MASSACHUSETTS – Pro-Palestinian protesters at Harvard University are clearing out their weeks-long encampment without achieving their primary demand: forcing the school to cut its financial ties to Israel.

It has become a pattern. Demonstrators at Northwestern and Brown universities also took down their tents and tables recently, assuaged by the schools’ promises to consider their pleas.

The protesters initially viewed this as progress in their Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns to drive the universities’ endowments to divest from the Jewish state and weapons makers.

They are now confronting a tough reality: Their schools are not going to do it.

“We are under no illusions: We do not believe these meetings are divestment wins,” the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine wrote in an Instagram post. “These side deals are intended to pacify us away from full disclosure and divestment.”

The university has agreed to consider requests to reinstate students who were suspended for taking part in protests, but will continue disciplinary proceedings that could result in official admonishments or expulsions, according to a spokesperson for the institution.

Harvard president Alan Garber will “pursue a meeting” between demonstrators and the chair of the committee that oversees shareholder responsibility as well as other university leaders, the spokesperson said. The university will answer questions about its endowment and will not discuss divestment.

While administrators at schools across the US, including the University of Minnesota, Rutgers and Sacramento State, agreed to listen to activists’ pleas, the idea of actually selling holdings in Israeli assets or defence stocks was a non-starter given the opaque nature of many endowments and their investments, the pushback from donors and potential conflict with anti-BDS laws in many states.

“We said a flat ‘no’” to the idea of divesting, Northwestern president Michael Schill wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed on May 9, less than two weeks after the school sent out a statement pledging to consider students’ views on the matter.

Officials at Brown have assured at least one major donor that the university will not ultimately divest from Israel, despite a public pledge to review its holdings, The New York Times reported.

The issue is central to protesters who believe severing financial ties to Israel will pressure the country to stop its military operation in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people after an Oct 7, 2023, assault on the Jewish state by Hamas.

The militant group, designated a terrorist organisation by the US, killed more than 1,200 people and is still holding hostages. 

At Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois, student protesters see the accord they reached with the university under which it will disclose holdings as a crucial first step, according to Ms Paz Baun, a third-year political science student who helped organise the demonstrations. 

“We got disclosure,” she said. “Even six months ago, we didn’t think the disclosure was possible. I’m so proud of us that we gained disclosure of financial investments because it’s a foothold in the path towards divestment.”

The agreement requires Northwestern to answer questions from “any internal stakeholder about specific holdings, held currently or within the last quarter, to the best of its knowledge and to the extent legally possible” within 30 days. 

From Northwestern’s perspective, it may not have had much room to manoeuvre. The university did not want to leave the encampment up indefinitely and was keen to avoid a violent confrontation with law enforcement, according to sources familiar with the matter. Evanston police also declined a request from the university to intervene, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public.

Sustainability science and policy professor Jennie Stephens of Northeastern University in Boston said the agreements universities are reaching with protesters are more than symbolically important.

She drew parallels to earlier movements to get colleges to divest from South Africa during apartheid or sell holdings of fossil fuel stocks.

“At the beginning of those efforts, the institutions were just ignoring or saying that’s impossible and not engaging,” she said in an interview. “But with pressure mounting and consistent pressure and evidence that the pressure isn’t going to stop, the conversations change and the universities did start meeting with students and actually considering it.”

Under Brown’s deal, five students will meet trustees in May to make arguments for divestment. The school also said an advisory committee would make a recommendation about divestment, and its governing body will vote on that measure in October.

“The university has not endorsed the divestment proposal,” a Brown spokesman said. “Whether it’s for or against divestment, the vote will bring clarity to an issue that is of longstanding interest to many members of our community.”

Some small universities and colleges are moving forward with divestment.

Union Theological Seminary in New York has said it will divest from companies that have ties to the war in Gaza. In Ireland, Trinity College Dublin agreed to divest from certain Israeli companies in exchange for protesters ending their encampment.

But most schools have not committed to getting rid of any holdings.

At Occidental College in Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian protest leaders took down their encampment on May 8 after the school’s board agreed to hold a vote on their calls to divest from four companies they said have ties to Israel.

The vote over Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Boeing and Elbit Systems will be held by June 6, according to the agreement signed by Occidental administrators and two protest leaders.

The college also agreed to grant amnesty to students who participated in the protest and disclose certain parts of its investment portfolio. 

Mr Matthew Vickers, a spokesman for the group Students for Justice in Palestine at Occidental, said demonstrators were deliberate in targeting just a few companies rather than demanding complete divestment from Israel, viewing it as a more reasonable demand. 

He said that protesters will be watching the vote in June and ready to resume demonstrations if it does not go their way.

In that case, “some form of protest will definitely come back”, Mr Vickers said. BLOOMBERG