Joseph Edelman, CEO of the investment firm Perceptive Advisors, announced in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that he is resigning as a trustee of Brown University due to a scheduled October vote over whether to divest from the Jewish state.
“I disagree with the upcoming divestment vote on Israel,” wrote Edelman, who has been a trustee at the Ivy League school in Providence, R.I., since 2019. “I am concerned about what Brown’s willingness to hold such a vote suggests about the university’s attitude toward rising antisemitism on campus and a growing political movement that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel.”
“I find it morally reprehensible that holding a divestment vote was even considered, much less that it will be held—especially in the wake of the deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he wrote, accusing the school of acting “not based on facts or values but based on weakness toward student activists.”
“The university leadership has for some reason chosen to reward, rather than punish, the activists for disrupting campus life, breaking school rules and promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown,” he added. “Brown’s leadership admits the looming divestment vote is designed to buy good behavior from pro-Hamas activists, many of whom are adherents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which seeks the destruction of the Jewish state through political and economic warfare.”
Brown agreed to hold the vote in exchange for anti-Israel protesters dismantling an encampment at the university.
“I consider the willingness to hold this vote a stunning failure of moral leadership at Brown University,” he concluded the 500-word op-ed. “I am unwilling to lend my name or give my time to a body that lacks basic moral judgment. I hereby resign from the board of trustees.”
The Brown Daily Herald, a student publication, reported that Edelman gave $1.65 million to Brown in 2014 for its brain science institute and that his family foundation donated $800,000 to Brown in 2022.
