No US university endowment has divested from companies linked to Israel despite intensifying demands from pro-Palestinian students in campus protests across the country, according to the network that has long championed the move.

Legal and practical obstacles to divestment and the difficulties of building a consensus on the issue have constrained action in response to a campaign launched nearly two decades ago.

Omar Barghouti, an alumnus of Columbia University and co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights in 2005, said he was unaware of any higher educational institutions that had sold shares, although a number have held faculty and student votes in favour of doing so and some have introduced academic boycotts.