Student Protesters Are Questioning the Hypocrisies Around Them, Why Can’t the ‘Adults’?
Simona Sawhney | 01 May 2024 | The Wire
On April 27, 2024, police in the United States arrested about 200 students from pro-Palestinian encampments at three universities. Student protests have intensified in the past few weeks not only across the US, but also in Canada, France, the UK, and other places. The protests in the US now have a more clear and focused aim: they ask that universities divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The statement issued by students at Columbia university says, “Divest all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine” and further asks for “complete transparency” regarding all of Columbia University’s financial investments.
What exactly are the students articulating? At one level, they are registering their horror at being made unwilling participants of, and contributors to, a global economy that funnels their tuition money into corporations that profit from war and starvation. Would those who are opposing these protests – including politicians, administrators and parents of students – not want these students to experience, voice and act upon their horror?
Let us imagine, for a moment, that the protesting students were not protesting; that, like most of us, they were simply going about their daily business at a time when over 30,000 people, about half of them children, have been killed in Palestine in seven devastating months, and when hospitals, schools and universities across Gaza have been systematically destroyed. Let us imagine that, like many of us, the students too had simply viewed such massive violence as an unfortunate but distant event that did not concern them directly; that they had continued with their classes and daily activities, blockingg out daily news of children being bombarded, aid workers killed, thousands of people being starved; that they had, like much of international media, paid scant attention to the history of colonialism, racism and occupation that has culminated today in such violence. By thus retreating and insulating themselves, would they have indeed accomplished their goal of receiving the “education” they seek in these prestigious institutions….