Beyond the Glass Wall

We’re closing out the year with an episode from our friends at Making Contact: As graduation approached this year, students around the country began protests after calls for divestment from Israel were initially ignored by university leadership. The campus encampments were met with physical violence and the mainstream press dismissed the students’ demands as naive and immature. But, it turns out that there’s a lot we should be asking about college endowments. We take a look at what an endowment is and how they’re invested. Then we learn why transparency around the endowment (and divestment!) might actually benefit the entire college community. We talk to Kelly Grotke, a financial researcher from Pattern Recognition, a research collective focused on financialized higher education. And, with Andrea Pritchett, we look at the links between the encampments today, and those from the 80s, when students protested South African Apartheid. Episode Credits: Host: Salima Hamirani Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang Executive Director: Jina Chung Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong Engineer: Jeff Emtman Digital Media Marketing: Anubhuti Kumar Learn more about Making Contact at https://focmedia.org/