Pro-Palestinian student activism on campuses allows for debate, learning, and greater pressure for political change, says Professor David Palumbo Liu, a professor at Lewis Hewlett Nixon College and professor of comparative literature at Stanford University.
Liu explains – in an article published by Al Jazeera English – that for more than 5 months, students have been in all United State They mobilize support for the Palestinians who are being subjected to genocide at the hands of the Israeli army, adding that it seems clear, day after day, that more young Americans see the defense of Palestine “A real moral test for the world,” as Angela Davis used to see it.
Professor Liu’s article continues as follows:
Mobilization is not easy. Students who support the liberation of Palestine have been stabbed, shot, run over, and sprayed with chemicals used by the Israeli occupation forces. They were suspended from school, arrested and subjected to disciplinary measures. They had to work and rely on the limited financial resources they were able to collect in order to organize their protest demonstrations.
In contrast, pro-Israel students have well-established donor networks and rely on Hillels International – the world’s largest Jewish campus organization – and the mainstream media to amplify their complaints that pro-Palestinian activism is anti-Semitic.
University administrations opposed supporters of Palestine
University administrations, wary of donor money, did their best to appease powerful individuals and groups who denounced pro-Palestinian activism, and did not hesitate to discipline opposing students on their behalf.
Palestine’s defenders, who suffer from a lack of resources and lack protection to a large extent, have become intelligent and creative, as they have begun to establish alliances with communities that are diverse in ethnicity, class, and religion, and have used multiple methods and strategies. Their actions range from long-term plans to spontaneous uprisings and interactions between these and those.
Some of the organizing processes they invented have yielded results, as some of them have achieved notable successes in colleges and institutes affiliated with the University of California. The pro-Palestinian campaigns resulted in a historic vote held by the Student Union on February 15 to respond to the call for…To boycott, divest, and impose sanctions (BDS). As a result, the Student Union refrains from investing any money from its $20 million budget in any company listed by the province.
Tangible achievements
On the same day, the UCLA Graduate Student Association invited… Los Angeles (UCLA) to divest from Israel. On February 20, the University of California Student Union voted unanimously in favor of asking the university to refrain from investing the tuition fees charged to students in anything related to business.Apartheid AndEthnic cleansing AndGenocide“.
On February 29, students enrolled at the University of California at Riverside also issued a decision to fully withdraw their investments from companies complicit in the genocide committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza strip. On March 6, students at the University of California, San Diego also voted in favor of the divestment bill.
Mixed results
But results elsewhere were mixed. At Stanford University, where I teach, students organized a round-the-clock sit-in for 120 days, demanding that the university condemn Israeli apartheid and genocide, support Palestinian students, identify anti-Palestinian biases in teaching and research, and implement initiatives Divestment.
When the university suddenly demanded the dispersal of the sit-in, more than 500 students gathered to defend it, and many of them remained stationed throughout the night and defied the university by arresting them. While some administrators privately expressed some degree of sympathy, no concrete concessions were made, so students continued to demonstrate, disrupt campus life, and redoubled their university-wide divestment campaign.
Although the Stanford administration has not yet made any meaningful changes, the students organizing the campaign are fully aware of their achievements. “Obviously it was a protest at the end of the day, but we also made room for dialogue,” Farah, one of the organizers of the protests at Stanford, told me in a recent interview on my podcast. “It’s ironic that the university was serious.” To create a space like this, she was desperate to create this kind of dialogue – and many officials admitted this to us, including the university president himself.” He added: “What the sit-in did was do what the university was trying to do.”
Radical change in university environments
What long-term campaigns and efforts to attract new supporters have succeeded in achieving without having to pay money for advertising is to radically change university environments. In addition to the emotional and vociferous interactions between those with differing viewpoints that we have witnessed at marches and demonstrations, deliberate and systematic divestment campaigns and prolonged sit-ins have continued months of conversations, dialogues, and debates.
Each of these measures involves bringing in guest speakers (often prominent Palestinian activists, artists, and poets) to fill gaps in student enlightenment that American universities have been happy to overlook. Therefore, students learn from a wide range of sources and work to educate others themselves.
In the months following October 7, the entire landscape on American universities regarding Palestine changed. Some began to draw comparisons with the anti-student movementFor war in Vietnam. A report by a student newspaper at the University of California, San Diego, about a pro-Palestine march – in which more than two thousand people participated – said: “A turnout of this kind was unprecedented, even for the student demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the sixties and seventies.”
Amazing similarities
As a former student at the University of California at Berkeley during the Vietnam War, and a participant in those demonstrations as well as today’s marches for the liberation of Palestine, I was struck by some clear similarities between the two cases.
FirstlyIn both cases the student protests challenged mainstream media coverage of the wars and the official positions of their university administrations. The protest movement contributed to educating the public and exposing the roles played by higher education institutions in influencing national and global power dynamics. University administrators were exposed to difficult situations because of their complicity in wars and their deliberate obstruction of certain types of knowledge and learning, and they were unable to hide behind their “sins of omission.”
secondlyThese protests aligned the struggles for the liberation of Vietnam and the liberation of Palestine with local and international struggles, and broad multi-racial and multi-ethnic alliances emerged linking the local, national and international struggles. These connections mean that even those who live in geographically isolated and smaller institutions do not feel separated or alone, but rather feel part of something much larger.
At the same time, I was struck by the dramatic and dramatic difference. The American students saw how their personal lives were inextricably intertwined with the Vietnam War.
Many of us lost friends in Vietnam, and some of us hid people avoiding the draft or federal investigation because of their work in the movement. There was no shortage of solidarity with the Vietnamese people, but there was not the same kind of focus on personal matters that we see now with regard to the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in West Bank.
Strong belief in the Palestinian cause
I have never seen dozens of Vietnamese flags flying in universities, or other national symbols displayed by students like we see today (with the Palestinian case). The students and other demonstrators waving flags and wearing keffiyehs and other Palestinian symbols, in very poignant and powerful ways, is an example that embodies their belief in the Palestinian cause.
Aside from the consequences that the genocide in Gaza may have on them personally, American university students express historically unprecedented solidarity, sympathy and concern for the Palestinian people, and their anger that the United States was the facilitator of the historic ethnic cleansing practiced by Israel against the Palestinians.
There is no going back when it comes to college student discourse on Palestine. The details of the struggle against genocide and apartheid in Palestine have gained strength and breadth precisely because sensitivities in the United States and elsewhere since the Vietnam era regarding racism and violence have simmered. The police, the state, and other forms of discrimination and cruelty have become engraved in our cultural and political memory.
There is no going back to pro-Palestine activism
No right-wing attacks on “critical race theory,” “diversity,” or “inclusion” will change that, nor will Israel’s critics continue to be silenced on charges of “Anti-Semitism“.
The passion, energy and commitment of today’s youth has revived the spirit of political activism and established intergenerational alliances as the new norm.
Although it is difficult to predict with certainty whether these movements on campuses will have an impact on the broader national political landscape, I think it is safe to say that each of these actions on campuses not only caught the attention of the local community, but got them involved.
The external community consists not only of individuals, but also includes unions, church groups and other civil society groups to force political change. Meanwhile, more than 100 municipalities have called for a ceasefire, and at least 85 members of Congress have done the same. While change is happening, it is moving at a very slow pace, which is why the coming months will not see an end or decline in student activism for Palestinian rights.