In the past month, more than 300 students from colleges in the United States — including Pomona College, Brown University, Columbia University, New York University, Yale University and the University of Southern California — have been arrested in demonstrations calling for the liberation of Palestine from Israel’s occupation and an end to Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent response prompted worldwide conversations on relations between Israel and Palestine leading to a surge in protests, sit-ins and teach-ins, particularly on college and university campuses. At the 5Cs, students and faculty alike began to grapple with the weight of the violence and as Israel’s retaliatory siege has only escalated in the over six months since Oct. 7, collegiate activism has continued to rise.
Notably, students have increasingly called for institutions to divest from the Israeli government and Israeli-affiliated companies. Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA) released their demands in a Dec. 2 instagram post pinned on their page of over 4,000 followers.
“We demand that Pomona College divest from all weapons manufacturers and all institutions that aid the ongoing occupation of Palestine,” the post reads.
Though demonstrations and protests are not new, these past two months have seen an immense uptick in administration response, heavily through police force and legal charges against student protestors.
In an April 8 post from Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine, they pointed to the recent increase in militarization at the 5Cs and called for students to come together against it.
“This is more important now than ever before,” they wrote. “We need all hands on deck to oppose police repression.”
Despite the latest surge in the escalation of administrative response, legal actions against dissenting students have been taken by colleges for months.
On Nov. 8, 20 Brown University students and members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now were arrested during a sit-in following a rally in support of Palestine.
Those participating in the sit-in specifically called for divestment based on Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies report, which was released in March 2020 and recommended divestment from companies associated with Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land.
One of the 20 Brown students arrested in November, who requested to stay anonymous, recalled how the lack of communication from the administration transpired during the sit-in that led to the arrests.
“Christina Paxson, [president of the university], did not speak to us once,” the student said in an interview with TSL. “I would have thought that our president or at least some higher-up would have at least called in to have a discussion with us and they didn’t.”
That same night, all 20 students were released from the Providence Police Department and their charges were later dropped; however, on Dec. 11, 41 more Brown students were arrested for a demonstration in University Hall — the same building the 20 previous students occupied — but their charges have not been dropped.
In a March 12 statement on Instagram, the 41 students and members of Brown Divest Coalition arrested Dec. 11 announced their pleas of not guilty on the charges against them and emphasized the symbolic nature of Brown’s unprecedented use of police force and what that means for its relationship with students.
“Never in University history has Brown pursued criminal charges against student activists to the point of conviction,” the statement read. “Brown’s political choice to selectively leverage the carceral system against its students sends a clear message: The University values making an example of its own students to intimidate the campus community and shut down meaningful dialogue more than it values both its students’ individual futures and the community resources that Brown continues to drain.”
Now, four months after the 41 Brown students were arrested, school administrations across the country are cracking down on demonstrations, many with the aid of the police. The April 5 arrest of the 20 5C students at Pomona —whose charges have not been dropped and four of the seven Pomona students are still facing suspension — came at the start of a nationwide string of mass arrests of collegiate protesters.
The most severe of these administrative responses came on April 18 at Columbia University after its president Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep a student encampment resulting in the arrests of over 100 students. Students had set up the “Gaza solidarity encampment” on the university’s South Lawn, pitching dozens of tents, hosting speakers and calling for divestment.
Still, over a week into the action, the encampment is still active as students remain on the Lawn and are currently in negotiations with Columbia administration.
Despite their geographical distance, each of these movements are connected to one another and are situated within a much larger global context. At an April 11 rally in support of the 5C students arrested on April 5, one speaker called for students to remember why they are protesting; that even with the national attention on student arrests, this should not distract from their goals of Palestinian liberation.
“Our sit-in was one drop in an ocean indebted to and aligned with the Palestinian-led worldwide boycott, divest and sanction movement,” the student said.
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