https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University
Pro-Palestinian organizations at universities across the world protest in support of Columbia ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’
The protests are a show of solidarity for the 108 individuals arrested on campus on Thursday.
As the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia enters its fifth day, students at over a dozen universities across the country—and the globe—have begun protesting in solidarity with the encampment after 108 affiliates were arrested on campus by the New York Police Department on Thursday.
Protests ranged from walkouts to marches to encampments in solidarity with the Columbia efforts, garnering anywhere from 50 to hundreds of protesters. At Yale University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, students started encampments in solidarity with the Columbia “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
In a Friday evening Instagram post, the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called on all chapters to follow Columbia SJP’s lead and pressure their administrations to divest from Israel.
“Our universities have chosen profit and reputation over the lives of the people of Palestine and the will of their students,” the national SJP chapter wrote in the post. “President Minouche Shafik’s cowardly testimony to Congress heralds an unfortunate shift: university administrators have capitulated to the pressure of the Zionist lobby and allied Right Wing, selling out the Student Movement for Palestinian liberation to save face in the eye of the state.”
[Read more: Shafik authorizes NYPD to sweep ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ officers in riot gear arrest over 100]
“In the footsteps of our comrades at … Columbia SJP, we call on all SJPs across the nation to seize the university and force the administration to divest, for the people of Gaza!” the post continues.
Carrie Zaremba, a member of the national SJP chapter, said that the support from other universities across the country is “absolutely unprecedented.”
“Immediately after Columbia SJP and CUAD set up the first encampment, we got a bunch of messages from SJP chapters around the country asking, ‘How can we do that?’ ‘What are they doing?’ ‘We want to get on board,’” Zaremba said. “So, there’s definitely an outpouring of support.
University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s chapter of SJP and SJP Carolinas—a coalition of students from universities across North Carolina and South Carolina—called for a “solidarity rally” at UNC Chapel Hill on Friday in response to Columbia’s “brutal and unprecedented repression of pro-Palestinian student activists.”
In a Friday Instagram post, UNC Chapel Hill SJP asked students to join them in front of their South Building and encouraged others to bring chairs, additional tents, blankets, snacks, and water. The group began setting up on Friday morning at around 9 a.m., and participants began to arrive around 10 a.m. They also put up a banner that read “CH x NYC FOR PALESTINE” with students holding signs that read “ceasefire now.”
Students repeatedly chanted, “From Chapel Hill to NYC, we are all SJP,” according to videos obtained by Spectator.
“It was completely inspired by the courage of our comrades at Columbia. With social media, it’s really easy to bear witness to what other students across the nation are experiencing,” a UNC Chapel Hill SJP executive board member said in an interview with Spectator. “We met and decided that we needed to target our action today, we needed to target it at UNC’s administration but also to be in solidarity with our folks at Columbia.”
When administrators and police arrived at the protest demanding that the tents be removed in accordance with UNC Chapel Hill guidelines, organizers decided to place their tents on chairs to “navigate UNC’s vague language about structures,” the executive board member said. When police returned later in the afternoon, members ultimately lifted the tents up and marched with them in hand to keep “taking up space in front of [the] administrative building.”
“We are standing in solidarity with Columbia because all of us are wanting to see the liberation of Palestine,” the executive board member added.
Yale University — New Haven, Connecticut
The Occupy Beinecke Coalition at Yale University set up an encampment at Beinecke Plaza on Friday night outside of a board of trustees dinner honoring outgoing Yale president Peter Salovey. The encampment, which had around 75 individuals sleeping in 24 tents overnight, was built “to call for military weapons divestment and express solidarity with recent protests at Columbia University,” and “follows a weeklong occupation of Beinecke Plaza,” according to an Occupy Beinecke Coalition press statement.
Earlier in the week, Yale students placed a “Liberated Zone” banner on Beinecke Plaza, similar to one present on a tent at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
“We are here to defend students’ right to peaceful protest, and we stand in solidarity with our peers who have been arrested and suspended at Columbia,” Lumisa Bista, a protester at the encampment, wrote in a press release on Friday.“ We condemn the mobilization of police against students who were demonstrating for peace.”
Bard Coalition for Palestine — East Jerusalem; Berlin; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
The Bard Coalition for Palestine, made up of students from Al-Quds Bard Student Union at Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem; Bard College Berlin Student Union at Bard College Berlin; SJP at Bard College at Simon’s Rock; and SJP at Bard College Annandale, released a statement on its Instagram on Friday “in solidarity with our comrades at Columbia University.”
“In light of continued repression of pro-Palestine activism in the United States and Europe, we stand with our allies at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment who are enduring a triad of aggression: from Zionists on-campus, from the university administration, and from the NYPD who have stormed the ‘free speech zone’ where student encampments are located,” the statement reads.
The coalition urged students to sign a “Tell Columbia University: No More Suspensions, No More Arrests! We will not rest, until Columbia divests” petition and to call Columbia Public Safety and Columbia’s Office of the President to demand “the immediate release of all arrestees and amnesty from any criminal charges” and the reversal of suspensions and evictions.
University of Melbourne — Melbourne, Australia
University of Melbourne for Palestine issued a statement through an Instagram post on Saturday, writing, “From the other side of the world, we University of Melbourne For Palestine UM4P, express our full and unwavering solidarity with the brave actions of Columbia’s Students For Justice in Palestine SJP. ”
“From Australia, we join the global chant ‘disclose, divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!’” the statement reads.
Harvard University — Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard University’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, African American Resistance Organization, Law Students for a Free Palestine, Graduate Students for Palestine, Jews for Palestine, and Harvard Graduate Student Union Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions called for students to join a walkout at 4 p.m. on Saturday “in solidarity with steadfast Columbia students.”
“As 100+ Columbia students are arrested and many face suspension for demanding divestment on their campus, we stand in solidarity with our peers while reiterating our own demands for Harvard to disclose, divest and reinvest,” the coalition of groups wrote on their Instagram.
More than 200 Harvard affiliates participated in the protest, the Harvard Crimson reported, chanting, “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest”—a phrase often chanted at Columbia’s protests—and holding up signs that read “Harvard out of occupied Palestine” and “Stop the genocide in Gaza.”
“We are enraged and horrified, but not surprised, by the repression unleashed by Columbia University’s administration on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and the broader divestment coalition,” the HGSU-BDS caucus of rank and file members wrote in a statement to Spectator on Friday.
The caucus described “the demand for divestment as inextricable from worker rights and the labor struggle. For this reason, we stand in complete solidarity with students and student-workers protesting against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and join their demand for Columbia University to divest from Israel.”
Brown University — Providence, Rhode Island
Brown University’s chapter of SJP co-hosted an “emergency picket” at around 12 p.m. on Friday outside the Brown campus. The chapter also co-authored a statement on Thursday with Brown Divest Coalition and BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now in support of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” On Dec. 11, 2023, 41 Brown Divest Coalition affiliates were arrested following an occupation of Brown’s University Hall, one month after 20 students from BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now were arrested for a sit-in also at University Hall, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
“Columbia’s deployment of the NYPD to carry out arrests and Brown’s unprecedented pursuit of criminal conviction of the BDC 41 are instances of the rise in police presence and arrests in universities’ responses to student activism speaking out against universities complicity in the genocide in Gaza,” the Brown Divest Coalition wrote in a statement to Spectator. “The BDC stands in solidarity with all students arrested at Columbia and all students facing criminal punishment for peaceful protest across the nation.”
Miami University — Oxford, Ohio
The Miami University chapter of SJP held a “walkout in solidarity” with the arrested Columbia students at 12 p.m. on Friday at its campus in Oxford, Ohio. The group drew around 30 students, according to Maysa Constandinidis, president of MUSJP. Students made signs that read “Amnesty for Columbia students” and “Stand with Columbia Students!” MUSJP also hung a sign that read “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” alongside the Palestinian flag.
“Our decision was born out of a refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice against 100+ students at Columbia University being arrested,” Constandinidis wrote in a statement to Spectator. “We firmly believe in the fundamental rights of protest and freedom of speech. The ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian genocide demands our voices, and we will not be silenced until it ceases and the right of return occurs.”
Ohio State University — Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio State University’s chapter of SJP, Palestinian Women’s Association at the Ohio State University, Jews for Justice in Palestine at Ohio State University, Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists, and Ohio Youth for Climate Justice called on students to join an “emergency protest” at 2 p.m. on Friday “in support of the courageous student activists of the Gaza Solidarity Encampments.”
“Columbia students have bravely occupied their campus in peaceful protest, yet they have faced authoritarian retaliation from their administration, with 3 students suspended and over 100 arrested,” the post reads. “We will not be silenced. We will continue demanding divestment from genocide—from Columbus to Columbia—until justice prevails.”
In a statement to Spectator, the Ohio Youth for Climate Justice said that the group has also faced repercussions in response to its organizing efforts.
“As an organization rooted in the values of climate justice and whose members have been punished for demanding divestment from israel, Ohio Youth for Climate Justice remains firm in our stance against the same capitalist institutions that oppress Palestinians and create unlivable conditions throughout the planet,” the group wrote. “The bravery of Columbia students has sent ripples across the country, and has deeply strengthened the movement towards Palestinian freedom. This rippling effect has been and will continue to be felt at Ohio State until we see a free Palestine.”
Princeton University — Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton’s chapter of SJP, Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest, Princeton Alumni for Palestine and Princeton Palestine Liberation Coalition hosted a rally on Friday “in solidarity with CUAD Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
“As the enduring CUAD encampment has shown us and as stated clearly yesterday, the more university administrations try to silence us, the louder we will be,” Princeton Divest Now wrote in a statement to Spectator on Saturday. “Even as the police in our imperial core learn from Israeli colonizers, we commit to learning with each other and continuing to build the mass movement for the liberation of Palestine within our lifetimes.”
Northwestern University — Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University’s chapter of SJP held an “Emergency March For Palestine” at their campus at 12 p.m. on Friday and called on protesters to “stand in solidarity with Columbia.”
Protesters also decorated the sidewalk outside Northwestern President Michael Schill’s house in chalk, writing “Stop Funding War Crimes,” among other statements.
“Not long ago, an official from Northwestern made a comment commending the university for not experiencing the same kind of ‘unrest’ that other universities have been experiencing,” Northwestern SJP wrote in a statement to Spectator. “We wanted to march in solidarity with Columbia to show school officials that we won’t sit by and be silent as our comrades are violently suppressed.”
Temple University — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Temple University SJP also called for an “emergency call to action,” and held a walkout on Friday.
The post announcing the walkout included a picture of the first Columbia encampment and asked students to “rally to support the students of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
City University of New York — New York City, New York
CUNY for Palestine, along with Peoples Forum NYC, Answer Coalition, and the Palestinian Youth Movement NYC protested on Friday at 12 p.m. at Frederick Douglass Circle “to stand with the brave students at Columbia university siding with justice and a free Palestine — no matter how much repression they face,” according to a joint Instagram post.
“We’re showing up in solidarity—the repression that Columbia students have faced, getting suspended, getting arrested just for simply speaking out against the genocide, which has currently killed over 34,000 Palestinians,” a member of City College’s chapter of SJP said.
“We all know who is on the right side of history—the students and the people in the streets for Palestine!” the caption of the announcement post reads.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas — Las Vegas, Nevada
The SJP chapter at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation, the Fifth Sun Project, the Las Vegas Party of Socialism and Liberation, and the Indigenous Students Association called for students to participate in a “solidarity rally” on Monday at 10:30 a.m. in support of Columbia students.
“SJP UNLV stands with our comrades at Columbia and will rally to show our solidarity and fight for disclosure and divestment from genocide and apartheid,” the group wrote in a Saturday Instagram post.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly named a group as “Ohio Youth for Climate Change.” In fact, the group is called “Ohio Youth for Climate Justice.” Spectator regrets this error.
Deputy News Editor Apurva Chakravarthy can be contacted at apurva.chakravarthy@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on X @ColumbiaSpec.
Deputy News Editor Isha Banerjee can be contacted at isha.banerjee@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on X @ishabanerjee20.
Staff Writer Joseph Zuloaga can be contacted at joseph.zuloaga@columbiaspectator.com. Follow him on X @josephzuloaga.
City News Editor Manuela Silva can be contacted at manuela.silva@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on X @manuelas957.
font images google
font redaction https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/21/pro-palestinian-organizations-at-universities-across-the-world-protest-in-support-of-columbia-gaza-solidarity-encampment/
