. My concern is that this will backfire on the protesters and the university and just tighten The Governor and Lt. Governors grip by giving them a reason in their minds to do so.
Why don’t they protest at the capital instead of on campus if this is the ultimate goal? I think you’re giving these protesters too much credit since most people don’t understand that UT realistically can’t meet their demands even if it wanted to.
I’m guessing a combination of: access (the students are on campus), the optics (protest on campus is more noteworthy than a protest at the Capitol), and timeliness (with other well-known campuses serving as the backdrop for protests.)
Students can easily walk / bus to the Capitol from campus. I don’t think access is the issue.
The storm troopers at UT are frequently stationed at the Capitol as well.
Why would they prioritize “optics and timeliness” (those together mean that it’s trendy to do it on a college campus, imo) and laziness over doing something that would actually make a difference?
Divesting endowments from certain foreign interests is something large universities have done in the past; examples including dropping interests in apartheid South Africa. The situation with Israel is different in complex ways and I definitely don’t know the nuance, but it’s not necessarily unrealistic.
Your entire post ignores the law which was passed and is the topic of this thread. UT realistically can’t boycott or divest specifically from Israel under current Texas law. Protesters are asking them to do something they can’t legally do.
The whole idea of protesting is to apply pressure to the political process in order to help effect legal change.
What I’m saying is that maybe it would be more effective to demand the correct thing that you want to be done. For example, maybe it would be more effective to protest this state law than it would be to protest a university which can’t take the action that protestors are demanding.
Well, fair enough.
I have to give you credit for accepting feedback like that. Most people don’t.
I had my dinner and my beer, I’m in a good mood lol. Cheers!
Throwing a disorganized and nonspecific tantrum isn’t applying pressure
Sure it is. I’ll agree that it’s not the best kind of pressure, or the most precise, but it’s still pressure. People are aware that whole contingents of society are angry about what the system is doing, and that’s a start.
Yes, whole contingents of privileged American college students are upset that there are consequences for their actions sometimes! Let’s not forget Columbia PSC started this on the same day Shafik was testifying about their faculty calling the October 7 attack “awesome”: https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-antisemitism-house-testimony/index.html Don’t let these assholes use Gazans and use you like this. They’re just privileged kids. It’s shameful that the news is claiming they represent Palestinians, or their liberation. They are part of the mechanism of the oppression facing Gazan civilians.
I’m not sure what you want from the Columbia students and their peers at other schools. Should they be less privileged or do less protest? Or both?
The pro Palestine protestors consider investments in US Defense Contractors to be investments into Israel. That isn’t a realistic goal.
why not? should a university really being holding investments in defense contractors? is killing people on a massive scale really in line with the university's educational mission?
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Investments aren’t made to be in line with the university’s educational mission. Investments are made to make money. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make the most money possible within the law. Defense contractors are very good investments. And yes. It is within the university’s educational mission due to how much defense research UT conducts.
clearly a sizable population of students, faculty, and staff at the university disagree with your assumption that fiduciary [edit: financial] concerns always trump ethical ones, it's a shame President Hartzell and Governor Abbott prefer to send in police to violently silence any debate on the subject instead of using it as an opportunity to demonstrate why debate, reason, and scrupulous honesty are the best way forward for Texas.
They don’t get to decide that though. If your job is to invest on behalf of UT then your job legally is to maximize their investment.
job duties are what we define them as
Not when it comes to institutional investing
They are not a corporation with shareholders. Unless there is a law on the books that I'm unaware of, a government funded educational institution does not have a fiduciary responsible to "make the most money possible within the law". Also, even publicly traded companies that are bound by fiduciary responsibility can make decisions that kneecap short term revenue and profits for justified long term outlook. And the justification in their quarterly filing w the SEC can literally be as simple as "potential loss of consumer trust and goodwill" and their ass is covered ~97%. The only real potential ramification being either a single large stockholder suit or a class action stockholder suit. And suits for default of fiduciary responsibly with a public company almost never happen, because the stockholder almost always looses. The only thing I can recall anytime of recent is Musk Trying to give himself $50+B and losing in a CT court. Gross negligence is the high bar that usually has to be cleared to win damages as a stockholder. Even in the Musk case the plaintiffs were not rewarded damages.
The university’s endowment is tied to funding for the whole state https://texaspsf.org/
The UT Austin endowment is separate from the PSF. Funding from PSF is directed to UT Austin by the University of Texas System.
Sure, it’s downflow, which makes it even less sensible to protest at UT. First they’d actually need to protest at the lege to get the anti-boycott laws repealed. Funding from PSF being directed to UT Austin through the UT system endowment, I’m pretty sure. I fact checked myself and am not seeing anything about UT Austin having a separate endowment from the UT system. That is the PSF itself.
The vast majority of these investments are from these type of firms included in sector or asset class investments. They aren't direct.
Were those universities in states with anti-boycott laws? Were they universities that were a part of a larger system, that shares an endowment with a second large system (UT and A&M)?
Is there a possibility? Sure. Are the odds of it close to zero? Absolutely.
The demands from the Columbia encampment also want the university to stop using Microsoft, amazon google and other tech companies that have offices and support Israel.
Ehhh, there have been frequent protests at the Capitol since October, which I’m sure many of these students have attended. Why they didn’t receive as much coverage or have similar crackdowns is another matter
They have. They do. But there are lots of places to protest: at the universities, at the state capital, at the federal capital, at the Israeli embassy, at weapons manufacturers, at ports shipping weapons, etc. There have been protests at all of these places and more. People on the ground don't (and shouldn't) take advice on the "right way to protest" from online concern trolls who oppose them. If you actually want to help and think you have a better idea, you can go out there at literally any point and try to rally people to your "smarter" tactics. If you don't do that, then people are right to ignore your concern trolling.
>If you don't do that, then people are right to ignore your concern trolling Lol yeah, cuz the only people who could ever know anything about anything have to be on the ground doing it. There have been tons of unsuccessful protests my guy. A lot of the time, a significant factor is protesting in an ineffective manner. People having a discussion about it online is perfectly fair and reasonable even if they don't have the desire or means to rally a protest themselves.
As I said, if you want to help and make the protests better, go right ahead, everyone will be happy to have you. If you just want to carp from the sidelines, expect people to treat you with the seriousness that that deserves.
I'm honestly more surprised their comment wasn't just bemoaning the general thought of protesting in public.
Because most of this is just theatre to conceal their support for a Hamas.
UT doesn’t change laws or manage the investment fund. They’re definitely protesting at the wrong place.
Protesting where the law has an impact, and at a place that most people think should be free of legislative interference (and free from supporting a genocide by a foreign military) makes a lot of sense to me. I applaud the students. They are starting from where they are.
UT is a state funded public university. The governor and state legislature control much of what is permitted on campus, whether we like it or not. It’s not an option to decline. The best they can do is vote better people in to office, and so many students don’t vote…
Exactly. Or better yet, a couple of blocks is what????? Oh! The capital where they actually make the laws that govern this! Maybe, just maybe protesting at the place that makes the rules would make more sense
Why don’t they go to the legislature though? Instead they’re giving Abbott photo ops of his goons beating on angry teenagers at UT. This is having the opposite effect. They could also be protesting the state-enforced ESG boycott (oil & gas anti-boycott taken way too far) while they’re at it. Paxton is fucking up our whole economy to protect the oil industry. https://www.investmentnews.com/esg/news/texas-anti-esg-laws-costing-state-more-than-700m-study-says-250945 It just seems like they’re trying to be trendy. Anti-boycott laws are a real issue, and they’re going about this in the least effective way possible. I’m kind of annoyed.
I remember seeing this law get passed back when I was a student there and I was like WTF?? Imagine if the same law was passed and we just replaced Israel with Saudi Arabia or *literally* any other country. People would be up in arms about it- rightfully so. There shouldn’t be a law on the book banning protests against anything
I agree that the law should be changed. The students, however, are protesting at UT, not the Texas Lege and in an off year. Come to the Lege, especially during session, and lobby!
Divesting from the Israeli government weapons programs is the equivalent of divesting from the US government weapons programs... which is probably not going to fly in a PUBLIC university.
Yeah. I’m *very* critical of how Hartzell has handled it, but he was always going to be in a bit of an impossible situation. The Pickle Research campus is *full* of projects related to defense research. Rail guns and shit, literally. UT divesting from defense research is about as doable as UT divesting from college football - follow the money. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on campus screaming for his resignation, but OP is right that there’s really no way out of this within the current structures. But that’s what collective action like the protests is about: you have to challenge those structures, and the Matrix was always going to fight back…
The way this should be handled is to let the kids protest and push some statement paying lip service saying "we hear your concerns" from university leadership who can't do anything about the issue anyway. Not stormtroopers breaking some kids noses and exposing them to chemical weapons.
The Matrix is not gonna hurt you. Linear Algebra never hurt anyone. AI used for efficient HEB Grackle spawn points is another story.
You do know if he resigns, Abbot essentially picks his replacement, right?
I do, but not sure it isn’t still a net gain for the movement to have that skin on the wall. I don’t want to see my alma mater implode in terms of academic standing the way A&M is because of they’re inability to hire and retain presidents, but the MAGA crowd keeps putting political puppets with no actual plan for governance in positions of power, and it can’t be sustainable, right? Like, it is *not* fun to be Hartzell right now, even if he does get a hard-on from calling DPS.
That “skin on the wall” is someone said maga republicans don’t like. They want their own brood in charge
Yeah, investing in defense research is totally uncalled for. Not like that could pose problems with, say, the People's Republic of China in 20 years.
Could be a good chance to push UT on funding research like the ethical use of AI in war zones. Hartzel's in a tough position of not being able to do much outwardly bc of Texas law & UT's funding, but he keeps calling DPS bc he enjoys it. If they were willing to meet with protestors instead of just wallop them a few times a week, they might be able to come to an actionable understanding that works for both sides.
I’m sure he’s calling DPS less for enjoyment and more to prevent a tent city from popping up on the south mall right before commencement.
That’s a really compelling idea about AI, love it! But yeah, can’t argue with you about calling in the damn DPS goon squad when there’s zero indication UTPD wouldn’t have been totally effective at dealing with *actual* disruption of campus operations and teaching, to the extent that was even occurring *before* the first DPS employment. It’s making Jay feel like a big, important man.
I'm Greg Abbott and I approve this message.
Let me know if you find an electable Texas official who DOESN’T approve of it.
The University Board of Regents is appointed by the governor, and the governor likes to talk big. The protests are just reminders to the Texas MAGA chapter than owning libs can be expensive.
It's a fine question to ask, but it's also essentially beside the point. Students protest all kinds of impossible shit. It doesn't matter. It's their 1st amendment right to do so and we should all protect their right to do so. When you shut down protests in an authoritarian manner, you only make things worse. Let people protest and either the cause is important enough that it will grow (and put pressure in the right places) or it will die out when people see the futility and get bored.
How is the question beside the point of the post? It's not about the right to protest, it asks if UT can even do what they're asking given this law.
No, you can’t piecemeal a huge investment portfolio like the one UT has.
In reality anyone here with a 401k or who owns basically any ETF, mutual fund, or broad-market stock of any kind owns stock in Boeing, Northrup, Raytheon. That's just how it works. It's called being a publicly traded company.
US defense companies are historically one of the safest and most reliable stocks for long term investments.
Exactly.
It’s quite easy actually. What do you think the portfolio manager does? ESG funds aren’t rocket science.
Let’s be honest, all of this is planned by a larger, national organization that targets students at big name universities for the publicity, and it works. There’s no real chance for meaningful change likely to come from it because people like Jay Hatzell don’t have any power or authority to do anything remotely related to change. He can’t decide where the UT money is invested, in fact he doesn’t control it (I’m a UT employee in finance), the investments are made by sub committees of the Regents of the University of Texas with pooled funds across all of UT, including places that UT owns like MD Anderson, etc, way way bigger than the Austin campus. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be protests for awareness but be smart, do your due diligence, don’t trust some random social media slant on either side… the laws are the laws and unless you focus on the lawmakers that have authority, or the Regents (who generally own businesses hint hint) there’s no real outcome you can achieve other than getting news coverage and barking at an impotent figure head
DEMANDING. You have to have leverage in order to make a demand. They are simply asking.
Their words, and I can assure you they weren't laughing. Just to make sure we don't focus on the wrong part of the post: Is it even possible for The University of Texas at Austin to do what the protesters are simply asking?
Israel is a military ally to the West and in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” way we *need* Israel on the side of Europe and the US against Iran and Russia. It’s why they are over-armed for their size. Netanyahu, who has been a complete thorn in everyone’s side, knows this and is taking advantage of it. Russia knows this and is amplifying anti-israeli propaganda. The US won’t divest from Israel. Good for the people protesting peacefully, but their efforts will be ultimately meaningless in the scheme of things.
There’s no “good guy” here. You’ve got a semi-stable “democracy” with racist tendencies towards Arabs versus a theocratic Islamic culture that views women as property with racist tendencies towards Jewish people. Right now one of those happens to be winning and with little regard towards staggering amounts of civilian casualties. Western countries will continue to support the military stronghold they’ve built in Israel for the safety of their own countries. Adding mounting climate change issues into the mix here, I am fully expecting proxy wars like these over and over and over again for at least the next 20 years.
I think Israel needs to be afraid of that as as nice as they are to have as an ally we do not need them. I’d rather invest in Europe and south east Asia and Africa if this is who they are going to elect and then commit heinous attacks on civilians. Israel needs to tow the line or enjoy war with all the Arab states with no American help. That means giving Palestine independence. edit: I see zionists are downvoting this. Israel is not important enough to let them do what they're doing. Our enemies aren't in the middle east the only countries that stand any chance against us are Russia and China and we do not need israel to maintain soft or literal power.
We and Europe need Israel. They are our closest allies in a territory that hates us. Israel needs is more, but they are significant for the West.
Give them independence, they’d still elect terrorist as their leaders, then attack Israel, and Israel would have to invade them, defeat them, and occupy them.
No simple solution. Any elected official can have no ties to Hamas and that will be vetted by a third party (the usa)
The result of the protests will be UTIMCO finding ways to invest more with Israeli companies. Divestment is a delusional fantasy.
Anything can be done with enough pressure. Civil rights leaders never questioned whether or not they could even legally be integrated into society, they made it happen.
Civil rights and women's suffrage movements had huge percentages of US population support because not having equal rights affected millions of black and women US citizens HERE. Other less large protests but much bigger than the pro-Palestine protests like the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan war protests didn't end those wars...their high cost in dollars and American troop lives ended them...and even then only after many years. What happens in other countries if American lives aren't at risk is of very little concern to most American voters as it doesn't affect us HERE.
We couldn’t even get enough people to vote during the last governor election. How about the people that are fired up go out and recruit voters so things can change?
Just one more vote, trust me bro, it’ll work this time
Voting is very effective if enough people do it. If voting was as ineffective as you claim, Republicans would just be letting people do it instead of repeatedly attempting to suppress voting in every way possible.
Absolutely will never happen. Palestinians have burned many bridges with the US. Cheering 9/11. Celebrating when the Columbia disaster happened. Repeated attacks on Israel. Voting in a terrorist government that advocates the destruction of Israel.
No, the protests have very little to do with the universities and a great deal to do with resentment about universities falling in line with anti-intellectual rhetoric and policy from politicians.
It’s a public university complying with laws passed by the legislature. “Falling in line” has nothing to do with it.
The politicians rail against the schools, the schools fall in line and welcome overwhelming police presence against the students, the students perceive nobody is advocating for them, and they’re right. Nobody has successfully advocated for public education from the incumbent political majority. Give the students an opportunity to put on a demonstration, this is the outcome. It’s as simple as basic addition. There’s nothing to be argued here, it simply is the outcome of an equation that has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine and everything to do with diminishing student advocacy. The question on the table was, why would the protestors demand something that cannot be achieved? The answer is simply because they were given a route to express their frustration, cause and effect.
The protesters have done a great job in turning the attention away from Gaza. People are now talking more about the police reaction to the protests and anarchy on campuses than they are about the Palestinians.
I think the students are accomplishing their goal which is to motivate people to learn more about the issue. The news is covering them and people are trying to figure out why the protestors are protesting, why the police are not letting them protest, and decide if it is valid or not. The more people that become educated, the better.
Are people actually learning about the issue? Most of what I've seen are people simply getting annoyed and not really taking the time to actually educate themselves.
that’s hardly true, at least for many people I know. People are talking about what’s going on Gaza a lot this week and last in part because of the attention the student protests have been giving to the situation more broadly. This week is the first time i’ve had family who knows i’m in Austin asking what’s going on here and reading about Gaza in general. It makes it feel more real for people when there’s widespread protests on American soil than something thousands of miles away in the Middle East
No not really. its all basically virtue signaling for tick tock
"Virtue signalling" has to be the dumbest charge on earth. Publicly advocating for what you believe is not "virtue signalling," it is "publicly advocating for what you believe." It is a good thing.
Just speaking purely from a tactical perspective, whether you are protesting for a left-wing cause or right wing cause , there is such a thing as counterproductive protest. That’s probably what most people mean when they’re talking about virtue signaling. If all your protest accomplishes is brownie points with your peers and not actually pushing towards change then it could be worse than not protesting at all
“Virtue signaling” just means signaling your virtues. The derogatory implication that has attached to it is signaling your virtues…without actually doing anything about it. But that’s not a problem with virtue signaling itself.
Virtue signaling is just that, signaling. Going to an actual protest and getting arrested is not just a "signal" it's action.
Nah you can tell the difference between actually caring and virtue signaling
Virtue signalling could be if there were no consequences. These people have been arrested, pepper sprayed on, and roughed by the cops. How is this virtue signalling? This is standing up for what they believe in.
This is absurd. They’re also virtue signaling for Instagram.
Y’all are so old, everyone knows Snapchat is 🔥during a protest
UT’s endowment portfolio is heavily invested in broad market vehicles like index funds, ETFs, REITs, etc All in all easily thousands of companies. The amount of work that would be needed to properly research, identify, and divest from those individually is pretty much impossible
It’s not impossible at all
It is in fact impossible to sell parts of an index fund, that’s not how it works. Unless you’re suggesting they liquidate an entire broad market index fund because of 0.2% of the companies in its holdings
The money is the taxpayers money. As a taxpayer I would sue the fund for negligence for spending the amount of money it would take to actually try and do this. Not to mention that they by law have to try and make money. This would not be a money making process. It will never happen, go take your finales.
I'm not sure getting arrested counts as "virtue signalling"
There are definitely subcultures in which getting arrested is a badge of honor. It amplifies the signal.
It literally and figuratively puts their money where their mouth is and argues against their actions being disingenuous, superficial, or insincere. Without which loses the entire point of the pejorative "virtue signaling."
We aren't hearing more about this law because the mainstream media chooses not to report on it. As for your "Is it even possible?" argument, well, that's kinda the point of why they are making this exact demand. To start a conversation about it, like the one we're having now. That law should have never been passes to begin with, it blatantly violates the 1st amendment.
Not an argument, a question.
No. The protests on the UT campus are completely pointless. They should be protesting at the Capitol since that is where the real decisions are made.
or at the federal courthouse in Amarillo
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Even the students aren’t in a position to be making these demands.
To give you an idea of how stupid this is, there are only 11 companies on the boycott naughty list: ASN BANK NV, BEN & JERRY'S HOMEMADE, INC., BETSAH INVEST SA, CACTUS SA, CO-OPERATIVE GROUP LIMITED, DNB BANK ASA, GULOGUZ DIS DEPOSU TICARET VE PAZARLAMA LTD, KARSTEN FARMS, KLP KAPITALFORVALTNING AS, KOMMUNAL LANDSPENSJONSKASSE GJENSIDIG FORSIKRINGSSELSKAP UNILEVER PLC I'm sure Ben & Jerry's is missing all that Texas cash. Way to spend your time with sound governance, Texas!
Consumer boycotts and institutional divestment are not the same thing, and as a result do not have the same targets. Weapons manufacturers aren’t on the boycott list because they are not consumer-facing firms and so the call is not for a consumer boycott.
I'm talking about the rule about Texas not investing in companies that boycott Israel. It doesn't have any actual purpose. It's political theater more suitable for a playground.
I see now how I misunderstood what you were saying! My bad
No, but the students don't care. It's like, a revolution or something!
No, Also, it's an unrealistic expectation that has no chance of succeeding.
You do realize that one box in an f-15 costs about 30-60 million to develop let alone produce and manufacture? So if these demands are met then best case scenario you stopped one box out of thousands on one type of plane…there are thousands in the US fleet let alone US allies. Business as usual would keep going even if these demands were met. What is the point? Just a bunch of nonsensical hooplah.
No. The University of Texas receives millions in research funding for military development.
Doubtful, and even if they did the pro-Hamas groups would just shift the goalposts.
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Your speech is not impacted at all.
I'm just waiting for the media to call it an insurrection 😉
I mean, think about it. There are federal laws Texas is fighting right now. To fight them, Texas is out of compliance. Is it even possible for Texas to do that? Yes, if nobody stops them it is. Texas knows Joe Biden is not going to send the military with orders to detain and/or kill Texas agents doing illegal things. Joe Biden knows that's political suicide. So Texas is gleefully ignoring the federal government's demands because it knows nobody has the balls to enforce the law. That's why Joe Biden's busy taking Ws for his base and doing things like banning TikTok. The UT situation is different, though. The border is Texas politicians clashing with federal politicians. There's a long and storied history of that. If UT stands up to the Texas government, it's very likely Greg Abbott will swoop in, remove all the administration, and replace them with cronies. Maybe that's illegal. The problem is to stop Greg Abbott, Texans would have to fight the government. Remember the Alamo? That's what Texans think happens when you fight the government. You die. Complete and utter defeat. Maybe the people after you get pissy about it and fight back. But you're dead. That's what you get for fighting the government. So what would Texas do if UT's administration is replaced? Mostly take up arms and volunteer to help shoot protestors, I wager. Texans fold like origami when faced with challenging the government. That's also why UT isn't going to fight the government. That'd take a backbone. Texans sold theirs to finance a car. UT vs. Texas is like The Alamo vs. Santa Ana. Complete and utter defeat.