UW: Talks with protesters broke down, campus leaders still willing to meet Thursday

MADISON, Wis. -- UW-Madison officials said Wednesday that they are willing to meet again with protest organizers, but that ending the encampment on Library Mall remains a priority after talks between the two groups broke down earlier in the day.

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, university officials said that students and faculty liaisons walked out of a meeting on Wednesday. Student protesters are calling on the university to divest from groups that they said are supplying arms used by the Israeli government against Palestinians.

Protesters are also calling for better transparency in how investments are made and for the university to adopt an "ethical investment strategy."

University officials said that there is a misunderstanding about UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin's role in the university's investment strategy. The university's endowment is controlled by the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, not the chancellor.

"The university’s shared governance mechanism may offer an appropriate setting for taking up the issue of whether the university wishes to create investment principles for the consideration of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association or the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents," officials said. " The chancellor’s pre-endorsement of any content on such questions – regardless of her personal or institutional views – would be an inappropriate end run around important shared governance internal processes which she, and her team, take very seriously. This is not something up for negotiation."

Officials maintained that the encampment on Library Mall is illegal, and that ending it is an "urgent campus priority." However, they said a proposal circulated on social media Tuesday was just a draft, and no police action would be taken against the encampment at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

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