If these companies are profitable, they will still be profitable.
Until it becomes politically untenable to provide contracts to these companies or make laws that fuel the industry.
A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction.
Why would you hold stock in something if the morals you wish to champion will make it less profitable or non-existent? Better to drop that cash in something like renewables which are going to see growth for decades to come and give you warm fuzzies at the same time.
There's also the press angle:
Press: You invest in private prisons
University: But we do so with good intentions, we wish to improve the...
Public: Ugh, too many words. These guys are clearly jerks.
You have a valid point. It doesn't make sense for a single investor to actively work against their financial interests by devaluing stock they own. But that shouldn't necessarily hold true for institutional investors, especially a university like Columbia that already has a multi billion dollar endowment and doesn't have the financial pressure to be forced to make the most profitable decisions. For example, PETA owns SeaWorld shares for the purpose of attending and protesting the company at their stockholder meetings. PETA would be perfectly happy to lose their investment and they would just attribute that as the cost of accomplishing their mission.
Really divestment is the no man's land between working for change and supporting the status quo. Instead of doing good, Columbia just decided to stop doing bad.
PETA's job is to fight what they believe to be animal cruelty.
Columbia's job is to provide quality education. Protesting at CCA stockholder meetings doesn't advance student education...
Until it becomes politically untenable to provide contracts to these companies or make laws that fuel the industry.
A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction.
Why would you hold stock in something if the morals you wish to champion will make it less profitable or non-existent? Better to drop that cash in something like renewables which are going to see growth for decades to come and give you warm fuzzies at the same time.
There's also the press angle:
Press: You invest in private prisons
University: But we do so with good intentions, we wish to improve the...
Public: Ugh, too many words. These guys are clearly jerks.