Over the past weeks, a massive wave of solidarity has spilled across US university campuses, despite mounting repression.
Students at New York’s Columbia University had voted to divest university funds from companies complicit in Israeli militarism and apartheid back in 2020. But the former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger refused to carry out the student’s wishes. After months of watching the Israeli state’s actions unfold in Gaza, students decided to take direct action. Inspired by the historic 1968 student occupation, an encampment of 60 tents was set up at the Columbia campus on 17 April 2024.
BREAKING ‼️
As of 4 AM this morning, Columbia University students have occupied the center of campus, launching our Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
We demand divestment and an end to Columbia’s complicity in genocide. pic.twitter.com/9rAbnNtetp— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) April 17, 2024
This week, hundreds of staff walked out of work to demonstrate solidarity with the students. The staff’s action was triggered by the faculty’s decision to ask police to remove students who were occupying the campus.
New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in riot gear arrested over 120 people on 18 and 19 April. But the students returned, with a new 100-tent-strong encampment erected soon after, and a civil rights complaint filed against the university’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students.
Riot police violently disperse Pro-Palestine demonstrators at the encampment located inside Ohio State University in Columbus. pic.twitter.com/O6rcTxOpny
— War Watch (@WarWatchs) April 26, 2024
Students and staff have hit back at accusations of anti-semitism. Professor Susan Bernofsky, who is a Jewish member of staff at Columbia, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that “I do feel that the students are highly critical of Israeli politics, and I do not believe that is inherently antisemitic at all. And I do not feel threatened as a Jewish faculty member in any way by what’s happening on campus.”
The students are demanding that the university divests from companies complicit in the genocide being committed against Palestinians in Gaza. Their slogan is “We will not stop, we will not rest. Disclose. Divest.”
‼️🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A large crowd rallies in front of Columbia’s gates in support of the student encampment inside. ALL OUT TO COLUMBIA NOW!
📍115th and Broadway pic.twitter.com/YgDtcgOJ7K
— ANSWER Coalition (@answercoalition) April 26, 2024
Students have occupied many other university campuses in the past weeks. These include Harvard, Emory, Pomona, New York University, Yale University, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and The New School.
Yale students recently launched a hunger strike over the university’s complicity in Israel’s actions. They wrote: “History will remember. We demand that by the morning of this Friday, 4/12/2024, you make a public statement committing to divest from all weapons manufacturing companies contributing to Israel’s assault on Palestine. We demand that at next Saturday’s Yale Corporation board meeting, you and the rest of the board discuss plans for divestment and release a public statement acknowledging that the board has done so.”
In recent days, new protests have erupted on campuses in San Antonio, Texas CCNY and Pittsburgh.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is a Palestinian group promoting an academic boycott of Israeli universities, and university divestment from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. They wrote, in solidarity with the campus resistance, “The selfless determination of students seeking to rid their campuses of ties to Israel’s regime of apartheid and genocide against millions of Palestinians, in the face of shameful repression by university administrations and police, gives us hope.”
PACBI continued: “This current historic wave builds on the mobilizations, academic boycott and divestment motions, encampments, occupations, walkouts, and teach-ins by students and faculty throughout the US and across the world over the past months.”
The statement concluded with a call for other campuses to join the divestment movement. They wrote “This is precisely the type of peaceful disruption of business-as-usual that is needed to help stop Israel’s #GazaGenocide and divest from and sanction Israeli apartheid.”
