On May 21st, Stephen T. Boswell, Chairman of the Board of Trustees and President Nariman
Farvardin responded to the Stevens Divest from War Initiative’s Letter from the Student Body
which passed with overwhelming support in early May. The recommendations to divest from
companies complicit in war crimes and human rights violations were rejected for four reasons, of
which I will respond to each:
Point 1) “On April 21, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it would
revoke funding to any university engaged in boycotting Israeli companies. Each time
Stevens accepts a grant from NIH, it must certify that it is not participating in a
‘discriminatory prohibited boycott.’ Clearly, adopting the recommendations of the LSB
could put the university at risk of losing millions of dollars of research funding.”
Interestingly, after weeks of debate in the student body, the decision was made to have no
mention of Israel or any specific country or corporation, in the LSB. From this we can assume
that our institution’s endowment is for a fact invested in Israeli companies, and that the Board of
Trustees also fully and formally acknowledges that these companies are in violation of the LSB’s
Criteria for Divestment in some way (against genocide, against war crimes, against crimes
against humanity, to name a few examples). Since our endowment is not publicly available, this
information has never been confirmed until now.
Point 3) “Adding the supplemental screening and due diligence proposed in the LSB
would create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and have the potential to negatively
affect the long-term returns of endowment funds, therefore reducing the revenue
available to support the university’s operations and strategic priorities, including financial
aid to undergraduate students from low-income families.”
It is true that the profits from our endowment are used to support our student’s tuition, the
library, and many other services essential to Stevens. This is acknowledged in the LSB in section
4.3, which includes a detailed introduction to the long-term sustainability of ethical investing as a
financially viable strategy. Furthermore, if our research and tuition is paid with negligence to the
global community – a genocidal negligence at worst – we should not take them. I personally
received scholarships to attend Stevens which made my education here possible. If I had known
that money was steeped in blood, I would not have attended; and I will encourage all prospecting
Stevens students to stay away from a university complicit in war crimes and crimes against
humanity. As stated in the LSB, “Until divestment, Stevens’ values are empty words, touted to
lifeless bodies and caustic destruction.”
I paired my response to the following two points because both are related to the complexities of
divestment.
Point 2) “Our endowment is primarily invested in commingled funds and exchange
traded funds (ETFs) rather than individual securities, in partnership with our outsourced
Chief Investment Officer, Goldman Sachs. This structure, while efficient for achieving
our financial objectives, presents complexities when considering targeted divestment (or
investment) in today’s interconnected global market.”
Point 4) “Furthermore, although the LSB clearly differentiates between investments and
other types of relationships with organizations which some may deem to be practicing
unethical behavior, university partnerships are multifaceted, and discontinuing one type
of relationship has the potential to negatively impact other types of relationships, such as
corporate-sponsored research, student co-operative education and internship assignments
and career placement. Therefore, a decision to divest from certain companies could
negatively impact our educational and research partnerships that provide direct benefits
to our students and faculty.”
I will reiterate the above point that these direct benefits are not worth anything if they are steeped
in blood. Let us look at the complexities of university relationships in the case of Lockheed
Martin. Lockheed Martin has played a key and direct role in conceiving and developing Stevens’
Department of Systems and Enterprises, to which Jack Irving, Senior VP and General Manager
at Lockheed Martin, praised as a “controllable curriculum that we could continuously customize
to meet the ever changing needs of our business… it was perfect” (Stevens). Corporate
connections are a great resource for a university of budding engineers, computer scientists, and
mathematicians. But a devoted relationship to a company with staggering accounts of human
rights violations should certainly raise alarms. For example, in 2023, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon
and General Dynamics, three of the five largest U.S. defense contractors, were sued in the US
federal court for supporting war crimes by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and UAE-led
coalition forces during the civil war in Yemen. Reports have linked Lockheed Martin weaponry
specifically to a horrifying instance on Oct. 8, 2016 – in Yemen’s capital. According to Military
Times, “Hundreds were gathered at the Great Hall of Sana’a City for the funeral of a tribal
leader, when a Raytheon and Lockheed-made GBU-12 Paveway II 500-pound laser-guided
bomb leveled the area, killing 140” (Military Times, Human Rights Watch). If we divest from
such an egregious company, and they consequently cancel co-op programs or internships… is
that really so bad? Why are we so afraid of improving our moral standards? Is it because several
Lockheed Martin executives have served on the Board of Advisors of the Stevens School of
Systems and Enterprises, including Jack Irving, Senior VP and General Manager? Innovate for
peace instead of weapons and war; this is the only way forward.
Allow me to tell a brief story from my freshman year at Stevens: When I first met my guitar
instructor, he asked me to show him what I could do. I had been playing guitar for close to four
years and thought I had at least a little knowledge on the topic. I started to play a complicated
chord progression, trying to impress him – I barely played the first note before he interrupted me:
“Enough! Complete beginner.” I sat up straight and listened. He told me it would be necessary to
dump out everything that I knew (or thought I knew) in order to learn the ins and outs of the
guitar methodically. He shook me upside down with his powerful lectures, and taught me to
reorder all my knowledge into the right places. Starting from scratch, I would be fit to grow in
the most efficient way. Only in unlearning all I had known could I possibly be receptive to his
teachings. I wrote this article to make a case for divestment at Stevens, not as a moral and
ethical obligation, but as a method for unlearning everything in order to put it all back in the
right places. The Stevens Divest from War Initiative is not naively advocating for a simple
selling-off of our investments, nor will it be content with gestural changes to policy with no real
impact. The SDFWI is advocating for a complete upheaval of the systematic processes that
enable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, such as the ongoing genocide in
Palestine – that have enabled our ability to remain ignorant, and allow institutional complexities
to override our moral standards.
To future Stevens students, activists, organizers, current administrators, Chairman Boswell,
President Farvardin, and the Board of Trustees, faculty, staff, the entire Stevens community: Be
bold! Envision a future of peace on Earth! It is about time we become a community and not a
corporation – to actually know each other and know how our system operates, to be an essential
piece of the tapestry of a vibrant network, and not a cog in a machine designed to churn out
employees for the Department of Defense. We must become real students and stake our interests
in the actual advancement of ourselves, each other, and the world. Peace on Earth is possible –
and it starts with our own community. When we are grounded in mutual support for each other,
we can then extend a helping hand to create a global community, a real system of codependence
and prosperity, not based on competitive factors, grades, and hierarchical limitations, but free to
expand and grow in unconditional love.
With the growing student liberation movement, we are being quite rudely awakened from some
lucrative dream of material wealth which will never be satisfied. Pinch yourself now! Wake up
now! This old dream-idea is fading with each new generation. Material wealth and its consort
ignorance will no longer sustain or satiate people’s appetite for a satisfying existence. I want us
to divest – not as a simple gesture, not even out of a feeling of moral responsibility – but as a
commitment to rejecting the ideals of the modern economic machines we call universities. We
must divest from ignorance, the corporatization of our lives, the numerical itemization of human
beings that allows us to be molded, exploited, and manipulated to the needs of employers and
which allows real-life human beings to be slaughtered in our name.
The Palestinians starving in Gaza are us. We are starving in Gaza. I will reiterate: We are
starving in Gaza. Please, let us take care of ourselves! Banish from your mind forever the
delusive concept of an us and them! An incredible, vibrant future lies in this simple
acknowledgment. Let us take care of each other, no matter the cost. Obviously, divestment is an
incredible financial complexity, and the truth is that making war is a great way to get rich. But
this desire must be overcome. I promise, by even trying to do this, we won’t lose a thing.
It starts with acknowledging the fact that we are complete beginners. Let us shake out the old
idea, empty our minds of wrong-doing! Only then can we begin to put the pieces back together.
End the blockade, allow aid into Gaza, free Palestine, and the Congo, and Sudan, and
somewhere along the way, may we free ourselves.
“Here, on this thin rind of spanning time, I laugh at myself and this scrap of identity scraped from the thinnest soil of recent history / The few flashing decades of a hand-me-down homemade myth / A few more boxes of disintegrating poetry books from a barely cohesive, mouse-eaten lineage…” (“Demolition,” Mount Eerie)
