“Logic and experience indicate that barring investments in a major, integral sector of the global economy would—especially for a large endowment reliant on sophisticated economic techniques, pooled funds, and broad diversification—come at a substantial cost,” wrote Harvard President Drew Faust last year, explaining the University’s refusal to join the divestment brigades.

“I also find a troubling inconsistency,” she added, “in the notion that, as an investor, we should boycott a whole class of companies at the same time that, as individuals and as a community, we are extensively relying on those companies products and services for so much of what we do every day.”