‘The Student Revolution Will Help Free Palestine Within Our Lifetime’

PROTESTORS JUST STOPPED LAPD FROM ENTERING THE ENCAMPMENT!!
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The police repression unleashed on many of these students and teachers is a response, many have said, to the threat their governments perceive of a loss of support for Israel, nuclear-armed colony in Palestine. In Paris, where student protestors have set up encampments at the University of Paris Sorbonne and at Sciences Po, Ziad Majed, a professor of political science told the media:

“Sciences Po is considered by the French government as a sacred place, whose role is to produce the elites of the country. A counter-model has emerged inside this elite institution, which is very worrying in the eyes of the establishment. The government is very scared that these students’ protests could spread to other French universities and is thus trying everything in its power to avoid that.”

At the Sorbonne, protestors chanted, “The police are everywhere, justice is nowhere!”

And as police forcibly removed protestors from the Columbia campus, students chanted, “NYPD, KKK, IDF they’re all the same!”

The CUAD student group is also demanding “No land grabs, whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking, or Palestine. Cease expansion, provide reparations, and support housing for low-income Harlem residents. No development by Columbia without real community control.” Lenapehoking is the swath of land around New York that was home to the Lenape Indigenous people until their genocide by European settlers from the 17th century. Above, New Jersey schoolchildren reenact a massacre of the Lenape people in 1910, to celebrate the founding of Jersey City, beside Manhattan, which originated as the walled enclave of Bergen meant to corral Lenape survivors violently displaced by European colonialists

Almost reflexively to divide the protests, establishment politicians including Democrat mayor Eric Adams and Mike Johnson have been describing them as “anti-Semitic.” Jewish Voice for Peace, which has organised huge protests since the US-Israel genocide began and is perhaps the largest anti-Zionist Jewish-led organisation in the world, stated in response to similar allegations by the White House that: “Yesterday’s statement by the White House, like the administrators of Columbia University, dangerously and inaccurately presumes that all Jewish students support the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. This assumption is actively harming Palestinian and Jewish students.”

After earlier threats by the Columbia administration, the campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine pointed out that: “Columbia’s threat to call the National Guard follows two days of interfaith celebrations, including a Passover Seder – organized by anti-Zionist Jewish students – that contextualized the story of the Jewish Exodus in a millennia-long movement for freedom whose latest mission is an end to genocide, apartheid and displacement of Palestinians today.”

Besides evicting students from their dorms during final exams (reportedly including many who weren’t at the protest, and others, including Palestinian nationals, who weren’t on campus that day) and denying them access to bathrooms, food and water, Columbia’s “disciplinary” actions against international students also put their visa status in jeopardy. The police violence and mass arrests on April 30 followed faculty offers to negotiate with the students that they said in a statement had been “rebuffed or ignored” by the administration.

At the New York University downtown, alumni and student organisations demanded that their university shut down a campus in Tel Aviv which “bars Palestinian students, faculty and affiliates from accessing academic opportunities at the site because of their ethnicity,” contradicting “NYU’s principles of academic freedom and egalitarianism.”

The alumni letter also asked that NYU, particularly its Tandon School of Engineering, reconsider its involvement in arms research and development and to cease collaboration with arms manufacturers – the United States is Israel’s largest weapons supplier while India is its largest customer.

Police also stormed the encampment at the City College of New York uptown where the NYPD chief was seen lowering the Palestinian flag and raising the American flag as the surrounding police who had just attacked teenagers cheered. As these encampments were being raided, another was set up by the students of Fordham University midtown (which police were taking down at the time of writing) while students at Brown University in Rhode Island announced that their administration had agreed to vote on divesting from the Israeli occupation.

Demonstrators face police on the NYU campus on Monday, where more than 150 were arrested / Alex Kent AFP

The violent police action invited by the Columbia administration was met with an expansion of the worldwide Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel, as over 1,400 academics around the world signed an open letter initiating “an academic and cultural boycott” of Columbia University and Barnard College until they revoke the suspensions and other disciplinary actions against student protestors and call off the police with amnesty to student protestors. They also asked the Columbia and Barnard university presidents to resign, writing:

“Israel has undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy the Palestinian education system. Thousands of students, teachers and professors have been martyred, and 80% of educational facilities in Gaza have been partially or wholly destroyed, including every university, the Gaza Municipal Archive and hundreds of libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses.

“We are appalled by the Columbia administration’s decision to call the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group onto campus, in full riot gear, to arrest over one hundred peacefully protesting students. At the time of the arrest, NYPD representatives stated that ‘students were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever’ and that the assessment of ‘danger’ was the University’s alone.”

“We endorse and reiterate the demands of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment: divest all of Columbia's finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine; and ensure accountability by increasing transparency around financial investments.

“We stand in full solidarity with the brave students, clerical staff, graduate workers, post-doctoral workers, and faculty at Columbia, Barnard, and Teacher’s College resisting genocide, from Gaza, from Palestine, to Morningside Heights.”

Many faculty members at Columbia, Barnard and Teachers College have stood by the students and graduate workers. Besides forming a protective human barricade around the encampment to stall police action earlier, they led a walkout on April 22 and at Barnard passed a vote of no confidence in college president Laura Rosenbury, with support from 77% of participating faculty. Teachers in other campuses have also faced police violence while supporting antiwar students on campus. In this the university administrations stand isolated, and protesting students at Columbia called on their professors to strike work after university president Nemat Minouche Shafik emailed the campus community declaring that the university “will not divest from Israel.”

Columbia literature professor Susan Bernofsky told the media: “I do not feel that this project is anti-Semitic in any way. I do feel that the students are highly critical of Israeli politics, and I do not believe that that is inherently anti-Semitic at all. And I do not feel threatened as a Jewish faculty member in any way by what’s happening here on this campus—except by the arrest of many of our students.”

Law school professor Bassam Khawaja told the media that Shafik was required to consult the university senate before calling the police on campus, and had done so, but was denied permission, and went ahead and called in the police anyway. Yesterday, student groups shared a letter from Shafik requesting the NYPD to remain on campus till May 17, until after graduation, likely to prevent students setting up another encampment.

Asked what should be done about the war on Palestine, Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs told the media: “What should be done about it is straightforward… What the government of Israel is doing is unconscionable, world opinion is united against Israel, the problem is the United States remains complicit in these war crimes… What of course a strong, effective US president would do would be to stop the flow of munitions, if those munitions are used for slaughter, for killing tens of thousands of innocent people, which is exactly what's happening… We need to stop the absolute war crime policymaking of the Israeli government, and that can be done by saying, as the US has on other occasion, No more arms!”

Former faculty member and historian Robin Kelly in an open letter to Shafik said he was “appalled by your draconian, unethical, illegal, and dishonest actions toward your own students and faculty.”

“In the name of keeping students safe, you bring the NYPD on campus to break up a peaceful encampment, thereby endangering hundreds of student protesters—many of whom are Jewish students and students of color—and the campus community at large. Given the NYPD’s racist record, the fact that you would subject Black, Latinx, Arab and South Asian students to police repression suggests that you are either unaware or indifferent to the trauma our communities have experienced with the police.

“And your administration’s decision to evict students from their dorms, strip them of their meal cards, and have them charged with trespassing is nothing less than vindictive. After taking their tuition and fees, you render them houseless and potentially food insecure. How does this make students safe?”

Kelly countered the rhetoric of “lawlessness” by pointing to the administration’s double standards in taking no action against those who had attacked student protestors earlier in the week by dousing them with a toxic chemical fluid, or suspended faculty members like business school assistant professor Shai Davidai, “who targets and identifies antiwar students on his social media account, putting their safety in jeopardy”.

In the growing climate of unity between university faculty and students, Kelly pointed to Shafik’s targeting of teachers as well, including postcolonial queer theorist Joseph Massad and law and sexuality scholar Katherine Frank, in Shafik’s televised statements to a Congressional committee before the police were sent in. He said: “You are keeping no one safe, except for your donors, trustees, and Columbia’s endowment. Among these same trustees and donors are persons who have vowed to punish these students by blocking them from future employment.” Recalling Shafik’s earlier positions at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, he said: “Universities are not supposed to resemble dictatorships or Fortune 500 companies”.

Noting that a number of US university administrations had invited police brutality on their faculty and students Kelly concluded:

“This is a dark day for U.S. higher education, especially at a time when right-wing extremists are waging war on academic freedom and all manner of critical studies. Yet, as the courageous students you had arrested and suspended have been saying, it is a much darker day for the people of Palestine. Gaza’s universities are now rubble, many of its faculty, staff, students, and administrators—including three university presidents—have been killed, and most of its libraries, archives, and bookstores destroyed. These students are risking their futures to demand that universities divest their holdings from Israel and weapons manufacturers, and that their leaders act in an ethical manner—in how they invest, how they relate to their own neighboring communities, and how they treat students, faculty, and staff.

“In other words, they are doing what you should be doing: leading. It is time to follow their lead”.

Asking “How did Palestine win the battle of American universities?” Tunisian journalist Ahmed Nazif observed: “To demonstrate the importance of what is happening to Palestine, its enormity must be stated to the enemy camp… These private universities, with high budgets, exorbitant fees, and often meager acceptance rates, train the country’s elite, but they are also important and well-funded research centers. The work carried out there often serves the interests of the military-academic-industrial complex. Therefore, it receives huge funds from major companies, digital and military, as well as funds from ‘Israel’ itself”.

Besides the enormous work of Palestinians resisting occupation and educating others around the world, the civil rights movement in the United States and decolonial movements in the former colonies have helped liberate the younger generation of Whites from the racist worldview of older generations, which would insist that those outside the pale of Europe are less than human. Banners of support for Palestine were visible in the Black Lives Matter protests that spread after the police killed Eric Garner and later George Floyd in the United States, and banners proclaiming Black Lives Matter were raised during the Great March of Return in occupied Palestine.

The Columbia University Apartheid Divest yesterday recalled the police had stormed Hamilton Hall, now Hind’s Hall, on the very anniversary of the day, 56 years ago, that they stormed the same building during the protests against the war on Vietnam. They wrote:

“The world sees you clearly, Columbia. Your only goal, which you will defend at any cost, is to enrich your endowment at the expense of 40,000 Palestinian martyrs and every student in your care.”

“This takeover [of Hind’s Hall] has set the stage for a new period of escalations as students' demands remain clear: a total liberation from the university's participation in the Western imperial system.”

Police attack pro-Palestine demonstrators at the City College of New York, in NYC, on April 30 / Spencer Platt

To “students and their supporters” they said, “academia is meant to advance our understanding of humanity... with Gaza as our metric we call on you to resist this militant, war making status quo.”

And “to every professor who has expressed shock at the events of last night: if you do not take action to demand divestment and an end to police presence on campus by withholding your labor, you too are complicit. You must do more than make statements. You must strike. Do not grade exams. Do not teach classes. Our universities which put profit over life must grind to a halt until our demands are met: Divestment, disclosure, an end to campus militarization, and amnesty for all. The student revolution will help free Palestine within our lifetime.”