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Nine months ago in The Daily Princetonian, I described how the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community, which I chair, would take up a divestment and dissociation request related to the State of Israel.
I outlined our approach, promising it would include careful consideration of input from the broad University community, and cautioning that it might be a lengthy process.
That process has concluded, and the Committee has decided against forwarding a dissociation recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
Our findings are based on community input from June 2024 to January 2025. During that period, we received more than 2,000 emails and other correspondence, plus 2,300 more unique replies via an online form in response to our invitation for feedback. We offered in-person meetings and met with the dissociation petitioners as well as with a group of Princeton faculty.
A detailed summary of our work and analysis is posted on the Resources Committee website.
I want to use this opportunity to explain how the Committee arrived at its decision, and to anticipate and answer some questions members of our community may have.
First, a recap of how Princeton considers demands for divestment, which at our University is always contemplated as a question of “dissociation,” and extends beyond divestment to encompass many other financial relationships, including purchase agreements and some gifts.
Princeton has a strong presumption against dissociation. That’s because the taking of institutional stances on external controversies endangers the University’s role as a sponsor and enabler of free inquiry. The University does very rarely dissociate, but only when three demanding criteria established by the trustees are met:
There must be “considerable, thoughtful, and sustained campus interest” on the dissociation question, it must implicate a “central University value,” and a “consensus within the University community” in favor of dissociation must be plausible.
It is the Resources Committee’s job to assess whether those criteria are met, and to determine whether to make a recommendation to the trustees. Only the trustees can decide to dissociate.
Let’s take each criterion in turn.
With regard to the first, there does appear to be sustained campus interest in the question of whether to dissociate from Israel, as evidenced by the intensity of input we received and the persistence of interest over time.
As to the values criterion, this dissociation question does implicate central University values, such as ethical responsibility and academic freedom — but people on all sides of the question sincerely invoked these same values in the service of divergent and opposite positions.
This naturally leads to the third criterion: Without the possibility of consensus, there can be no divestment and dissociation at Princeton, and the feedback we received made it plain that our community is sharply and inexorably divided on this topic. Indeed, our process revealed that a lack of consensus is a defining quality of the Princeton conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since our Committee’s recommendation hinges on the question of consensus, I can anticipate several questions: How do we define “consensus”? By what method did we calculate consensus? Will we “show our work” and release the thousands of emails, messages, and petitions we received?
In my last column, I defined consensus as “widespread deliberative agreement.” The Resources Committee did not observe what a reasonable person would call “widespread agreement” at Princeton on the question of divestment from Israel. Nor was there widespread agreement within any of the major subgroups of the Princeton community: students, faculty, staff, or alumni.
How do we measure consensus? The trustee guidelines on dissociation don’t offer a distinct mechanism for determining consensus, and the Committee decided not to rely on counting methods, such as the outcomes of polls, the number of signatures on a petition, or the sheer volume of messages sent in an email campaign. That kind of data is not by itself indicative of deliberative consideration.
It was, however, plainly evident from the comments and materials submitted to our committee that there are multiple, divergent, and strongly held views in our community about the topics raised in the dissociation petition. The committee reached the same conclusion in 2014 in response to a similar dissociation request about Israel.
Will we release the emails we received or the notes we took at in-person meetings? While our report strives for maximum transparency, we offered confidentiality to the community to encourage input, and we must respect that promise.
I can tell you that we heard no argument for or against dissociation that would be unfamiliar to anyone following this debate in public forums. Those who wish to evaluate this question on its merits — a subjective exercise that is not the role of the Resources Committee — should have no problem finding the various arguments and judging for themselves.
I want to thank the Princeton community for its participation in this process, and for doing so with consideration and thoughtfulness. The Committee’s work was never disrupted by protest, nor was anyone who wanted to speak with us shouted down. That is a testament to the civility of the Princeton community and to the respect Princetonians have for one another, even when they disagree on the most contentious of topics.
John T. (Jay) Groves is the Hugh Stott Taylor Chair of Chemistry and chair of the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community.
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