by Philip Weiss on February 16, 2010

Divestment is biting at the University of Arizona. Several articles about the campaign in the student newspaper. Here”s the lead:

UA administrators are resisting a recommendation by UA students to terminate the university”s contract with the Motorola Corporation. Students say the company is complicit in human rights violations because of contracts they have with the Israeli government, which is militarily occupying Palestinian lands.

And this piece, Dial D for Death– Motorola. And some important history:

Following waves of anti-apartheid activism led by students and community around the UA and ASU pressuring the Arizona Board of Regents to divest, on Monday Sept. 9, 1985, the Daily Wildcat reported that, at its meeting on Sept. 6, ABOR ordered both universities “to divest their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa,” some $3.4 million.

And this reference to Rachel Corrie in a piece by Gabriel Schivone (who wrote the last two links, too) dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn:

Ironically, 2004 is the year during which global outcry against the company, led by the world”s most prominent human rights organizations, dramatically increased. Among the concerned groups, the United Nations wrote to Caterpillar, which it has done more than once, pleading with the company to recognize and respond to the horrendous use of its products by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that include massive home demolitions, property destruction, crop devastation and unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians – as well as the death of American college student Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by a Caterpillar bulldozer during peacekeeping activities in the Gaza Strip in March 2003. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also written letters urging the company to respect not only international law but Caterpillar”s own internal code of conduct.

Such credible pleas seem to consistently have fallen on deaf ears.