Illustration by Jaime Hebel

After almost a year of students and community members demanding that Washington University cut ties with and divest from aerospace company Boeing, Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Scott Wilson stated on Sept. 4 that, to the best of his knowledge, the University is not invested in the company at all. This statement was repeated by Chancellor Andrew Martin at the joint Senate and Treasury Student Union (SU) meeting on Sept. 10.

“We haven’t had an investment in Boeing since I’ve been at WashU, and we’ve certainly never had one that we directly control,” Wilson said to Student Life in a Q&A. “I’m not sure where that came from. Absolutely, we would invest in Boeing if we thought it was a good investment, but those decisions are typically initiated by our external investment partners.” 

WashU has had a long-standing relationship with Boeing, dating back to connections to former Board of Trustees member James McDonnell, who founded McDonnell Douglas before it merged with Boeing. 

When asked if the Washington University Investment Management Company (WUIMC) had indirect investments in Boeing, such as investments made through externally managed funds, Wilson said that to the best of his knowledge, they do not currently have any in Boeing. 

Wilson explained in a follow-up interview that while WUIMC does not have complete transparency for every fund, they are usually aware of their investments. He added that if WUIMC owns stock through a direct investment or through a specific managed account, then they would have complete transparency in real time. 

“Depending on the external investment manager, we typically have knowledge of most of the holdings on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis,” Wilson wrote in a comment to Student Life. “In between these periods, we could have exposure to a given company without any knowledge.” 

The topic of divestment from Boeing was contentious on campus last year, as Resist WashU and other activist organizations held a number of protests in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Organizations across the country have had similar demonstrations — many on college campuses — all with the goal of inspiring the public to boycott and divest from companies invested in Israel.  

Resist WashU did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this subject. 

These demonstrations continued through the spring semester, with some WashU students being arrested and suspended for protesting the cause.  

Additionally, last March, SU Senate passed a resolution that called for — among other things — the University to divest from Boeing. While the resolution text also included other demands, such as ending Boeing recruitment events on campus, it mentions divestment five separate times including in the title. 

Junior and SU Senator Sonal Churiwal, who co-sponsored the divestment resolution, also called on the University to provide more financial transparency surrounding their investments, including not just Boeing but also investments in fossil fuels — another widely-discussed topic on campus over the past several years.

“WashU has a Boeing center on campus, and Boeing routinely recruits at career-engagement events, so it is clear that there is some relationship between WashU and Boeing,” Churiwal said. “As the CIO’s interview shows, the exact nature of that relationship — and WashU’s financial ties to Boeing — is unclear, and that’s why it’s important that WashU commit to financial transparency with their endowments, as was promised to Green Action.” 

WashU and Boeing have connections through programs like Boeing’s Accelerated Leadership Program, recruitment events on campus, and the Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation at the Olin Business School. 

Julie Flory, Vice Chancellor of Marketing and Communications, told Student Life that WashU’s partnership with Boeing is one that benefits students. 

“We partner with many companies that provide internships and scholarships for our students, hire our graduates, fund faculty research and scholarship, and join in our efforts to strengthen the St. Louis region,” Flory wrote. “There is great value in these partnerships, and Boeing is no exception.”

Confusion about the University’s investment-based ties to Boeing continued throughout the Spring 2024 semester. Martin was asked specifically about the topic during a Q&A with Student Life on March 6.   

Student Life asked: “[T]here’s an unofficial WashU group known as Resist WashU that has been pretty persistently calling for the University to divest or unaffiliate with Boeing due to claims about the company supplying missiles to Israel. What is your response to this call? And would this divestment or unaffiliation ever happen?” 

Martin responded by simply saying “No,” without other elaboration on the relationship between the University and the corporation. 

In another, more recent, Q&A with Student Life on Sept. 13, Martin said that the decision to share information about WUIMC’s investments is the sole decision of Wilson.

“Scott did an interview with you all a week or two ago and decided to make the disclosure that we weren’t invested, and that was certainly within his authority to do so,” Martin said. “I’m not sure if we were ever asked the question [of] whether we were invested in Boeing before, and I’m not sure how we would have answered the question if we were asked.”

He added that the University has a policy of not disclosing all their investments. 

“As I’ve said publically in the past, just because we don’t divest doesn’t mean we’re invested,” Martin said.   

Flory said that although WUIMC does not typically publicly disclose investments, she would direct students to their annual report as a resource to learn about the WUIMC’s investment strategy.

When asked why he chose to share information about WUIMC’s investment status in relation to Boeing this year and not during the past year as many protests occurred, Wilson noted that their general policy is to not talk about individual holdings. 

“This is both practical and legal, as we are often bound by non-disclosure agreements,” he wrote.  

In the Q&A, Wilson said that if the opportunity to invest in Boeing presented itself, and it looked like a good financial decision, the WUIMC would not hesitate to do so. Flory and Martin both echoed this sentiment.

“As Chancellor Martin recently told Student Life, the question of divestment is a settled issue — we do not use positive or negative screens in the endowment,” Flory said. “That policy is not going to change.”

At the joint session with SU, Martin was asked by Senator Natalia Leon-Diaz whether WashU planned to divest from Boeing, following a resolution passed on March 19 calling for the University to cut all ties. 

Martin reaffirmed Wilson’s statement about WashU’s lack of investment, and went on to say that the University has made an institutional decision to invest purely based on where they will see the highest returns. He did not address the call for WashU to cut non-investment based ties with Boeing, such as recruitment events. 

“We do so because that return is what funds scholarships and professorships,” Martin said. “You want to have a conversation about the way in which the University is engaged with certain corporations, […] I’m happy to have those conversations.”