On February 12, 2009, the Hampshire College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a campus anti-Israel group with chapters across the U.S. that has been committed to urging divestment from Israel since 2001, issued a press release announcing that Hampshire College had divested from the "Israeli Occupation."

In its press release, titled, "Hampshire College Becomes First College in the United States to Divest from the Israeli Occupation," SJP noted that the group had pressured the board to divest based on "human rights concerns in occupied Palestine."

In response to SJP press release and the media reports claiming it had become the first institution of higher learning in the country to divest its holdings in Israeli companies, Hampshire's administration denied that the move was an attempt to divest from Israeli companies and denied that it was motivated by an anti-Israel agenda.

Hampshire made it clear that the college holds investments in hundreds of companies that do business in Israel, and in at least three actual Israeli companies.  In a statement clarifying the school's position, Ralph J. Hexter, President of Hampshire College, and Sigmund Roos, Chair of the Board of Trustees, indicated that some students and faculty members had mischaracterized the college's investment decisions.   "No other college or university should use Hampshire as a precedent for divesting from Israel, since Hampshire has refused to divest from Israel.  We have stated this publicly."

Despite Hampshire's insistence that it had not divested from Israel, some individuals and groups on other campuses and elsewhere have used the attention garnered by SJP and the Hampshire College controversy to push their divestment campaigns forward. For example:

• On March 4, Columbia University's school newspaper reported that a new pro-divestment campus group called the Columbia Palestine Forum (CPF) had modeled their efforts on the "successful" efforts of Hampshire students to push the administration to divest from Israel. In an opinion piece for the paper published the previous day, a member of the group wrote, "Last month, Hampshire College became the first American university to divest from the occupation. Columbia should be next."

• On February 23, a member of the coordinating committee for Emory Advocates for Justice in Palestine wrote an article for the school newspaper in which he encouraged boycott, divestments and sanctions as a means to supporting human rights. He cited SJP's divestment efforts at Hampshire and noted the group's perceived role in the school's decision to move its investments: "Two weeks ago, Hampshire College, the first American university to divest from South Africa, became the first American university to divest from companies supporting the Israeli occupation—which has been found illegal by an international court—after a two-year process of engagement between Students for Justice in Palestine and their administration."

• On February 19, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Rochester wrote an opinion piece in the school newspaper calling for the University to take a more "democratic" approach to its investment decisions. The student asked, "Why oppose the atrocities in Darfur, though not in Iraq or Palestine?," and cited Hampshire as an example of a successful divestment effort: "Just recently, students from Hampshire College, after engaging in a campaign to divest from companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine, won a divestment victory."

• The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has announced a fall 2009 national campus tour intended to help "build sustainable boycott & divestment campaigns on campuses" in five U.S. cities. The announcement for the tour boasts that it is being organized "with consultation from Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine - the only campus group to have successfully divested from Israel's illegal military occupation" and vows to "bring the lessons learned during Hampshire's two-year campaign to campuses across the country." The group intends to spend three days training groups organizing boycott and divestment campaigns.