Pro-Palestinian students demonstrate outside the Ministry of Education on March 22 in London. Students called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to links between British universities and Israel.
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Pro-Palestinian students demonstrate outside the Ministry of Education on March 22 in London. Students called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to links between British universities and Israel.
Mark Kerrison/In pictures via Getty Images
LONDON — A growing global student movement to occupy college campuses has continued to coalesce and expand in recent days, following dramatic scenes involving pro-Palestinian protesters and police captured on cameras at U.S. universities .
Student groups in the United Kingdom, France and Mexico, among others, have sought to erect what many of them call “solidarity encampments”, sparking various reactions from university authorities and forces of local order.
Students’ efforts to pressure institutional leaders, and in some cases national policymakers, to change their positions on Israeli military actions reflect widespread anger among young people in rich and developing countries. development.
These demonstrations continue against a backdrop of sustained violence in the Gaza Strip, the persistent failure of negotiations led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States to achieve a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and new threats from Israeli leaders to initiate a peace deal. ground offensive in the town of Rafah, south of Gaza.
Many protesters often demand that their educational institutions sever ties with companies that do business with the Israeli state or, in some cases, end collaboration agreements with Israeli universities.
The concerns of students in the United Kingdom – for example – seemed to echo the aim of an increasingly high-profile national campaign to end British arms exports to Israel. Earlier this week, hundreds of activists surrounded a government trade office in London and demonstrated against British aerospace manufacturer BAE Systems’ sites elsewhere in the UK, leading to arrests..
This came just days after the United Nations’ highest court in The Hague rejected Nicaragua’s arguments that Germany should immediately suspend military transfers to Israel.
The protest against Israel’s arming is particularly pronounced at the University of Warwick in central England, where a coalition of students and teachers built an encampment in the campus’s central square last Thursday evening , on April 25, demanding that the institution sever its relations with companies supplying military equipment to Israel. .
“The University of Warwick has one of the UK’s largest partnerships with arms companies,” says Fraser Amos, a student member of the group called Warwick Stands For Palestine. “We have campaigned in recent months for a university to sever these ties – an overwhelming majority of students voted in favor in November, and we have seen 27,000 Palestinians die since then. So we were forced to take this action.”
Warwick acknowledges having academic and research partnerships with companies involved in the production of weapons systems or components used in weapons, including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and Moog.
In a statement, university spokesperson Bron Mills told NPR that “the university is working to begin discussions with the protest organizers regarding the demands that have been made.”
But so far, few student campaigns have been successful.
France’s elite Sciences Po university was rocked by protests last week, but administrators began what was described by participants as an “emotional” dialogue with students on Thursday to try to calm the situation.
“It’s good to have these debates, because we are in a school that says all the time that we have to debate politics, that we have to discuss,” said student Ismail El Gataa, shortly after participated in these conversations with university authorities.
Students set up a camp on the Sorbonne University campus to protest against the war in Gaza, in Paris on April 29.
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Students set up a camp on the Sorbonne University campus to protest against the war in Gaza, in Paris on April 29.
Ameer Alhalbi/Anadolu via Getty Images
Despite specific requests from students, Sciences Po management says it would refuse to sever ties or investigate its relationships with four Israeli universities. After the nighttime occupation of a school auditorium into Friday morning, student activists responded that their protests would continue – although in a much more peaceful and less confrontational manner than in the United States.
“I feel like the context in the United States and here is different,” El Gataa said. “Unfortunately, what I have seen in the United States is that there is a lot of extremism in certain contexts.”
But on Friday morning, police units began to gather outside the Sciences Po campus – just as they had at another top Paris university, the Sorbonne – after authorities asked for their help in evacuating the students.
Another group, Goldsmiths for Palestine, was formed in November last year at Goldsmiths University in London, when students began staging walkouts, urging university management to issue a statement condemning the circumstances faced by Palestinians and to divest from a company called Nice Ltd. which sells monitoring services. equipment to government for use by police units and prison systems.
Graduate student Danna Liu Macrae says their decision to occupy part of the college library this week was quite specific to Goldsmiths, where students had previously disbanded a previous encampment after university leadership offered to discuss of their concerns, but were then disappointed by these efforts.
“We had several meetings with them and they made certain commitments which they reneged on – with little explanation,” says Liu Macrae, speaking of the library’s latest occupation. “It made sense for us to put the pressure back on them to be held accountable and make sure they deliver on their commitments.”
Pro-Palestinian protests on American campuses have meanwhile drawn largely positive reactions from contemporaries and peers elsewhere – with little sign of the pro-Israeli counter-protests seen at several American universities.
At the National Autonomous University of Mexico, known as UNAM, the megaphones of the country’s largest university boomed across campus Thursday as students set up several tents in front of the university’s administrative buildings to protest Israeli military actions in Gaza.
Alexa Carranza, a Mexican geography student, said she was encouraged by the protests at American universities, especially since she had long viewed American students as apathetic in the face of global injustice. “Seeing them wake up inspired me,” she says.
Thursday was the first day of the protest, and students were demanding that the state of Mexico – not just their own university – completely sever diplomatic relations. “Sever ties with Israel,” a small crowd chanted, while students painted signs reading “Long live Palestine.”
At the University of Warwick, where police and university authorities have largely kept the situation calm, Fraser Amos says the treatment of American student protesters has been “appalling” and his group wants to show “full solidarity” with similar encampments from Columbia University in New York to the University of Texas at Austin.
For Samir Ali, an undergraduate at Goldsmiths in London, students like her are at the forefront right now, in this moment of global mutual support. “We see ourselves as part of this collective struggle and this collective student movement,” she says.
A woman raises her fist while shouting slogans during a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza, in Mexico City, April 13.
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A woman raises her fist while shouting slogans during a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza, in Mexico City, April 13.
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s an emotional kinship for Ana Jiménez, an 18-year-old UNAM student who grew up in Guerrero, a Mexican region ravaged by drug conflicts. She says she can identify very strongly with Palestinian children caught up in the conflict in Gaza.
“We need global solidarity, an empathetic world,” Jiménez says. “When you are young, there is no other choice than to be revolutionary.”
Eleanor Beardsley contributed reporting from Paris. Eyder Peralta contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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