Pro-Palestinian student protests target colleges’ financial ties with Israel

Students at a growing number of U.S. colleges are gathering in protest encampments with a unified demand of their schools: Stop doing business with Israel — or any companies that empower its ongoing war in Gaza.

The demand has its roots in a decades-old campaign against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. The movement has taken on new strength as the Israel-Hamas war surpasses the six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza have sparked international calls for a cease-fire.

Inspired by ongoing protests and the arrests last week of more than 100 students at Columbia University, students from Massachusetts to California are now gathering by the hundreds on campuses, setting up tent camps and pledging to stay put until their demands are met.

A sign sits erected at the pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in New York, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

A sign sits erected at the pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in New York, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

“We want to be visible,” said Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who noted that students at the university have been pushing for divestment from Israel since 2002. “The university should do something about what we’re asking for, about the genocide that’s happening in Gaza. They should stop investing in this genocide.”

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

WHAT DO THE STUDENTS WANT TO SEE HAPPEN?

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are empowering Israel’s military efforts in Gaza — and in some cases from Israel itself.

The demands vary from campus to campus. Among them:

__ Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel.

__ Stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that aid the country’s military efforts.

__ Stop investing college endowments with money managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors.

__ Be more transparent about what money is received from Israel and what it’s used for.

Student governments at some colleges in recent weeks have passed resolutions calling for an end to investments and academic partnerships with Israel. Such bills were passed by student bodies at Columbia, Harvard Law, Rutgers and American University.

Demonstrators protest against the Israel-Hamas war in front of The New School university in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
Demonstrators protest against the Israel-Hamas war in front of The New School university in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
A woman walks past a sign where students protest at an encampment on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
A woman walks past a sign where students protest at an encampment on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

HOW ARE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES RESPONDING?

Officials at several universities say they want to have a conversation with students and honor their right to protest. But they also are echoing the concerns of many Jewish students that some of the demonstrators’ words and actions amount to antisemitism — and they say such behavior won’t be tolerated.

Sylvia Burwell, president of American University, rejected a resolution from the undergraduate senate to end investments and partnerships with Israel.

“Such actions threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community,” Burwell said in a statement.

Burwell cited the university’s “longstanding position” against the decades-old Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Protesters in the movement have drawn parallels between Israel’s policy in Gaza — a tiny strip of land tucked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to about 2.3 million Palestinians — to apartheid in South Africa. Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized control of the strip in 2007.

The New School students and pro-Palestinian supporters rally outside The New School University Center building, Monday, April 22, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

The New School students and pro-Palestinian supporters rally outside The New School University Center building, Monday, April 22, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Opponents of BDS say its message veers into antisemitism. In the past decade alone, more than 30 states have enacted laws or directives blocking agencies from hiring companies that support the movement. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it a “pernicious threat” in 2019, saying it fueled bias against Jews on U.S. campuses.

Asked this week whether he condemned “the antisemitic protests,” President Joe Biden said he did. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden said after an Earth Day event Monday.

At Yale, where dozens of student protesters were arrested Monday, President Peter Salovey noted in a message to campus that, after hearing from students, the university’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility had recommended against divesting from military weapons manufacturers.

President Minouche Shafik at Columbia said there should be “serious conversations” about how the university can help in the Middle East. But “we cannot have one group dictate terms,” she said in a statement Monday.

MIT said in a statement that the protesters have “the full attention of leadership, who have been meeting and talking with students, faculty, and staff on an ongoing basis.”

HOW MUCH MONEY ARE THE SCHOOLS RECEIVING?

On many campuses, students pushing for divestment say they don’t know the extent of their colleges’ connections to Israel. Universities with large endowments spread their money across a vast array of investments, and it can be difficult or impossible to identify where it all lands.

The U.S. Education Department requires colleges to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources, but there have been problems with underreporting, and colleges sometimes dodge reporting requirements by steering money through separate foundations that work on their behalf.

According to an Education Department database, about 100 U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel totaling $375 million over the past two decades. The data tells little about where the money comes from, however, or how it was used.

Some students at MIT have published the names of several researchers who accept money from Israel’s defense ministry for projects that the students say could help with drone navigation and missile protection. All told, pro-Palestinian students say, MIT has accepted more than $11 million from the defense ministry over the past decade.

MIT officials didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., Tuesday, April 23, 2024. The Israel-Hamas war protests creating friction at universities across the United States escalated Tuesday as some colleges encouraged students to attend classes remotely and dozens faced charges after setting up tents on campuses and ignoring official requests to leave. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
A pro-Palestinian protester holds a Palestinian flag while in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)
A pro-Palestinian protester holds a Palestinian flag while in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)

“MIT is directly complicit with all of this,” said sophomore Quinn Perian, a leader of a Jewish student group that is calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. He said there’s growing momentum to hold colleges accountable for any role they play in supporting Israel’s military.

“We’re all drawing from the same fire,” he said. “They’re forcing us, as students, to be complicit in this genocide.”

Motivated by the Columbia protests, students at the University of Michigan were camping out on a campus plaza Tuesday demanding an end to financial investments with Israel. They say the school sends more than $6 billion to investment managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors. They also cited investments in companies that produce drones or warplanes used in Israel, and in surveillance products used at checkpoints into Gaza.

University of Michigan officials said that they have no direct investments with Israeli companies, and that indirect investments made through funds amount to a fraction of 1% of the university’s $18 billion endowment. The school rejected calls for divestment, citing a nearly 20-year-old policy “that shields the university’s investments from political pressures.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE STUDENTS?

Students at Harvard and Yale are demanding greater transparency, along with their calls for divestment.

Transparency was one of the key demands at Emerson College, where 80 students and other supporters occupied a busy courtyard on the downtown Boston campus Tuesday.

Twelve tents sporting slogans including “Free Gaza” or “No U.S. $ For Israel” lined the entrance to the courtyard, with sleeping bags and pillows peeking out through the zippered doors.

Students sat cross-legged on the brick paving stones typing away on final papers and reading for exams. The semester ends in a couple of weeks.

“I would love to go home and have a shower,” said Owen Buxton, a film major, “but I will not leave until we reach our demands or I am dragged out by police.”

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Collin is a national education reporter
Vázquez Toness is an Associated Press reporter who writes about the continuing impact of the pandemic on young people and their education.