A group of over 100 people stand outside of Smith Union during a rally at Bowdoin College in Brunswick in February. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

Bowdoin College has announced that it will not change its investment strategies following a student referendum calling for a halt to investing in companies that manufacture weapons for Israel.

The decision was made by an ad hoc committee and approved by trustees, and comes less than a month after a five-day student encampment protesting the college’s lack of action on a student referendum that called for the college to divest all assets it holds in businesses tied to Israel as a form of protest against the war.

The college has made divestments in the past, including over apartheid in South Africa and fossil fuels, which leaders said was simpler to do at the time because those were direct investments.

Organizers with the group Students for Justice in Palestine launched an encampment inside the student union on Feb. 6, nine months after the majority of Bowdoin students voted in favor of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum, which called on the college to issue an institutional statement on Israel’s war in Gaza, disclose investments, and not make future investments in companies associated with weapons manufacturing for Israel.

The protest at Bowdoin came less than a year after many other college and university students formed encampments to protest college investments in the war, which has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis and is in a tenuous ceasefire, with Israel recently cutting off all aid to Gaza. President Donald Trump in recent weeks pulled federal funding for some of those schools, like Columbia University, which he said failed to protect Jewish students. Trump has also threatened to deport or arrest students who participate in pro-Palestine protests.

Despite Trump’s threats, students and pro-Palestinian activists rallied on the steps of the University of Maine Orono’s Fogler Library Friday afternoon.

The rally, which saw dozens of attendees, was organized by the University of Maine chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Protesters held Palestinian flags and carried signs bearing handwritten messages of “SUPPORT STUDENTS NOT GENOCIDE” and “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT,” according to photos shared on the group’s social media.

Before the most recent protest at Bowdoin, there had been no encampment at the Brunswick school. After students passed the referendum, college President Safi Zaki declined to release an institutional statement at the time, and said she would hear from students about the endowment. In September, she created a committee, made up of trustees, administrators, students and faculty to review the college’s investment practices.

“The committee was formed as a result and in the context of the Solidarity Referendum, but (its) mission was broader. It was not charged with addressing the requests outlined in the referendum,” a 12-page report of the committee’s findings explains. “Instead, the (its) mandate was to develop recommendations to the board of trustees about how Bowdoin should respond to calls for change in the college’s investment strategies, about how these strategies should be communicated, and about how Bowdoin should respond to future specific requests regarding the endowment.”

On Feb. 28, Zaki and Scott Perper, the chair of the college’s board of trustees, authored a letter announcing the results of that committee’s work, which included three recommendations: maintaining current endowment investment practices, maintaining the current investment committee structure, and increasing clarity around how the endowment operates.

Regarding divestment, Zaki and Perper wrote that maintaining the college’s endowment is critical to funding the operating expenses of the school.

“We understand that some members of our community feel strongly that there are occasions where Bowdoin should use its endowment to try to effect political change,” the letter said. “Even if that were practicable, and even in cases where there is more consensus around a particular viewpoint, we would see our obligation differently. We believe that our core mission as a college is to empower our community to learn from one another, and to bring together faculty, staff, and students with differing and diverse expertise and experiences to bear in those conversations.”

They also said the complex and outsourced nature of the endowment, which is handled by a variety of third-party fund managers, “makes ongoing disclosure of its holdings an impossibility.”

During last month’s protest, dozens of students set up tents inside a college building, and received disciplinary warnings from administrators over five days. The remaining students eventually agreed to leave after reaching an “understanding” with administrators.

Eight students who were suspended by the college say those suspensions were lifted on Feb. 23, although Bowdoin has maintained that it will follow through on disciplinary proceedings for all students.

The college has placed the student group Students for Justice in Palestine on temporary suspension. The group did not return emailed questions Friday night about its response to the decision or its future plans.

— Staff Writer Daniel Kool contributed to this report.