“Excuse me, Mr Amb­as­sador! I am shocked by the audacity that you are here to talk about civil rights while your country is brutally abusing the people speaking for the rights of the Palestinians!”

A member of the Prog­ressive Students Colle­ctive (PSC) shouted this statement, interrupting the German ambassador’s ad­d­­ress on human rights at the Asma Jahangir Confe­rence org­a­nised in Lahore last week. Quickly, the organisers shuffled the protesters out of the conference hall as they shouted: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”

The PSC members claimed they were manhandled whereas the conference organisers explained that the students’ actions had posed a security threat to attendees. The framing of protesters as disruptors creating security threats for peaceful attendees needs to be held to critical examination.

Students across the world have been holding demonstrations on their campuses and in their cities to demand de-platforming of pro-Zionist representatives, as well as boycott, divestment and sanctions on companies operating in the state of Israel. In the US, university administrations justified police lockdowns of campuses and arrests of over 2,000 students and teachers since April 18 by labelling student protesters security threats.

Demonstrations of solidarity with people suffering in Gaza are increasingly being framed in the language of security and risk

Students-led protest camps

On the morning of April 29, students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, gathered at a library with tents, paintbrushes, books, food supplies and banners.

Salman Sikander, a PhD student at UMass, shares that protesters created a ‘Rafaat al Areer Library’, and expressed their collective anger through art, dance, and teach-ins.

From New York University, graduate student Mohiba Ahmad shares about two hundred students were huddled together in rain and chilly weather on April 27, as the administration had threatened to call the police if students put up a tent. Some of those attending sat on yoga mats while others covered food and water supplies with plastic sheets to protect them from rain.

When students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign set up their encampment last week, the administration brutally evicted the camps twice on the first day.

On the second occasion, police contingents with riot gear were called to disperse the nonviolent gathering, shares Umair Rasheed, a PhD student of Sociology.

Meanwhile, he adds, the university administration has cancelled a pre-scheduled meeting to discuss the demands of disclosure and divestment of investments in firms directly profiting from the Israeli war in Gaza. The students have also reported vehicles parked near the encampment through which the cops are recording the encampment activity using facial recognition software.

There are growing concerns that the university is acting in bad faith, he says.

At Rice University in Houston, PhD student, Zahid Ali says students organised a 48-hour liberated zone on campus. On March 25, members of the student association introduced a resolution asking for boycott and divesting from corporations implicated in the Gaza genocide. However, the university unilaterally stopped the vote on the resolution, while students were intimidated and harassed for tabling the divestment resolution.

Asmer Asrar Safi, a senior year undergraduate student at Harvard College, says the university booked around 30 students for disciplinary action which is worrisome, specially for international students who are not protected by first amendment rights to free speech and can be deported.

Unparalleled support

On April 24, a coalition of Harvard students called the ‘Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Coalition’ set up an encampment in the middle of Harvard Yard. The camp, termed Liberated Zone, was set up following the suspension of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Safi adds. “Our demands have enjoyed widespread support among the Harvard community, evidenced by the divestment resolutions passed by the Harvard Law School, the Harvard Divinity School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design,” he says.

At UT Austin, nearly 600 faculty members signed a letter of no-confidence against the university president for violating the trust of faculty and students by calling in state troopers to “forcibly disperse students gathering for a peaceful teach-in”.

Instead of opening channels of dialogue with students, the administration said they were in talks with a local mosque. The Islamophobic framing of the protests fails to account for the overwhelmingly multi-faith support and presence at the demonstrations often led by Jewish protesters in yarmulke skull caps and members of the Jewish Voice for Peace. With posters and banners saying, “Not in my name”, protesters made it clear that they opposed the ongoing genocide on principle regardless of faith.

Salman Sikander says protesting students are a crossroads between a world of police, riot gear, and genocide on the one hand and encampments, possibilities of love, colours, dance, and radical democracy on the other. If humanity must win it has to choose the later.

The author is a former staff member and a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. With reporting and comments from US-based international students: Zahid Ali, Umair Rasheed, Mohiba Ahmad, Salman Sikander and Asmer Shah Shafi.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2024