On the surface America’s corporate leaders are divorced from what’s happening on the campuses of many of the nation’s colleges and universities. What business is it of theirs if students protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and America’s support of Israel?
But not so fast. Recent incidents of campus unrest merely underscore how impossible it is for business leaders entirely to separate themselves from what’s happening in the United States more broadly. They, of course, want nothing so much as to stay in their own silo – the private sector – without getting involved with the public sector. Politics are complicated. Politics are messy. Politics are heated. And, worst of all, politics are divisive. In 2024 American politics are so divisive that if business leaders so much as open their mouths they risk being pilloried – and their businesses negatively impacted – by those who differ even a smidgeon.
Off the record, they do worry. Business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that a number told him they are “deeply concerned,” especially about “incidents of harassment of Jewish students.” But Sorkin adds that despite the handwringing, “there has been little action from corporations, which have a synergistic relationship with the schools where they recruit employees.”
Sorkin could additionally have pointed to the growing calls by protesters for their institutions to divest themselves from companies that have investments in or do business with Israel. In a major concession to students who took issue with policy at Brown University, the school promised that at the corporate board’s next meeting, to be held in October, members will vote on a resolution to divest.
In a column for the New York Times, Sorkin focused on the growing campus antisemitism and what business leaders might do about it. Clearly, he believes that they could do something as opposed to what they have done – nothing. He suggests, for example, that chief executive officers could announce that any school that refuses to take decisive action against antisemitism is one from which their companies will not recruit. Sorkin additionally notes that private equity and venture capital firms are uniquely positioned to influence what happens in institutions of higher education. They could- though they have not – threaten to stop managing a school’s endowments.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal similarly insisted that at least in some situations corporate leaders must get more involved in what’s happening on the nation’s campuses. They cannot be or at least they should not be what most would clearly prefer to be, certainly in public, bystanders.
The Journal ran an editorial that compared how the crisis is being managed at three different universities – Northwestern, the University of Florida, and Columbia. Not surprisingly it singled out the last for leadership that went from bad to worse, charging that Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, “has all but surrendered the campus.” The school, the editorial contended, “is barely serving students who pay more than 80,000 to attend, let alone making Jewish students feel safe.”
Then the editorial went a step further. Where, it asked, is Columbia’s board of trustees? Naming names in bold print no less – specifically the names of the board’s chairs and vice chairs, at least three (out of five) of whom are evidently from the private sector, such as David Greenwald, chairman emeritus of the eminent law firm, Fried Frank – the piece pointed out that it is they who are “the ultimate custodians of the institution.” They, in other words, members of the board of trustees, are the leaders ultimately responsible for what is happening, and not happening, at Columbia.
Campus unrest is, of course, not the only hot-button issue on which leaders in corporate America are being pressed to take a stand. The old days when those in the C-suite could wall themselves off from what was happening beyond their four walls are dead and gone. The question though remains – especially during a year in which democracy in America will undergo a stress test – how will they respond? Will it suffice for business leaders to see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing? Or will they conclude in the coming months that the price for their blindness, and deafness, and silence, might be too high?