CUNY ordered to disclose all investments in companies with alleged ties to Israel
CUNY agreed to a settlement and to provide all its stock and bond holdings for every fiscal year since January 2020. This is to be done within the next 15 days.
The City University of New York (CUNY) has reached a settlement to disclose information regarding its investments in companies with alleged ties to Israel. This resolution concludes a multi-year dispute that began in 2024 when law student Sarah Southey filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for CUNY's holdings. The New York State Supreme Court approved Southey's request in 2025, and CUNY appealed it.
On Tuesday, CUNY agreed to provide all its stock and bond holdings for fiscal years since January 2020 within the next 15 days.
Southey's initial FOIL request sought information on dozens of companies, including Dell, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit, Barclays, and IBM. While CUNY for Palestine and CUNY Law Students for Palestine hailed the settlement as a "victory," the agreement states that Southey acted as an individual, and other CUNY groups are not bound by the deal. Southey graduated from CUNY Law in May 2026.
Nonetheless, CUNY Law SJP and CUNY SJP declared, "This victory marks the beginning of a new chapter in our divestment campaign. We will soon know the exact amount of money that CUNY directly invests in companies complicit in Israeli colonialism and the exact amount it must divest." Southey called it "a major victory in CUNY4Palestine's years-long campaign for CUNY to disclose and divest from companies complicit in Israel's colonization of Palestine."
Veronica Salama, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented Southey, expressed relief at the disclosure of investment records. However, she lamented that the lawsuit was necessary in the first place. Salama emphasized that investment records disclosure is a fundamental responsibility for public institutions and that CUNY students, faculty, and the entire campus community are entitled to transparency and equal treatment, regardless of their viewpoint or purpose in seeking those records.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
