Since the academic school year ended and the last of the university students packed their cars, caught their flights, and headed home for the summer, lingering traces of the encampments remain on their campuses. A red and white keffiyeh caught in a tree, blowing in the wind. Stickers and graffiti donning the Palestinian flag pasted along the lecture hall’s stone steps. A crumpled blue tent lying in the grass. The students are gone, but their message insists upon staying.
The Pro-Palestinian Student Encampments, aimed at protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine (and the role that universities play in funding it), are an international movement spreading across North America, Europe, and South America. They begin in the heart of one of the world’s most prestigious private universities, in the center of America’s most populated city – Columbia University, New York City. It was there that a group of Columbia’s students set their tents up on the South Lawn on April 17th and camped there to protest the university’s undisclosed investments in Israel/with Israeli-affiliated businesses.
Students attending universities around the world began investigating their academic institutions and the investments made by them. They were horrified to learn that the tuition money they paid to receive an education was being used to fund Israel’s occupation of and genocide in Palestine. What’s more, these universities failed to properly disclose these investments to their students. The result of this discovery was hundreds of encampment protests set up across universities all over the world. The students demanded two main things: disclose the investments universities have made in Israeli businesses, and divest from these investments.
However, rather than being met with meetings and negotiations, most students and their encampments were threatened with police force if they refused to disband. When the students held their ground, the police were called in, violently destroying tents and inflicting bodily harm to peaceful protesters. One by one, the police cleared everything on that lawn, until every student, bruised and battered, was taken away in cuffs and the grass was empty.
By the time summer began, most encampments were no longer. They were silenced and erased by the universities in an attempt to disguise their culpability in Israel’s wrongful occupation of Palestine. Students within the encampments were villainized by universities and major media sources, called “trespassers” and portrayed as “dangerous”.
Now, as the weather begins to get colder and students begin classes at these universities once again, the question most of these institutions are nervously asking is if the encampments will start up again.
With the beginning of the school year comes the upcoming American presidential election. When it comes to pro-Palestine presidential candidates, the options are slim; Republican candidate Donald Trump has made his extreme pro-Israel stance clear by publicly urging Israeli government officials to continue their assault on Palestine, as well as providing Israel with American military, weapons, money and political propaganda.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden has also shown his support for Israel; since October 7th, 2023, at least $12.5 billion in military aid has been planned through legislation to be given to Israel by the United States of America, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Some of this aid was provided during Biden’s presidency, highlighting his complicitness in this genocide.
However, with Vice President Kamala Harris stepping up as the Democrat’s presidential candidate for the upcoming election comes new perspectives on the genocide in Gaza from a central political member of government. The microphone is now turned to her as she campaigns for the upcoming presidential election.
In her recent debate on ABC news with Trump, Harris made her stance clear: “Israel has a right to defend itself…And how it [defends itself] matters, because… far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” She discussed a “two-state solution”, highlighting equal security and safety for both Israeli and Palestinian people, but provided few details for her plan to work with the Israeli government to create this solution.
As we approach the one-year mark of this horrifying genocide, it is clear that universities and government institutions must fulfill their role in preventing the oppression of Palestine from continuing any longer. Student voices become louder and more persistent and the weight of the election determines a key role in Palestine’s future. Pressure is rising steadily for universities and governments to confront their own roles in perpetuating oppression and commit to change their policies that have only enabled systemic inequities.