From then to now: A history of divestment activism at Ohio State

George Nicholas was supposed to run.

It was the winter of 1985, and the Big Ten champion — a former Olympic Trials contender and one of Ohio State’s most decorated track athletes — was entering his final season. But instead of stepping into the blocks at that weekend’s indoor meet, he walked away from the starting line.

When the national anthem played inside the French Field House, Nicholas turned his back to the flag and knelt. While his teammates stood in silence, he remained on the sidelines — refusing to compete.

It was a protest, sparked by a front-page article in The Lantern revealing that Ohio State still held $7.1 million in investments linked to companies operating in apartheid South Africa. University officials, including President Edward Jennings, had responded to student concerns with a flat rejection: divestment was off the table.

“That upset me,” Nicholas said. “So, I decided to make a statement.”

He did. And within weeks, he had helped build a coalition that stretched from graduate students to union organizers, from law students to state senators. What started with one athlete kneeling at a track meet culminated in a confrontation far from campus — at a remote Board of Trustees meeting held at an off-site university facility.

They hadn’t put the students on the agenda, so Nicholas and hundreds of others showed up anyway, crowding the meeting room with flyers, chants and prepared statements. When the trustees tried to gavel the meeting to a close, students locked arms at the exits in peaceful resistance — blocking the doors and refusing to let the university walk away from the issue.

“We had rehearsed it,” Nicholas said. “We weren’t being violent. But we made it clear — no, you’re not just going to end this meeting and leave.”

Police tried to remove them, he said. They held the line.

What began as one man’s act of protest became a university-wide movement. And in the months that followed, Ohio State — under mounting pressure — voted to fully divest from companies connected to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

“We were strategic,” Nicholas said. “We were informed, and we weren’t kidding about it.”

Forty years later, the script has flipped, while Nicholas watches from afar.

As Ohio State students demand the university cut financial ties — this time with companies linked to human rights violations in Palestine — they face a new set of roadblocks. Despite echoing many of the same principles and strategies from 1985, students leading the charge for Palestinian divestment have encountered strong support for Israel from state and federal officials, an increasingly fractured coalition resulting in lack of community support, and state laws barring the university from taking any action. 

In recent years, the Undergraduate Student Government has seen multiple resolutions calling for financial transparency and divestment, most recently in 2021 and again in 2024. Calls for divestment were loudly heard at several campus protests last year.

At the state level, legislators enacted a law in 2017, with the goal of strengthening economic ties with Israel, which ensured state funds can not support entities participating in a boycott. Another law enacted in 2022 expanded the scope of existing anti-boycott laws by explicitly defining state institutions of higher education as government entities. 

When Ohio State officials, including university spokesperson Chris Booker are asked about  investments and endowments, inquirers are met with Ohio Revised Code, Section 9.76 - listed as one of the pillar key issues on the university’s Office of Marketing and Communications website - stating that it “prohibits the university from divesting any interests in Israel and prohibits adopting or adhering to a policy that requires divestment from Israel or with persons or entities associated with it.”

The key issues elaborate even further, stating that the university “utilizes a diversified investment strategy” by investing in funds - not individual companies - which “ are trade secret and therefore not public,” according to the website. 

In Washington D.C., the United States remains Israel’s largest military and diplomatic ally — complicating demands for divestment and prompting universities to tread carefully.

The parallels to 1985 are similar: students questioning where their tuition dollars go, calling for accountability in investment policy, and facing institutional resistance. 

To read more, please visit The Lantern's originally published article here.