Similar campaigns are ongoing at other institutions, including Cornell, Brown, U.C. Berkeley, and UCLA.
From article in Positive News.com:
Congratulations to Columbia University student activists in the group, Columbia Prison Divest, who successfully launched a campaign protesting their school's investment in private prisons. Columbia University will sell its roughly 220,000 shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well as its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the U.S.
Wilfred Chan
CNN
June 23, 2015
Jo Chiang
Columbia University has become the first college in the United States to divest from private prison companies, following a student activist campaign.
The decision means the Ivy League school -- with boasts a roughly $9 billion endowment -- will sell its roughly 220,000 shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the United states.
The campaign began in early 2014 when a small group of Columbia students discovered tuition money was being invested in the two firms, which run prisons and detention centers and militarized borders.
The group, called Columbia Prison Divest, launched protests and meetings with administrators where they argued it was wrong for the elite school to invest in a "racist, violent system."
"The private prison model is hinged on maximizing incarceration to generate profit -- they're incentivized by convicting, sentencing, and keeping people in prison for longer and longer times," Dunni Oduyemi, a 20-year-old organizer, told CNN.
"We don't think about how the privileges and resources students get access to are premised upon violence done to people by virtue of their race, class, or citizenship status."
In an emailed statement, a Columbia spokesperson said the university's trustees had decided to divest from private prison companies and would refrain from investing in such companies again.
"This action occurs within the larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum," the statement said. "The decision follows ... thoughtful analysis and deliberation by our faculty, students, and alumni."
The spokesperson would not confirm how much Columbia had invested in the two companies.
In 2007, Farallon, a company managing part of Yale University's endowment, also divested from CCA after a student campaign, though it did not rule out future investment in prison stock.
History of controversy
Oduyemi said activists targeted CCA for its "horrific" human rights record. A 2014
ACLU investigation found abuse and neglect in CCA-run prisons where guards used "extreme isolation arbitrarily and abusively," exposed prisoners to contaminated water, and delayed medical care of inmates, causing "needless suffering."
Student activists also targeted G4S, a British firm, which has
supplied a prison in the West Bank and checkpoints in Palestinian territories. Until last year, the firm also had a contract to provide
services at U.S. detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, according to the Financial Times. The firm still maintains
patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Continue reading here:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/us/co...prison-divest/
