Student leaders on campus will be hosting a conference this week calling for the University to end its economic investments in Israel, a request the University says it will not comply with.

For supporters of divestment, like LSA senior and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality member Eric Reichenberger, divestment is an issue of ethics that will end the suppression of Palestinian rights in Israel, specifically in the occupied territories.

"Divestment is a movement based on moral concerns arising from the oppression of the Palestinian people at the hands of the State of Israel," Reichenberger said. "It is the only way effective pressure can be placed on the Israeli government to convince it to discontinue its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

The University only has a small percentage of its investments in companies tied to Israel, University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said.

"Out of our $3.4 billion investment portfolio, we have stock in only two companies directly located in Israel with a value of about $500,000. It is impossible for the University to report investments in all companies that may have business in Israel or some other indirect connection," Peterson said.

Yulia Dernovsky, an opponent of divestment and member of the American Movement for Israel, said the movement to withdraw University investment in the region is harmful to Israel's development.

"It is in the interest of the University to stand against divestment because divestment is directed against the only democratic state in the Middle East," Dernovsky said.

While many students are divided over the issue of the University's economic involvement in the region, University President Mary Sue Coleman said in an e-mail to the University community last month that the administration has no intention of divesting from its economic interests in Israel.

"As a matter of University policy, we do not believe political interests should govern our investment decisions," Coleman wrote.

Coleman was prompted to send the message after she received more than 100 messages about the Second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement sponsored by SAFE, Peterson said.

"Both decisions to divest were reached only after sustained, campus-wide support that followed extensive research by faculty-led committees," Coleman said. "Those conditions do not exist, and I do not plan to ask our Board of Regents to pursue divestment."

The University has only divested from economic interests twice before - once from South Africa in 1983 to show its disapproval of apartheid and from tobacco companies in 2000 - Peterson said.

"Both the South Africa and tobacco divestments took place over a number of years," Peterson said. "The process by which divestment decisions have been reached in the past has set a very high bar for this sort of decision. In the past, faculty review has only been instituted after the emergence of very broad support."

former University President Lee Bollinger created the Tobacco Advisory Committee to investigate the costs of withdrawing from its tobacco stocks.

"Our tobacco investments were less than one-quarter of one percent of the total. The total dollar amount of tobacco investments was estimated at $2.5 to $3 million," Peterson said, adding that the current investments are only in the hundreds of thousands.

In a written statement to the Board of Regents in 2000, Bollinger said if the University maintained its tobacco stocks, it would be supporting an "organization whose practices are fundamentally at odd with our own mission of education and research and generally accepted standards of behavior."