On April 5, Pomona College’s administration called deputies from four surrounding police departments to arrest 20 students who were protesting at Alexander Hall. This incident shocked many at the Claremont Colleges, but looking at campus protests across the country, it’s clear that this escalation was only natural.
The unprecedented presence of police on Pomona’s campus on April 5 was deplorable and should rightfully be condemned. But I’m not here to talk about that. Instead, I want to draw attention to important facts about what these protests represent. The student activism happening today is about more than just Pomona and its administration. These protests reflect a larger problem within protestors’ rights — and reveal why protesting against Israel is so difficult.
In the aftermath of the militarization of Alexander Hall, the pressure for Pomona to divest from Israel has only increased.
President Gabi Starr has deflected her responsibility, arguing in an email on April 15 that the issue of the suspensions is no longer in her hands.
Pomona’s administration is not acting alone. Last week, mass demonstrations at Columbia University were alarmingly broken up by riot police.
Notably, the language employed by the university’s administration — similar to Pomona’s — justifies the extreme intervention by disavowing the actions of protestors as antisemitic.
Why are protests against Israeli violence in Gaza being so intensely repressed?
Protests are meant to be disruptive. That is, in fact, the point of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. The language around what is and is not acceptable action in protesting ignores the design to disrupt acceptability politics. After all, if the protests were not disruptive, they would be ignored.
When Pomona’s unions picketed two years ago, they strategically decided to picket during Family Weekend outside of Pomona’s Frary Dining Hall — a decision that brought them significant attention and contributed to their concessions in contract negotiations.
Protestors have always been seen as disruptive and labeled as nuisances by detractors, but that is the entire point. And it works.
Protestors’ rights to demonstrate are protected under not just the First Amendment, but several decades of jurisprudence and precedent — rights which are being rapidly rolled back in a process that is extremely selective.
Right now, protests of Israel are being repressed by the United States for historical reasons. The characterization of Pomona’s Palestinian Liberation movement has been extreme — in a way other protests on campus, like the union protests two years ago, have not been.
However, the things said today about Palestinian Liberation Protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement have been said about protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the AIDS crisis.
These patterns of repression have reemerged.
American investment in the Middle East has long supported Israel, starting during the Cold War, as a regional power supporting American interests. This investment has created deep financial and political ties, which many institutions like Pomona depend on.
To put it bluntly, because of colonial history, Israel has money. Palestine does not. And, the support for Israel and its government by college campuses is dependent on donor politics.
Last year, for example, multi-billionaire donor and trustee Marc Rowan — who is the CEO of the powerful equity group Apollo Global, which has significant financial ties to Israel — issued statements writing that they would cease to financially support UPenn if Liz Magill remained president. In response, Magill resigned, revealing the college’s reliance on donor support.
Additionally, students who have been given platforms to speak are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. This means that they lean towards the stance held by conservative college administrations and their pro-Israeli donors.
The rhetoric from political pundits on the right has called on a narrative that frequently invokes an identitarian religious conflict: Christendom against Islam. Islam, however contradictory to this narrative, is a religion which is also steeped in Abrahamic tradition, like Judaism and Christianity.
Protests against Israel are not protests against Jewish individuals or especially Jewish Americans. This rhetoric is dangerous because it disturbingly conflates Jewish identity with Israeli politics. It also distracts from the real problem of Israel’s violence against Palestinians. Meanwhile, pundits supposedly from the left (including Pomona’s administration) invoke arguments judging acceptable politics and expression — all over a conflict in which thousands have been, and continue to be, killed.
Emotions are being misrepresented and student anger is being written off as irrational and unproductive, regardless of its cause.
The term “identity politics” is one I’m not eager to invoke, but I believe it encompasses much of what is currently happening.
In his book “Elite Capture,” Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò shows that the distribution of power is often through systems of social identity that are captured by political elites to advance their own interests. The current ruling power has a vested interest in the violence in Israel continuing and they have hijacked the conversation about Israel to safeguard their power.
Protests against Israel have thus become a lightning rod for conservative commentators to deride the state of higher education.
The targeting of left-leaning college leaders who are sympathetic to Palestinian views is part of a larger so-called “culture war” that seeks to regress progressive agendas and maintain the conservative status quo.
Retaliation against students is part of this campaign.
Students who are protesting are now seeing their futures being threatened by colleges in an attempt to silence any discussion about Israel or its actions in Gaza. The threat of doxxing is being used as a real and intimidating tool to punish dissent and opposition to American policy.
To put it succinctly, resistance to Israel’s human rights violations and violence in Gaza are tempered by a political system influenced by elites in which many actors, including Pomona’s administration, its faculty and its students, are forced to engage.
For these reasons, anti-Israeli protests are being intensely depoliticized through spurious and bad-faith arguments against protestors.
If Pomona genuinely seeks an open dialogue, we, as students, need to be able to bring these facts to bear.
We also need to accept that if the change we seek is truly what we desire, then we need to be prepared for Pomona’s administration — and the many institutions in the United States — to continue to oppose it.
This may well mean that the protests happening today will need to continue.
Civil disobedience and disruptive non-violent protest is not only justified, but maybe the only form of resistance we have left.
Cooper Crane PO `’24 is in his final semester of senior year. He came to Pomona with the intent to study imperial and transnational history and post-colonial ethnographies. He is deeply disturbed by Pomona’s role in supporting neo-colonial relationships and its administration’s denial of the violence taking place in Gaza.
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