For more than five months, students across the United States have rallied to support Palestinians facing genocide at the hands of Israeli forces. It is becoming increasingly clear that, like Angela Davis, a growing number of young Americans see advocacy for Palestine as a “moral litmus test for the rest of the world.”
Mobilization is not an easy task. Students supporting the liberation of Palestine have been stabbed, shot, run over, and doused with chemicals by Israeli occupation forces. They have been suspended, arrested and disciplined. They had to rely on their own labor and the limited funds raised for the protests.
In contrast, pro-Israel students have an established donor network, a campus Hillel, and a mainstream media ear that amplifies complaints that pro-Palestinian activities are anti-Semitic.
University authorities concerned about endowments are also bending over backwards to please powerful individuals and groups who are not afraid to denounce pro-Palestinian activities and discipline students on their behalf.
Palestine advocates, with greater external resources and less protection, are increasing their knowledge and creativity, building alliances with communities across racial, class, and religious communities, and employing a wide range of tactics and strategies. There is. Their actions range from long-term plans to spontaneous eruptions and everything in between.
Some organizing efforts are already bearing fruit. The University of California system has had some notable successes. At the University of California, Davis, pro-Palestinian protests led to a historic student government vote on February 15 to heed calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). As a result, the student body will refrain from spending $20 million on companies on the BDS list.
On the same day, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Graduate Student Association called for divestment from Israel. On February 20, UCLA's student government unanimously passed a resolution calling for the university to strip students of their tuition fees due to “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.”
On February 29, the Associated Students of the University of California, Riverside also passed a resolution to completely divest from companies complicit in Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. On March 6, Associated Students at the University of California, San Diego also voted in favor of the divestment bill.
In other regions, results are mixed. At Stanford University, where I teach, students challenge the university to condemn Israeli apartheid and genocide, support Palestinian students, identify anti-Palestinian bias in teaching and research, and encourage others to: They managed to maintain a 24-hour sit-in for 120 days, demanding that measures be taken. Divestment initiatives.
When the university suddenly demanded an end to the sit-in, more than 500 students defended the rally, many staying overnight and forcing the university to arrest them. Although some administrators have privately expressed some sympathy, no concrete concessions have been made, so students continue to demonstrate, disrupt campus life, and wage a campus-wide divestment campaign.
Although Stanford University officials have yet to make any meaningful reforms, student organizers are well aware of their accomplishments. “Of course, it was a protest at the end of the day, but we also created a space for discussion. And ironically, universities are hell-bent on creating those spaces, and creating these kinds of conversations.” “What the sit-in did was do what the university was trying to do.” said Farah, a student organizer at Stanford University, in a recent interview on my podcast, “Speaking out of Place.”
What both long-term campaigns and organic, explosive takeovers have succeeded in doing is fundamentally changing the campus environment. In addition to the passionate and very vocal exchanges between people with different views that we have seen in marches and demonstrations, we have seen months of deliberate and organized divestment campaigns and long sit-ins. Conversations, debates, and debates have continued over the years.
Each of these activities involves bringing in guest speakers (often prominent Palestinian activists, artists, and poets) to fill gaps in education that U.S. universities are not willing to fill. Students therefore learn from a wider range of sources and themselves play a role in educating others.
In the months since October 7, the entire landscape of American universities has changed regarding Palestine. Some have drawn similarities to the anti-war student movement during the Vietnam War. The student newspaper at the University of California, San Diego, reported on the pro-Palestinian rally in which more than 2,000 people participated, saying, “Even student demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s had no precedent for such a large number of participants.”
As someone who was a student at the University of California, Berkeley during the Vietnam War and participated in those demonstrations and today's Palestine Liberation Rally, I was struck by some obvious similarities.
First, in both cases, student movements challenged mainstream media's portrayal of the war and the official positions of university authorities. The protests have helped educate the public and expose the role that higher education institutions play in national and global power relations. University administrators, faced with complicity in war and deliberate interference with certain types of knowledge and learning, were unable to hide “crimes of omission.''
Second, these protests aligned the struggles for the liberation of Vietnam and the liberation of Palestine with both national and international struggles, and were characterized by broad multi-ethnic and multi-ethnic coalitions linking the local, national and international. I was there. These connections mean that even those in small, geographically isolated institutions don't feel isolated or alone, but part of something much bigger.
At the same time, I was also struck by an important and striking difference. American college students saw their personal lives as intimately involved in the Vietnam War. Many of us lost friends in Vietnam, and some of us harbored people who evaded the draft or federal investigation because of their work in the movement. There was no lack of solidarity with the Vietnamese people, but there was no focus on the individual that we see today with regard to the genocide in Gaza or the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
I had never seen dozens of Vietnamese flags flying on campus like I do today, as well as other national symbols displayed by students. Students and other protesters use flags, keffiyeh, and other Palestinian symbols to embody Palestine in very moving and powerful ways.
Beyond the personal impact of the genocide in Gaza, American college students have demonstrated unprecedented solidarity in history, empathy and compassion for the Palestinian people, and the recognition that America has facilitated Israel's historic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. expressing anger at what happened.
When it comes to campus discussions about Palestine, there is no going back. It is precisely in the context of racism, police and state violence, and other forms of discrimination and brutality that the specific content of the struggle against genocide and apartheid in Palestine has grown in strength and breadth since the Vietnam era. This is because it reflected the sensibilities cultivated in the United States and other countries. It remains permanently in our cultural and political memory.
Right-wing attacks on “critical race theory,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” will not change this, nor will they last long in silencing those who criticize Israel for “anti-Semitism.” right.
Rather, the passion, energy, and dedication of today's youth has reignited the spirit of political activism and established a new norm of intergenerational collaboration.
While it is difficult to predict with certainty whether these movements on college campuses will have an impact on the broader national political climate, we can say the following: Each of these actions on campus has not only attracted the attention of the community; , we are also drawing out their participation.
And external communities are not just made up of individuals, but also include trade unions, church groups, and other civil society groups that force political change. More than 100 municipalities have now called for a ceasefire, and at least 85 members of parliament have done the same. Change is happening, but it is happening too slowly, and the student movement for Palestinian rights will not end or abate in the coming months.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.