The University of California system has sold about $30 million of its holdings in companies that operate private prisons after students voiced their opposition to such investments.  The move...came...as undergraduates throughout the nation have been pushing administrators to sell interests in fossil fuels and companies that aid Israeli occupation of the West Bank. In June, Columbia University divested from private prison companies after student pressure.

Representatives of the three companies the UC system divested from — Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, and G4S — defended their work. "These attacks … rely on politically motivated sources to advance the inaccurate notion that private prisons are somehow unaccountable," said Pablo Paez, vice president of corporate relations for the Geo Group...