Students from a growing number of American colleges are gathering in protest camps with a joint demand from their schools: stop doing business with Israel – or with any companies that enable the ongoing war in Gaza.
The demand has its roots in a decades-old campaign against Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. The movement has gained new strength as the war between Israel and Hamas passes the six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza have fueled international calls for a ceasefire.
Inspired by the ongoing protests and the arrests last week of more than a hundred students at Columbia University, students from Massachusetts to California are now gathering by the hundreds on campuses, setting up tent camps and vowing to stay until their demands are met.
“We want to be visible,” said protest leader Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia, noting that students at the university have been pushing for divestment from Israel since 2002. “The university must do something about what we are asking for, about the genocide that is being committed. happening in Gaza. They must stop investing in this genocide.”
The campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which makes no distinction between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
The students are calling on universities to separate themselves from all companies that bolster Israel’s military efforts in Gaza – and in some cases from Israel itself.
Requirements vary from campus to campus. Amongst them:
__ Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers who supply weapons to Israel.
__ Stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that support the country’s military efforts.
__ Stop investing university funds with money managers that profit from Israeli companies or contractors.
__ Be more transparent about the money received from Israel and what it is used for.
Student governments at some colleges have passed resolutions in recent weeks calling for an end to investments and academic partnerships with Israel. Such bills were passed by student organizations at Columbia, Harvard Law, Rutgers and American University.
Officials from several universities say they want to have a conversation with students and respect their right to protest. But they also reflect the concerns of many Jewish students that some of the protesters’ words and actions amount to anti-Semitism — and they say such behavior will not be tolerated.
Sylvia Burwell, president of American University, rejected a Senate resolution to end investments and partnerships with Israel.
“Such actions threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and viewpoints, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community,” Burwell said in a statement.
Burwell cited the university’s “longstanding position” toward the decades-old Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Protesters in the movement have drawn parallels between Israeli policies in Gaza — a small strip of land tucked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea where about 2.3 million Palestinians live — and apartheid in South Africa. Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza after Hamas took control of the strip in 2007.
Opponents of BDS say the message leans toward anti-Semitism. In the past decade alone, more than thirty states have passed laws or guidelines that prevent agencies from hiring companies that support the movement. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it a “pernicious threat” in 2019 and said it fueled prejudice against Jews on American campuses.
When President Joe Biden was asked this week whether he condemned “the anti-Semitic protests,” he said he did. “I also condemn those who do not understand what is going on with the Palestinians,” Biden said Monday after an Earth Day event.
At Yale, where dozens of student protesters were arrested Monday, President Peter Salovey noted in a message to campus that, after hearing from students, the university’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility had recommended not divesting from military weapons manufacturers.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said there need to be “serious conversations” about how the university can help in the Middle East. But “we cannot let one group dictate the terms,” she said in a statement Monday.
MIT said in a statement that the protesters “have the full attention of leadership, who are continually meeting and talking to students, faculty and staff.”
On many campuses, students pushing for divestment say they don’t know the extent of their university’s ties to Israel. Big-ticket universities spread their money across a wide range of investments, and it can be difficult or even impossible to determine where it all ends up.
The U.S. Department of Education requires universities to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources, but there are problems with under-reporting, and universities sometimes avoid reporting requirements by channeling money through separate foundations that work on their behalf.
About 100 U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel totaling $375 million over the past two decades, according to a Department of Education database. However, the data tells little about where the money came from or how it was used.
Some MIT students have published the names of several researchers who are accepting money from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for projects that the students say could help with drone navigation and missile defense. All told, pro-Palestinian students say MIT has accepted more than $11 million from the Defense Department over the past decade.
MIT officials did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
“MIT is directly complicit in all of this,” said sophomore Quinn Perian, leader of a Jewish student group calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. He said there is growing momentum to hold colleges accountable for any role they play in supporting the Israeli military.
“We’re all drawing from the same fire,” he said. “They force us, as students, to be complicit in this genocide.”
Motivated by the protests in Columbia, University of Michigan students camped out on a campus plaza Tuesday and demanded an end to financial investments in Israel. They say the school sends more than $6 billion to investment managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors. They also mentioned investments in companies that produce drones or fighter jets used in Israel, and in surveillance products used at checkpoints in Gaza.
University of Michigan officials said they have no direct investments in Israeli companies, and that indirect investments through funds amount to a fraction of 1% of the university’s $18 billion. The school rejected calls for divestment, citing a nearly two-decade-old policy “that protects the university’s investments from political pressure.”
Harvard and Yale students are demanding more transparency, along with their calls for divestment.
Transparency was a top demand at Emerson College, where 80 students and other supporters packed a crowded courtyard on the downtown Boston campus on Tuesday.
Twelve tents with slogans like “Liberate Gaza” or “No US$ for Israel” lined the entrance to the courtyard, while sleeping bags and pillows peeked out through zippered doors.
Students sat cross-legged on the brick pavers, typing and reading their final papers for exams. The semester ends in a few weeks.
“I’d love to go home and shower,” said film major Owen Buxton, “but I’m not leaving until we’ve met our demands or I’m being dragged out by the police.”
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