RICHARDSON, Texas — Tensions are high on the University of Texas at Dallas campus in Richardson as there have been protesters campaigning for days for the school to divest from companies with ties to Israel and the war in Gaza, withThe students protesting have been demanding specifically for the university system to divest from five companies: Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Corp and Raytheon Technologies.
Blackrock has investments in a number of companies listed above, and ExxonMobil has supplied Israel with fuel for its fighter jets. All in all, the investments in those seven companies add up to about $17.6 million. That's about 1% of UT System's total investments in their permanent university fund, which is about $1.73 billion. But divestment isn't a simple, snap-of-the-finger process.
Universities typically invest in large bundles of businesses -- not individual stocks. But it has been done in the past when schools have divested from companies with ties to South Africa during apartheid, or divestments from fossil fuel companies.