Columbia University has decided to divest from private prisons. ThinkProgress:
The Columbia University Board of Trustees voted Monday to make the university the first in the nation to pull its investments from the private prison industry. The university will divest from two major for-profit prison companies and create a new policy to ban investment in companies that operate prisons. …
“We targeted the university’s investments in two private prison companies, but we hope that private prison divestment campaigns, with the abolitionist vision of a larger anti-prison movement, can help us start working towards divesting from the idea that prisons equal justice, which we believe to be fundamentally racist,” student organizer Dunni Oduyemi wrote in a statement.
HuffPo notes, however:
The school still holds shares in G4S, a British prison and security services company.
USA Today reprints part of an email from Columbia U:
“This action occurs within the larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum. We are proud that many Columbia faculty and students will continue their scholarly examination and civic engagement of the underlying social issues that have led to and result from mass incarceration.”
The Columbia Spectator reports on the views of some of the student organizers:
“All of the work was done by students and especially students of color on this campus,” [Dunni] Oduyemi, a former editor in chief of The Eye, said. “The narrative should really be one of students and the way that we have managed to take power in a small way that is representative of a larger movement.” …
“We’ve said over and over again that we don’t want any investment in racist and classist systems of incarceration and policing, and those are all things that are going on in Harlem,” she said.
“There’s no way for Columbia to fully divest from these systems of racist policing and incarceration. It’s founded in that and uses that violence to maintain its privilege, so there’s a lot of work to do.”
So far it seems the potential for corruption has not been the primary driving force, but rather concern about how subtle racism can result in harsher sentences for minorities. While it appears it’s effective – and that’s good – recognition of the inappropriateness from the get-go would possibly permit future better decisions.
