Occupy Beinecke Holds Teach-ins, Displays Artwork

by Nora Moses, Ariela Lopez, & Yolanda Wang, Yale Daily News, April 17, 2024

On the second day of the organizers’ sit-in on Beinecke Plaza, students and faculty members hosted over 12 hours of events to call attention to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza … and for the University to divest from military weapons manufacturing. …

The organizers began arriving just before 8 a.m., alongside pro-Palestine hunger strikers gathered in a tent and an anti-war art installation on Beinecke Plaza. The art installation featured a roughly 10-foot-long model of a fighter jet with messages such as “COMPLACENCY = COMPLICITY” written on its surface. …

According to Yale’s SEC filings, the University holds over 6,400 shares — worth $680,207 — of iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, a Blackrock-managed exchange-traded fund. The ETF invests in several weapons manufacturers that sell weapons to Israel, including 0.27 percent of holdings in Raytheon, 0.20 percent in Boeing and 0.19 percent in Lockheed Martin — just under $4,000 across the three companies. Yale, however, publicly dis-closes just 1 percent of its endowment investments, so it remains unclear exactly to what extent the University invests in weapons manufacturers. …

[T]he coalition of protesters was not organized by any single student organization. Instead, the coalition includes organizers who also plan actions from Yalies4Palestine, Yale Graduate Students for Palestine, the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition and Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven.

[Article can be read in its entirety at https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/04/17/occupy-beinecke-holds-teach-ins-displays-artwork]