(CNN) — Columbia University has become the first college in the United States to divest from private prison companies, following a student activist campaign.
The decision means the Ivy League school — with boasts a roughly $9 billion endowment — will no longer invest in G4S, the world’s largest private security firm, or the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the United states.
The campaign began in early 2014 when a small group of Columbia students discovered tuition money was being invested in the two firms, which run prisons and detention centers and militarized borders.
The group, called Columbia Prison Divest, launched protests and meetings with administrators where they argued it was wrong for the elite school to invest in a “racist, violent system.”
“The private prison model is hinged on maximizing incarceration to generate profit — they’re incentivized by convicting, sentencing, and keeping people in prison for longer and longer times,” Dunni Oduyemi, an 20-year-old organizer, told CNN.
“We don’t think about how the privileges and resources students get access to are premised upon violence done to people by virtue of their race, class, or citizenship status.”
In an emailed statement, a Columbia spokesperson said the university’s trustees had decided to divest from private prison companies and would refrain from investing in such companies again.
“This action occurs within the larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum,” the statement said. “The decision follows … thoughtful analysis and deliberation by our faculty, students, and alumni.”
The spokesperson would not disclose how much the Columbia had invested in the two companies.
History of controversy
Oduyemi said activists targeted CCA for its “horrific” human rights record. A 2014 ACLU investigation found abuse and neglect in CCA-run prisons where guards used “extreme isolation arbitrarily and abusively,” exposed prisoners to contaminated water, and delayed medical care of inmates, causing “needless suffering.”
Student activists also targeted G4S, a British firm, which has supplied a prison in the West Bank and checkpoints in Palestinian territories. Until last year, the firm also had a contract to provide services at U.S. detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, according to the Financial Times. The firm still maintains patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border.
South African prisoners have sued the company over claims they were tortured, according to the Guardian.
Neither firm immediately responded to CNN’s calls and emailed requests for comment. CCA’s website includes a statement committing to “respecting human rights,” and G4S’s website says the firm has a “broad culture of high ethical standards.”
Will divestment work?
Oduyemi said G4S had been responsive to past divestment campaigns, and “that has been the only effective way of getting them to change the contracts they write.”
In 2014, the Gates Foundation Asset Trust, which manages investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, divested from G4S after controversy over the company’s involvement with Israeli prisons, according to Bloomberg.
But the foundation’s shares comprised just a small fraction of G4S’ market cap, valued today at $4.35 billion. Similarly, CCA has a market cap of $4.01 billion. Both firms are highly profitable and continue to grow.
Although Columbia is the first U.S. university to announce divestment from private prisons, similar campaigns are ongoing at other institutions, including Cornell, Brown, U.C. Berkeley, and UCLA.
“It seems to be a moment where people are making the connection between all the kinds of uprisings we’re seeing right now — #BlackLivesMatter, mass incarceration, and university movements,” said Oduyemi. “We all recognize how much work has to be done in the future.”
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