The Student Crackdown Didn’t Start Last Week. Months of Repression Got Us Here.
Alaa Hajyahia Et Al. | 01 May 2024 | The Nation
This piece was written by Alaa Hajyahia, Rachel Vogel, Saifeldeen Zihiri, Chloe Miller, Mehrdad Dariush, Chisato Kimura, Alaa Hachem, and Andrew Rikard, all of whom are members of Yale Law Students for Justice in Palestine.
Over the past two weeks, US college campuses have erupted in the largest wave of pro-Palestine student activism since Israel’s latest war on Gaza began in October 2023. Columbia University—where, earlier this week, students began occupying campus buildings—was the spark that fired the nationwide movement. It was also the site of some of the first waves of administrative and police repression that followed in the movement’s wake. But it was hardly the first time over the past seven months that students found themselves targeted for their support of Palestine.
In fact, Columbia has been cracking down on pro-Palestinian activism almost continually since October, including in the weeks before the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment sprang up. At the beginning of this month, Columbia President Minouche Shafik suspended and evicted four students following an event the administration deemed unauthorized. Shafik then testified before the congressional committee that previously brought down former Harvard President Claudine Gay. She happily bent to the cynical Republican weaponization of antisemitism, issuing repeated condemnations of her own students and faculty.
Columbia was no outlier. Vanderbilt expelled and suspended students for a March 26 sit-in. On the same day, Stony Brook administrators ordered the arrest of nine demonstrators for a sit-in. On April 5, Claremont Police in riot gear arrested 20 student activists during a peaceful occupation of an administrative building at Pomona College….