President Michael Elliott and Members of the Amherst College Board of Trustees,

We write to you as Amherst College alumni deeply disappointed by your failure to divest Amherst College’s endowment from companies perpetrating and enabling Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and occupation of Palestinian lands.

We will not attempt to convince you of the facts of this genocide and occupation or the moral imperative that Amherst College cut ties with the companies perpetrating and enabling it. Your students, staff, and faculty have presented these facts and made these appeals already. Nor will we attempt to convince you that divestment is possible and practical. As highlighted by students, Amherst College already divested from companies supporting the government of Sudan in 2006, and a college less than 10 minutes drive from your campus has already divested from Israel.

In recent months, you have responded to calls for divestment with stonewalling and censorship. You forced one student to leave campus under the pretense that his advocacy for divestment was indicative of a mental health issue—a tactic chillingly familiar to those of us on campus in 2011-12.

President Elliott and Trustees, in recent months you have demonstrated what many of us as alumni already understood from our time on campus: Amherst College’s leadership cannot be swayed by cogent arguments and heartfelt moral appeals. Amherst College’s leadership can be swayed only by threats to your institution’s image and bottom-line.

Accordingly, we as alumni commit to the following actions aimed at threatening Amherst College’s image and bottom line, until you have fully divested from Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people and occupation of Palestinian lands:

• We commit to withholding all payments and donations to Amherst College, including payments to attend 2024 Reunion Weekend

• We commit to disrupting (in-person and virtually) Amherst College alumni engagement efforts

• We commit to coordinating phone and email blasts to clog the phone lines and email inboxes of Amherst College administrators and trustees

• We commit to clogging Amherst social media accounts with comments decrying the college’s support for genocide

• We commit to protecting and defending Amherst College students who face repression in response to their advocacy for Palestine, including by supporting student-led efforts to call out Amherst admin responsible for repression

• We commit to publicizing and pursuing the severance of support for the state of Israel, Zionist organizations, and the war industry in the Amherst community beyond the endowment—for example, personal investments of Amherst trustees or administrators or the presence of Zionist propaganda in curricula
  

Unlike students who you can threaten with suspension or expulsion and unlike faculty who depend upon your institution for their livelihoods, you do not have leverage over us as alumni. On the contrary, Amherst College depends upon financial support from and professional networking with alumni to sustain its operations. We intend to leverage this position we occupy as alumni to compel Amherst College to divest from Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Palestine and occupation of Palestinian lands.

Signed: