City University of New York (CUNY) has agreed to disclose information about its investment holdings and contracts with 30 companies with alleged ties to Israel.
This brings a multi-year dispute to an end. In 2024, CUNY law student Sarah Southey filed a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request asking to view CUNY’s holdings.
In 2025, the Supreme Court of the State of New York approved the request. CUNY subsequently appealed this.
On Tuesday, CUNY agreed to a settlement and to provide all its stock and bond holdings for every fiscal year since January 2020. This is to be done in the next 15 days.
While the new settlement does not specifically mention Israel or name the companies, Southey’s 2024 filing previously requested holdings related to dozens of companies such as Dell, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit, Barclays, and IBM.
Although CUNY for Palestine and CUNY Law Students for Palestine have described the disclosure as a “victory,” the settlement agreement stipulates that Southey was acting as an individual. None of the other CUNY groups are bound to the agreement, and Southey graduated from CUNY Law in May 2026.
'New chapter in divestment campaign'
Nevertheless, CUNY Law SJP and CUNY SJP stated, “This victory marks the beginning of a new chapter in our divestment campaign. We will soon know the exact amount of money that CUNY directly invests in companies complicit in Israeli colonialism and the exact amount it must divest.”
Southey called it “a major victory in CUNY4Palestine’s years-long campaign for CUNY to disclose and divest from companies complicit in Israel’s colonization of Palestine.”
“In these records, CUNY must show exactly how much of our money, public money, it is spending on companies profiting off of genocide and occupation. Investments reflect values, and we will not stop fighting until the CUNY Board of Trustees fully divests our money from companies that are enabling and aiding the colonization of Palestine.”
Happy for the disclosure of investment records
Veronica Salama, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, which acted as Southey’s counsel, said: “While we’re grateful that the largest, urban public university in the country will finally disclose its investment records, it is outrageous that our client had to file this lawsuit in the first place.”
“Investment records disclosure is a basic responsibility and function of a public institution, and CUNY students, faculty, and the entire campus community are entitled to transparency and equal treatment from their administration – no matter their viewpoint or their purpose in seeking those records. CUNY cannot pick and choose which viewpoints to respect and which to dismiss when it comes to records disclosure.”