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Long live student resistance – the latest news

Vaseline

Priscilla Yuen, Associate Director of Doctoral Affairs at Columbia Engineering, stands with papers fluttering in her hand and large sunglasses hiding her face as she repeats a warning to the students in front of her.

“You are in violation of university policy. If you do not leave the premises before 11am you will be suspended.”

The students continue to clap rhythmically.

Two Barnard College administrators try to encourage students to talk things out, while Sarah Gillman, the vice president of Strategic Finance Operations, stands slightly behind and watches silently.

The students respond by singing.

Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, sends an email around 1 p.m. on April 18, warning the university that it has authorized the New York Police Department to arrest hundreds of students, while paying tribute to Columbia’s legacy in the same correspondence of activism.

The students respond by linking their arms.

Columbia University student organizers established the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 17. Sixty tents occupy the east lawn of campus to push the university to rid itself of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The encampment, inspired by the 1968 occupation of Hamilton Hall and the 1985 Mandela Hall demonstrations, is not Columbia’s first attempt to divest from the Zionist state. In 2020, a referendum calling on the university to divest from companies that had invested in Israeli apartheid was passed by a wide margin, but ultimately rejected by then-President Lee Bollinger.

As Palestinians defy the occupation in Gaza, students around the world continue to light the torch of Palestinian liberation on their college campuses. Institutionalized academia has long resisted the radical struggles of student activists, and the past seven months have been no different. Activism on college campuses has always been a stronghold for social justice and anti-war movements, but more than that, it is a study of hope as a discipline. As despair consumes us and hopelessness threatens us, students remind us that freedom together is not only achievable, but inevitable.

Student resistance has a long history around the world and is reflected in many global issues. From Tiananmen to Dhaka, Soweto to the United States, students have stood up vigorously against apartheid, gun violence, police brutality, climate change, global imperialism and more. Academia has long billed itself as a cradle of intellectual curiosity and innovation, encouraging students to challenge existing ideas and find new ways to improve the world around them. After all, it was at Merritt College that Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party, one of the most influential revolutionary vanguard organizations in existence.

Despite all this, student activism has existed for as long as oppression by their governing bodies has existed. This has become especially apparent over the past seven months.

As I write this, thousands of people have descended on Columbia’s campus to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of students who were strapped into NYPD vans the day before. Across the street, students took to the streets after Asna Tabassum’s farewell speech was canceled by the University of Southern California due to unfounded security concerns. In the South, the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR-Georgia) and Palestine Legal are brandishing a civil rights complaint against Emory University for fostering a “hostile anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic environment” after months of intimidation and oppression of students. Students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Miami University in Ohio have even launched their own solidarity camps.

The occupation of Palestine has long been a powder keg in academic institutions. Students for Justice in Palestine, a national network of groups focused on the issue of Palestinian liberation, has faced numerous obstacles as they push universities to rid themselves of Israeli weapons and technology and normalize Israeli apartheid to fight. The level of harassment has only increased exponentially since October 7, as students face renewed and vicious attacks from fellow students, faculty and even alumni. State and federal governments have even pressured universities to continue cracking down on their so-called “pro-Hamas” students and student groups to address the wolf-cries of anti-Semitism from Zionist organizations.

Perhaps one of the most sinister elements of college oppression is the adoption of social justice concepts and language to achieve diversity, equality, and inclusivity on their path to maintaining the status quo. So when universities send representatives to tell students to stop protesting, they are sending people who look like them. Institutions are urging students to celebrate Shafik’s appointment as one of the first Arab female presidents of the Ivy League, but are not counting on her to protect Arab students from police violence. There is a reason the US is sending Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a black woman, to veto the countless resolutions for a humanitarian ceasefire. It is also why Karine Jean-Pierre, the first openly gay press secretary, is the woman the US has chosen to stare down journalists while justifying this country’s active and deliberate participation in mass slaughter.

American institutions, especially academic ones, have answered the call for justice by inviting marginalized people to an imperial table. This won’t save us.

Student activists know this and reject neoliberal fantasies about identity politics. They stand up for Palestine and the world in a way that the classroom will never teach them. Despite looming suspensions, overbearing university officials and military-grade rifles, a deep concern for their fellow man is ever present.

Mohammed El-Kurd writes that in order to live up to the rallying cry “We are all Palestinian,” we must be willing to truly embody the Palestinian condition of resistance and sacrifice. Student organizers around the world risk arrest, job security, housing in some cases, and academic prestige because they understand that none of these things are more valuable than a single human life. And students who risk everything for freedom no longer have anything to fear.

We forget that these student movements are a microcosm of the best parts of the larger society. For a while, some even turned their noses at the idealized way students saw the world. But students are who we are when we are surrounded by community, by knowledge, and by the sense of being part of something much bigger than anyone else. Student movements remind us that liberation is, in fact, collective.

So we keep our eyes on Columbia and all our college campuses, now more than ever, as student resistance grows and rises against the empire. We look to them for hope, because students remind us that we can dream of a just world. They are our reminders to stay the course.

University administrators fail to understand that student activists have glimpsed a remarkable future in which Palestinian liberation is possible. Students are building this future with every protest, every divestment referendum, every linked arm, every roaring protest chant and every keffiyeh proudly waving above their grassy grounds.

Support the Columbia encampment by following Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@sjp.columbia) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (@cuapartheiddivest).

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