U. Vermont Caves to Campus Protester Demands, Cancels Commencement Speaker for Not Supporting Gaza Ceasefire
“UVM’s first concession was agreeing to disclose all financial investments in the university’s $800 million endowment by the end of the week, but has yet to do so.”
Appeasing these lunatics is the worst thing a school could do. UVM messed up here.
The Burlington Free Press reports:
UVM cancels commencement speaker, one of the demands by pro-Palestinian protesters
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will not be speaking at this year’s commencement, the University of Vermont announced on Friday evening, six days after pro-Palestinian student protesters pitched tents on the campus green outside Andrew Harris Commons.
Thomas-Greenfield infuriated pro-Palestinian activists when she vetoed resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on three separate occasions. Her removal as commencement speaker is included in a list of five demands to the university from student protesters and the subject of a rally held during the second day of the encampment on Monday, April 29.
This the second demand UVM has agreed to meet since protesters erected the tents, following the lead of thousands of other college activists nationwide who have set up similar school encampments.
“After their years of hard work and commitment to success, they deserve a weekend of ceremony and celebration befitting their accomplishment,” said UVM President Suresh Garimella in an email about graduating students. “It is with regret that I share that our planned speaker, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, will not be joining us to deliver the Commencement address.”
UVM’s first concession was agreeing to disclose all financial investments in the university’s $800 million endowment by the end of the week, but has yet to do so. The protesters’ other three demands include cutting ties with weapon manufacturers, Israeli companies and all companies aiding the Israeli occupation of Palestine; agreeing to an academic boycott of Israeli institutions; and providing amnesty to all protesters. UVM protesters say that until UVM meets all their demands, the encampment will continue.
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Comments
proving again they actually want war
and the destruction of western values by any means necessary
The UVM agitators must be dastardly racists. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is black, and we are told that anything that affects Blacks negatively (like police, educational standards, standardized tests, etc) must be racist.
The majority of UVM students are out of state, woke females so what did everyone expect? That school has been far left of center for years and everyone knows it.
Any endowment is mostly in mutual investment funds or in commingled funds. I sat on too many non-profit boards to know that it would take months to sift through the individual share and debt holdings of even one specific fund to know whether that issuer had any significant operations or ties to one country or another. As a matter of common business practice, they do. But divesting in specific holdings? Good rotten luck with that! Nobody would be able to disentangle a mess like that.