Students Advocating for USF to Divest is a coalition of students and student organizations at the University of South Florida. We are pushing for the USF Foundation to completely divest from corporations committing human rights violations against the Palestinian people. 

These corporations include:

•Caterpillar –Caterpillar supplies the Israeli army with bulldozers for militarization. These bulldozers demolish Palestinian homes, construct the separation wall and create settlements on Palestinian lands, and cause civilian casualties.

•Hewlett-Packard (HP) –HP supplies the Israeli military occupation with systems for military checkpoints that restrict Palestinian civilian movement inside the occupied territory. It further develops the new Israeli biometric ID card system, which is ethnically labeled to divide the population, supporting a system of state segregation and discrimination. 

•G4S PLC –G4S operates private prisons around the world and manages immigrant deportations in the US. It provides security systems for Israeli prisons in which Palestinian political prisoners and child prisoners are held. It provides technologies to Israeli military checkpoints and security services in illegal Israeli settlements. 

•Boeing Company –Boeing supplies Israel with Apache Helicopters and F-16 fighter jets as well as missile systems used repeatedly in war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

•Lockheed Martin –Lockheed Martin supplies the Israeli military with Hellfire Missiles, Apache parts, and F-16 fighter jets along with training and maintenance. These weapons are used in war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

•Northrop Grumman Corporation–Northrop Grumman supplies Israel with weapons used against Palestinian civilians, including Hellfire missiles, F-16 targeting and surveillance systems, and Longbow missile system. In 2008 and 2012, its technologies were used against Palestinian civilians in the bombing of Gaza.

Our demands are that USF:

•Create a committee consisting of representatives from staff, faculty and students that will publish quarterly reports of its investments and investment policy to create transparency with the goal of educating the university community on how its endowment is invested.

•Create a policy that ensures our endowment is invested in a socially just manner, with regard to human rights and environmental welfare.

•Declare complete divestment from corporations directly complicit in human rights violations against the Palestinian people.

The general student body has overwhelming agreed with these demands multiple times over the past decade, and the demands passed Student Government in 2016. Despite the USF Foundation Board blocking the motion, we believe that it is still in the interests of the USF student body that these demands are passed.