RICHARDSON, Texas — Tensions are high on the University of Texas at Dallas campus in Richardson as there have been protesters campaigning for days for the school to divest from companies with ties to Israel and the war in Gaza, with some being arrested earlier Wednesday.
The students protesting have been demanding specifically for the university system to divest from five companies: Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Corp and Raytheon Technologies. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are defense contractors, Northrop is an aerospace and defense technology company, General Dynamics is a weapons contractor, and Boeing has supplied the country with a number of fighter jets.
Here's how much UT System has invested into each company
- Boeing, 38 shares valued at $8,452.
- General Dynamics, 2,147 shares valued at $486,503.
- Lockheed Martin, 2,185 shares valued at $979,836.
- Northrop Corp, 3,206 shares value at $1.39 million
- Raytheon, Technologies 6,795 shares valued at $584,622.
But those aren't the only companies UT System has invested in with Israeli ties, there are two other companies as well:
- Blackrock, 8,557 shares valued at nearly $6 million.
- ExxonMobil, 73,389 shares valued at $8.16 million.
Blackrock has investments in a number of companies listed above, and ExxonMobil has supplied Israel with fuel for its fighter jets.
All in all, the investments in those seven companies add up to about $17.6 million. That's about 1% of UT System's total investments in their permanent university fund, which is about $1.73 billion.
That fund also shows that UT System has $396,821 in debt securities due to Israel in 2060.
But divestment isn't a simple, snap-of-the-finger process.
Universities typically invest in large bundles of businesses -- not individual stocks. But it has been done in the past when schools have divested from companies with ties to South Africa during apartheid, or divestments from fossil fuel companies.