As Jews for Ceasefire, we are voting yes on the Books, Not Bombs referendum, and we urge all Yale students to do the same. Guided by our Jewish values, we call upon Yale to disclose and divest from its investments in military weapons and manufacturers and to invest in Palestinian scholars.

The first question on the referendum asks if Yale should disclose its investments in military weapons manufacturers and suppliers, including those arming Israel. Jews for Ceasefire says yes.

Less than 0.006 percent of Yale’s investments are publicly traceable. From this fraction alone, Yale has clear ties to weapons manufacturers and suppliers facilitating the war crimes in Gaza, which experts, including the United Nations, have said are “consistent with genocide.” As students, we do not know the full extent of Yale’s financial involvement in mass death. Yale claims a commitment to light and truth, but in terms of the institution’s finances, we are left in the dark.

In 2021, Yale publicly disclosed an aggregate estimate of its investments in the fossil fuel industry. There is no evidence that disclosure had a negative effect on the endowment’s rate of return. Instead, the transparency created by this disclosure allowed Yale’s students and faculty to enter a necessary conversation about Yale’s responsibilities to the world — a conversation from which students are currently excluded.

To those worried about the profit margins of Yale Corporation’s $41.4 billion endowment, we ask: how many dollars is a human life worth? Jewish teaching tells us to treat the destruction of a soul as the destruction of an entire world. How many worlds have Yale-funded weapons destroyed? We call upon our fellow students to vote yes, demanding that the Yale Trustees value people above profit and be transparent with the student body about their decisions — especially when those decisions are too costly to be measured in dollars.

The second question on the referendum asks if Yale should divest from military weapons manufacturers and suppliers, including those arming Israel. We say yes.

Last spring, Yale refused to divest, driven by the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility’s decision that military weapons manufacturing does not constitute “grave social injury.” We disagree: over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 — over 17,000 of whom were children. Many thousands more are estimated to have been indirectly killed during the siege. Endowment Justice Coalition research into Yale’s tax filings shows that the University hands billions of its wealth to asset managers — including Farallon Capital, JLL Partners and Insight Partners — which are heavily tied to weapons manufacturers enabling Israel’s war crimes. And divestment is not unprecedented. In 2006, Yale divested from companies financing arms purchases by the Sudanese government in their perpetration of the Darfur genocide.

While the full extent of Yale’s investments remains undisclosed, any amount of money invested in war profiteering fundamentally contradicts the mission of a university. Though weapons are used in situations beyond the Israeli bombardment on Gaza, it is nevertheless intolerable that Yale’s endowment is used to produce weapons that contribute to mass death. As a university purporting to be a leader in thought and scholarship, Yale’s resources should be committed to books, not bombs. 

The third question of the referendum asks if Yale should invest in Palestinian students and scholars. We say yes.

Many of us were raised by families that saw intellectual curiosity and learning in community as quintessential Jewish values. But there are no universities left standing in Gaza. Military bombardment has targeted universities, amounting to scholasticide.

Yale, with its precedent for supporting scholars at risk, has the resources to aid Palestinian scholars and support Palestinian universities. In doing so, Yale can save lives and aid in the preservation of history and culture. As we benefit from Yale’s resources, we imagine a world in which safe education is available to all, in Palestine and around the world.

As Jews for Ceasefire, we stand against this scholasticide, these human rights violations and Yale’s financial involvement in both tragedies — not in spite of our Judaism, but because of it. The mass death in Gaza contradicts the sacredness of human life central to Judaism and humanity. We are reminded of the Jewish teaching “tzedek, tzedek tirdof” — “justice, justice thou shalt pursue” — that urges us, as we now urge Yale’s undergraduate community, to pursue justice for not only ourselves, but for the people of Palestine.

We imagine a world to come and urge Yale students to cast their vote to help shape it. We have the opportunity to vote for a world in which our educational institution does not contribute to, or profit from, mass death. We imagine a world in which Yale embraces transparency and utilizes its social power and resources to combat scholasticide. We urge our fellow students to vote yes on the Books, Not Bombs referendum.

ZOE KANTER is a sophomore in Saybrook majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. She can be reached at zoe.kanter@yale.edu. 

TESSA STEWART is a sophomore in Pauli Murray majoring in Psychology. She can be reached at tessa.stewart@yale.edu.