15 August 2024: The war on Gaza set in motion a mass Palestine solidarity movement among university students in the US which eventually spread across the globe. While it’s difficult to track precise numbers, Harvard University identified protest activity at over 525 different academic institutions, universities, and school district offices in the US. They estimate that encampments were present at more than 130 of them, writes Pauline Ertel for Middle East Eye on Wednesday.
Middle East Eye has also taken a look at what has been achieved so far by the protests.
Figures from The Guardian show that a total of 36 encampments were set up across England, Wales and Scotland. An interactive map tracking student protests suggested that 174 encampments were erected and 247 protest actions were held across 35 different countries.
Some solidarity encampments lasted for several days under the motto “no business as usual” and hindered university activities to varying degrees. The longest-running encampment was Stanford University’s “Sit-In to Stop Genocide”, with the first encampment running from 20 October 2023 until mid-February 2024, and a second one starting in late April.
The protests and encampments were mobilised by various student organisations which have been active on the Palestine issue long before October 2023, most notably Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has over 200 chapters across the US.
Student protest movements are not new. Over the last decade, students have pushed universities to cut financial ties with fossil fuel producers, weapons manufacturers, tobacco companies, and prison firms.
But Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has provided students with momentum and a single unifying factor under which to unite and clearly articulate demands.
The global campus solidarity protests have been labelled by The Guardian as “perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s”.
Berkeley University professor Robert Reich, who spent weeks travelling around campus protests speaking to students and faculty, concluded that different to other protest movements which often combine an assortment of people and different goals, “this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people – most of them women and children – in Gaza”.
Students’ demands centred around calling for financial divestment from Israel – cutting endowments’ ties to Israeli companies that do business with Israel, enable or facilitate the Israeli occupation of Palestine and/or profit from the war on Gaza. Another key demand was the severance of academic ties to Israeli institutions.
Prominent companies on the divestment list include Boeing, which manufactures F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters, which the Israeli army has used extensively in attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, or the aerospace and defence giant, Lockheed Martin, which is involved in the production of Hellfire missiles, F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.
Within days of the start of the war in October, Lockheed Martin reported a 10 percent increase in their stock values.
Universities, especially in the US, have huge endowments and investment portfolios in place to secure their financial backing. While many portfolios consist of an array of investments, some universities invest in specific companies and industries. These comply with ethical standards to varying degrees.
While universities and other institutions are closed for the summer at the moment, many students have pledged to continue their protests when the new school year begins, if the war continues in Gaza.
Divestments
In April at Portland State University (PSU), students sent a letter to the president of PSU, Ann Cudd, demanding the university cut “ties” with Boeing, a major employer in the region. That same week, PSU agreed to students’ demands and ceased to accept donations of $150,000 from Boeing.
Cudd replied with a campus-wide message saying she had been motivated by “the passion with which these demands are being repeatedly expressed by some in our community” and that in response, “PSU will pause seeking or accepting any further gifts or grants from the Boeing Company”. She clarified that the university never had any “ties” with the Boeing.
The response from PSU was one of the first from university administrators to distance their academic institution from a major weapons manufacturer.
In Europe, at Ireland’s Trinity College, a five-day encampment ended in victory for the students. Trinity’s administration released a statement calling Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and the dehumanisation of its people “obscene”. And, after holding several meetings with students, agreed to divest from Israeli companies that conduct activities on occupied territory and appear on the UN blacklist.
Last month, London’s Kings College (KCL) became the first college in London to halt all direct investments in Lockheed Martin, defence contractor L3Harris technologies and Boeing. Divesting from companies with investments in Israel’s arms manufacturing was one of the three demands of KCL’s student protest movement.
Student representative Hassan Ali told Middle East Eye that the demand to halt indirect investments into banks and financial institutions supporting Israel and the demand to help rebuild Gaza’s educational institutions were still under review by the administration.
At York University in the UK, a freedom of information request revealed the university had invested a total of $42,656 into the tech and communications companies, Cisco Systems and Smiths Group. Research by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign found that Cisco Systems was being used by Israel to facilitate its occupation of Palestine, and the Smiths Group had applied to the British government for 32 arms export licences to Israel.
After a prolonged protest, the university agreed “to no longer hold investments in companies that primarily make or sell weapons”, PalSoc, York University’s Palestine solidarity campaign, said in a statement.
In Denmark, the country’s top school, the University of Copenhagen, announced that as of 29 May, the university would divest its holdings, worth $145,810, from AirBnb, Booking.com and eDream, which all operate in the occupied West Bank.
Other universities made less tangible, albeit meaningful alterations to their investment portfolios to improve transparency.
Brown University, an Ivy League university, for example, agreed to have its highest governing body vote on divestment in October 2024. The University of Minnesota responded to student’s requests by agreeing to be more transparent about its holdings in public companies.
On 4 May, Canada’s Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia agreed to disclose their investments within 30 days of the students filing a freedom of information request.
At Harvard University, interim president Alan M Garber reportedly engaged in lengthy discussions with students after which he announced that a meeting with the chair of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility will take place to address questions about Harvard’s endowment. The university, however, repeatedly stated that divestments and boycotts will not take place at Harvard and that the university’s endowment will not be used for political means.
Harvard University has investments in Israeli companies worth an estimated $200m.
Boycotts
In response to student protests, several universities engaged in a boycott of Israeli universities and exchange programmes.
On 21 May, the University of Helsinki in Finland suspended student exchanges with Israeli universities. A month later, Belgium’s Ghent University severed ties with all Israeli universities and research institutions, stating that the partnerships no longer aligned with the university’s human rights policy.
Following a vote by the University of Barcelona’s senate in May, the university broke all institutional and academic ties with Israel, including research institutes, companies, and other institutions in the country.
In the US, the University of California, Riverside, indefinitely suspended all study abroad programmes with Israel. The university also agreed to form a task force to “explore the removal of investments and endowments of companies involved in weapon manufacturing”, the agreement read. The task force will present a report to the Board of Trustees by the end of the winter quarter 2025.
California’s Pitzer College also dropped its study abroad programme at the University of Haifa in Israel from its list of pre-approved programs.
Earlier this week, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a union committed to safeguarding academic freedom with 500 chapters on campuses around the country, acknowledged that academic boycotts can be legitimate responses to certain circumstances and announced that its long-standing policy of opposing academic boycotts would be reversed.
“Academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education,” a statement approved by AAUP’s committee on academic freedom and tenure said.
While the statement did not specifically refer to Israel, the war on Gaza “was likely the reason” that the professors’ association chose to revisit its policy, Haaretz reported.
With summer drawing to an end, the question arises whether protests will continue in the fall.
Student organisations from various US universities have over the summer posted updates on their social media channels, indicating that protests will continue, with university administrators likely to impose harsher restrictions against on-campus demonstrations.
“Until victory, we will be back”, SJP Columbia University posted in June. The University of Berkeley SJP chapter last week posted a statement saying, “Until the genocide stops, until Palestine is free – we must and will continue. Life and business cannot go on as usual.”
