Students at a growing number of US colleges are gathering in protest encampments with a unified demand of their schools: stop doing business with Israel -- or any companies that support its ongoing war in Gaza.
The demand has its roots in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a decades-old campaign against Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. The movement has taken on new strength as the Israel-Hamas war surpasses the six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza have sparked international calls for a cease-fire.
Inspired by ongoing protests and the arrests last week of more than 100 students at Columbia University, students from Massachusetts to California are now gathering by the hundreds on campuses, setting up tent camps and pledging to stay put until their demands are met.
"We want to be visible," said Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who noted that students at the university have been pushing for divestment from Israel since 2002. "The university should do something about what we are asking for, about the genocide that is happening in Gaza. They should stop investing in this genocide."
Campus protests began after Hamas' deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
WHAT DO THE STUDENTS WANT TO SEE HAPPEN?
The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel's military efforts in Gaza -- and in some cases, from Israel itself.
Protests on many campuses have been orchestrated by coalitions of student groups, often including local chapters of organisations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. They are banding together as umbrella groups, such as MIT's Coalition Against Apartheid and the University of Michigan's Tahrir Coalition.
The groups largely act independently, though there has been some coordination. After students at Columbia formed their encampment last week, they held a phone call with about 200 other people interested in starting their own camps. But mostly it has happened spontaneously, with little collaboration between campuses, organisers said.
The demands vary from campus to campus. Among them:
- Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel.
- Stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that aid the country's military efforts.
- Stop investing college endowments with money managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors.
- Be more transparent about what money is received from Israel and what it is used for.
Student governments at some colleges in recent weeks have passed resolutions calling for an end to investments and academic partnerships with Israel. Such bills were passed by student bodies at Columbia, Harvard Law, Rutgers and American University.
HOW ARE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES RESPONDING?
Officials at several universities say they want to have a conversation with students and honour their right to protest. But they also are echoing the concerns of many Jewish students that some of the demonstrators' words and actions amount to antisemitism -- and they say such behaviour will not be tolerated.
Sylvia Burwell, president of American University, rejected a resolution from the undergraduate senate to end investments and partnerships with Israel.
"Such actions threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community," Burwell said in a statement.
Burwell cited the university's "longstanding position" against the decades-old BDS movement.
Protesters in the movement have drawn parallels between Israel's policy in Gaza -- a tiny strip of land tucked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to about 2.3 million (23 lakh) Palestinians -- to apartheid in South Africa. Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized control of the strip in 2007.
Opponents of BDS say its message veers into antisemitism. In the past decade alone, more than 30 states have enacted laws or directives blocking agencies from hiring companies that support the movement. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it a "pernicious threat" in 2019, saying it fuelled bias against Jews on US campuses.
Asked this week whether he condemned "the antisemitic protests", President Joe Biden said he did. "I also condemn those who do not understand what is going on with the Palestinians," Biden said after an Earth Day event on Monday.
At Yale, where dozens of student protesters were arrested on Monday, President Peter Salovey noted in a message to campus that, after hearing from students, the university's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility had recommended against divesting from military weapons manufacturers.
President Minouche Shafik at Columbia said there should be "serious conversations" about how the university can help in the Middle East. But "we cannot have one group dictate terms", she said in a statement on Monday.
