This page was created by Daniel Abel Fernandez.
I was a student at Swarthmore College and was involved with Ban the Ban, a coalition of student groups working to end Swarthmore’s 1991 ban on ethical divestment.
I originally created this website to supplement an investigative series I wrote about the ban on ethical divestment (read them here: Clandestine Ban, Repressive Ban; Duplicitous Ban). For the series, I sought out a number of archival documents related to past divestment campaigns and the ban on divestment, many of which were difficult to access. Viewing some of these documents requires a trip to the campus library and an appointment to view them. Reading others, like the historical news articles, requires lots of flipping through scans of newspapers online. Still others I have not even been able to access because they are restricted. I wanted to make all of these documents easily and quickly accessible. I also wanted to highlight the inaccessibility of a number of important documents related to the ban, including the ban itself!
Now, I want to turn this website into a resource for student, faculty, staff, or alumni activists working on divestment, or anyone else interested in learning more about the issue.
I see this project as particularly important because student campaigns, like divestment, often last many years and institutional memory and knowledge often gets lost as older activists graduate. I know that I would have benefited greatly from a website like this when I first started working on divestment. I hope that this website will aid future student activists long after I have left Swarthmore. Although, it is my sincere hope that, by then, the divestment fight will have been won and students can direct their energies towards other pressing issues.
For inquiries and questions, contact: swatdivestmentdocuments@gmail.com.