After battling for two years to obtain the City University of New York’s (CUNY) investment records, student divestment activists won a big victory on September 9.A Supreme Court decision ruled in favor of the students, who argued that under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the university could no longer withhold its records from the public.
Despite the ruling, CUNY, which operates 26 colleges across all five boroughs of New York City, has failed to disclose the full cache of materials students have requested, including purchase order histories for the 30 companies whose financial ties to CUNY organizers sought to investigate.Of these, the university only provided records for two—the American technology companies Dell and IBM.Through these holdings, organizers were looking to identify the university’s financial ties to companies they believed profited from Israeli military actions.
Since 2024, CUNY4Palestine, an organization of CUNY students and workers, has been the force behind calls for the university to disclose investments in companies that are connected to Israeli military operations in Gaza.Across all 26 schools, CUNY4Palestine has organized divestment efforts for years, connecting this investment campaign to broader demands for institutional change.
The newly released forms reveal that from 2020 until 2025, CUNY was invested in companies, including Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, and Caterpillar, that have provided Israel with weapons and military equipment used in its decimation of Gaza.CUNY also held stock in mass detention and surveillance companies such as Palantir, Geo Group, and CoreCivic.
For many students, the newly released information raises another question: What should CUNY do now?
A draft resolution, a collaboration by Hunter College’s student government and Hunter SJP members, demands that CUNY “immediately divest from these harmful holdings” and instead “adopt an ethical investment policy.”
For many students, the university has failed to uphold its mission as a university “for the whole people of New York.” They believe the university has profited from genocide, displacement, and incarceration, which stands at odds with the values and goals of the larger CUNY community.
“Students have become passive actors in mass violence without their knowledge” by paying tuition that may find its way into the university’s invested fund, said one Hunter SJP member, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
“CUNY is merely a facade of a public institution that instead perpetuates harms to the very communities it claims to serve.”
Corinna Mullin, an adjunct professor in the political science and economics department at John Jay College and Brooklyn College and a member of CUNY4Palestine, said the fight goes beyond CUNY’s investment practices.
“We have always linked divestment—as we did in the encampment—to broader systemic change at CUNY: cops off campus, demilitarization, a fully funded CUNY with free tuition, fair contracts for CUNY workers, and solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle,” Mullin said.The group has also advocated to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) away from CUNY campuses.
For Mullin, the disclosure of CUNY’s investments marks a new stage in the group’s organizing efforts.
Mullin participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in 2024.In 2025, four Brooklyn College adjunct professors, including Mullin, were removed from their positions due to ongoing support for Pro-Palestinian protests and movements.Three have since been reinstated; Mullin continues to advocate for the last member to regain their post.
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“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →Mullin said that one of the organization’s mantras, borrowed from the Black feminist movement, is “None of us is free until all of us are free.”
Many of these student- and faculty-run organizations share one goal: to hold the university accountable and to ensure its representatives accurately reflect the people who make up the university community.
CUNY is known for the wide undergraduate racial and ethnic representation of its student body.
For Mullin and other members of CUNY4Palestine, campuses should represent the larger New York City community.
“Now that we’ve won disclosure, we’re building a broad coalition because we recognize that CUNY investments are connected not only to settler colonialism and genocide in Palestine,” Mullin said, “but also to the US imperialist war machine and to repression at home.”
“We want a university run by and for its students, workers, and community members,” she said.
To some CUNY professors, the disclosure story is significant not just for what the records reveal but also for what the university’s refusal to release them says about the school and its true priorities.
Anthony Alessandrini is a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and chair of the Professional Staff Congress’s Academic Freedom Committee.The committee is dedicated to protecting CUNY faculty and staff and ensuring freedom throughout the university.
Alessandrini explained that faculty members have tried to defend students’ right to organize long before this phase of the divestment movement started.
He traces CUNY’s Palestine solidarity organizing to a 2013 Brooklyn College panel on the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.
For decades,“the message being given to students [has been], we’re here to teach you critical thinking, we want you to question things, we want you to look and analyze things, but not your own university,” Alessandrini said.
He also points out that the university’s refusal to disclose these records is part of a broader pattern of restricting academic freedom and student activism, not only at CUNY but also in schools worldwide.Alessandrini looked to France, where high school students and teachers are leading protests over poor educational facilities and staff shortages.For him, these demonstrations highlight the importance of holding educational institutions accountable.
He said the university’s response to student protests and its treatment of workers involved in the movement also raises questions about its role as a public institution.
“If you’re arresting your students, if you’re refusing to disclose your investments to students, if you’re firing workers for being against genocide,” Alessandrini said, “you’re not a functioning university.”.