Кампания UC Move Your Money призывает преподавателей Калифорнийского университета перевести пенсионные накопления в фонд, исключающий компании, связанные с государственным насилием

The UC Move Your Money campaign is mobilizing hundreds of university faculty and staff to divest their retirement savings from companies that it alleges enable genocide and other forms of state violence. UC Move Your Money aims to divest UC system retirement savings from GE Aerospace, Raytheon and other companies it says profit from border violence, prisons and weapons manufacturing. As of press time, 361 faculty and staff members had divested since the campaign began last fall, according to the campaign’s website. “We want people to put their money where their values are,” said Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, a campus assistant professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures. Nearly all UC system faculty have funds in individual retirement accounts as part of the voluntary UC Retirement Savings Program. UC Investments offers a selection of different index fund options, which employees with savings in the UC Retirement Savings Program can choose from. UC Move Your Money is encouraging faculty to divest from state violence by moving their savings into the pre-existing UC Social Equity Fund, a U.S. stock fund that excludes holdings in weapons manufacturers, certain human rights violators and fossil fuels. Campus associate professor of English Colleen Lye first became aware of university investments in weapons in 2024 through student protests on campus against the genocide in Gaza. She has since divested her retirement savings with UC Move Your Money. “As a professor who chose to teach at a public university rather than a private one,” Lye said in an email. “I am passionate about the idea of a university that serves the public good which, given how international California is, (is) linked to the fate of the planet as well.” The campaign notes that the UC Social Equity Fund has similar, and often slightly better, returns compared with the UC Domestic Equity Index Fund, another investment option with holdings in companies that UC Move Your Money alleges are complicit in apartheid and genocide. Juana María Rodríguez, a recently retired UC Berkeley professor of ethnic studies and performance studies, called on UC system faculty to show a commitment to more ethical investments. “I don’t want my retirement tainted by the fact that I’m living off of the spoils of war and violence,” Rodríguez said. UC Move Your Money has set a goal for 10% of UC system faculty to move their UC Retirement Savings Program investments into the UC Social Equity Fund; but that’s just the first step. Although organizers consider the UC Social Equity Fund to be the best possible option UC Investments currently offers, they note that it isn’t perfect. The UC administration recently removed Palantir from the fund, but a small percentage of the fund’s holdings still lie in companies that have been deemed complicit in occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. UC Move Your Money organizers hope the campaign will create a support base to demand the UC administration create a No State Violence Fund that would be fully divested from companies profiting off of state violence. They also envision the proposed No State Violence Fund becoming a divestment option for other higher education retirement plans across the country. “I think that’s where it’s actually quite revolutionary,” Jacobsen Ben Hammed said. “It’s our money — we want to be able to invest it in ways that are not going to build the private prison industry, ICE detention centers or tech companies that are complicit in genocide.”