There is always agitation calling for divestment from weapons, pharmaceutical, and oil and gas companies. It's a perennial feature of American progressive activism.
Lately, the call has been for universities to divest themselves from weapons companies on the grounds that those companies' weapons are directly used in a genocide in Gaza. Supposing (as we will for the rest of this post) that there really is a genocide in Gaza, the students don't want to be linked to it, e.g. student to university to shares in weapons companies to weapons to weapons used in a genocide.
Without litigating the genocide point, this seems reasonable. They want to divest themselves of a link to genocide. But what does it really mean to truly divest oneself of that responsibility? Is it really just not having ownership of weapons companies directly or indirectly through the S&P 500 directly, retirement accounts, pension funds, etc.?
There is one glaring direct link from the activist to the genocide in Gaza. They are American citizens and the United States government gives weapons to Isreal. Of course the activist would like to change that too but that is beside the point.
Why does the activist want universities to divest from the weapons manufactures when they themselves won't divest from the U.S. government? Aren't they being hypocritical by not renouncing their citizenship?
I think so. The reality of the modern world is that it is impossible to divest. We are inextricably tied together with every other human being in the world. We are forced to interact. There is no escaping into the woods or sailing off to unknown.