Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment explains why it’s recommending divestment from two defense contractors

LOUISVILLE — Shareholder resolutions filed by the PC(USA)’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment with GE Aerospace and Palantir Technologies each received modest 8.3% support during recent shareholder meetings. Those votes came ahead of the 227^th General Assembly’s Financial Stewardship and Witness Committee considering FIN-07, which calls for selective divestment of the two defense contractors. The committee will meet online June 22-24.

Those companies, according to MRTI’s rationale in FIN-07, “show no inclination to change their behavior or begin efforts to limit connections of their products with human rights violations.”

Palantir Technologies Inc. is a software development company. According to MRTI, its technology provides software and services to “state militaries and agencies with documented records of violating human rights and international humanitarian law violations, including companies in the Middle East and Africa as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

GE Aerospace designs and produces commercial and defense aircraft engines. MRTI said the company “supplied engines for aircraft and ships to militaries with records of international humanitarian violations” in countries including Egypt, India and Saudi Arabia, “and provided weapon system products that have been used in Israel’s military operations in Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023.”

Both resolutions asked shareholders to approve a request of each corporation’s board of directors to pay for an independent third-party report on the due diligence process the company uses to determine if its defense-related products, technologies and services contribute to human rights harms or violations of international humanitarian law in conflict-affected and high-risk areas.

But MRTI’s engagement with a third company, GE Vernova, the renewable energy arm of General Electric, resulted in a prompt response by company officials to MRTI’s outreach letter. The company spoke with MRTI twice in 2025, including  through its Sustainability Director and Executive Human Rights Counsel. “Given GEV’s responsiveness and willingness to dialogue and quality human rights reporting, MRTI recommends continued corporate engagement” with GE Vernova, the rationale to FIN-07 states.

Simon Doong, Associate for Corporate, Community and Church Engagement, offered up these reasons for MRTI’s recommendations in FIN-07:

• GE Vernova was “responsive and demonstrated good human rights diligence processes with its customers” and was “open to feedback.” That’s why no divestment action is recommended.
• GE Aerospace was slow to respond and “does not go beyond U.S. compliance law to screen customers.”
• Palantir Technologies was also slow to respond and “did not alleviate MRTI’s concerns about the use of its products in relation to human rights harms in various contexts, including ICE, the [U.S.] Department of War, and the Israeli Defense Force.”

The Rev. Marcella Glass, Chair of MRTI, said, “MRTI followed the appropriate process in engaging these three companies, as laid out in the General Assembly directive. Unfortunately, despite our engagement it became apparent that future efforts would not result in meaningful change with GE Aerospace and Palantir. Therefore, we recommended selective divestment from those two companies.”

Dr. Bob Ross, a member of the Steering Committee of the Palestine Justice Network, which pushed for the overture naming GE Aerospace and Palantir for focused engagement during the 226^th General Assembly (2024), said that Palestinians have been asking the world since 2005 to use divestment as a tool to help them win their liberation from occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing “and now genocide.”

“Our church partners in Palestine reiterated this call in 2009 with the Kairos Palestine document and again in 2025 with the second Kairos Palestine statement,” Ross noted.

According to Ross, in addition to what Palantir Technologies and GE Aerospace help the Israeli military to bring about in the Middle East, Palantir is in “active partnership” with ICE in the United States, “helping the Trump administration determine who to detain and deport. And GE Aerospace has also worked directly with the Royal Saudi Air Force, which has repeatedly launched airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen.”

“If we divest from these companies,” Ross said, “we will signal to the world that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) rejects genocide and refuses to profit from human rights abuses in Palestine, Yemen, the United States or anywhere else in the world.”

“As Jesus taught us, we side with the poor and the oppressed and follow the way of nonviolent resistance to imperial powers.”