EXPLAINER
Many campus protesters have taken down Gaza solidarity encampments after colleges agreed to consider divestment from Israel.
College campuses around the world have exploded in recent weeks in protests by pro-Palestinian students and faculty members against Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 people have been killed.
In university after university, protesters are demanding that their schools sever any direct or indirect financial and academic links with Israel, including by divesting from companies with ties to Israel.
The protests have led to an array of different responses from universities. On Monday, Columbia University cancelled its main graduation or commencement ceremony. Many universities have called police and other law enforcement agencies on to campus. In the United States alone, more than 2,000 students have been arrested. Both protests and the campus crackdowns have also spread to other parts of the world – from Canada to Australia, and in multiple European nations. On Monday, students at Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom also set up encampments.
Yet, even as tension continues to soar at several campuses, students and administrators in some universities have managed to negotiate agreements that have acceded to some of the demands of the protesters.
So how have these universities managed protests – and what deals have students and administrators struck in these cases?
For the most part, the agreements that have helped calm tensions have revolved around a few common themes:
Columbia announced on Monday that there will be smaller, school-level ceremonies during this week and the next, instead of a large commencement.
Also on Monday, pro-Palestine student protesters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) resisted a university deadline to clear the encampment. This was after the institute’s president issued a warning letter to students where he asserted they would be suspended if they did not disperse voluntarily. Harvard authorities issued a similar letter to students on Monday, saying that the students who continue with the encampment “will be referred for involuntary leave from their Schools”.
Students at more than 100 universities are protesting across the US. Their counterparts in at least 20 campuses outside of the US are protesting and several of these protests are also encampments.
While some students and those supporting them have welcomed the breakthroughs with university officials, others have criticised the deals as inadequate. Northwestern University is a case in point.
Immediately after the deal, two Palestinian students at the university said they were proud to “have a seat at a table that we’ve never had before,” student-run newspaper The Daily Northwestern reported. Similarly, the student protesters at Brown celebrated the deal after the encampment was dismantled.
Here is another idea #ColumbiaUniversity, instead of turning your campus into a police state https://t.co/AIBV4N0dZ5
— Matteo Farinella (@matteofarinella) May 1, 2024
However, not everyone has hailed the deals as a win.
this is NOT good. The divestment is NON BINDING and the vote won’t happen until OCTOBER. Administration win for this https://t.co/ty2OGN2WwM
— lucas 📕 (@lucas_s21122) May 1, 2024
The Daily Northwestern reported that some students were disappointed that the deal did not involve divestment.
On the other hand, critics of the pro-Palestine protests have also accused the universities of buckling under pressure in reaching the agreements.
Not only is it a major cave, it’s also got major anti-Semitic implications
Dude weird it’s like the “until our demands are met” Rutgers protester-agitator branch planned it that way https://t.co/7n3HuNXNbu
— AAPL Tree (@AAPLTree) May 3, 2024
On May 1, two graduate students and one first-year undergraduate student at Northwestern University sued the institute in a breach of contract lawsuit, saying that the university breached its own rules by allowing the encampments. The lawsuit also criticised the agreement for allowing student protesters to stay on campus until June 1.
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