‘What starts here changes the world. It starts with you and what you do every day’. So reads an encouraging sign welcoming students at the University of Texas at Austin. But the actions the school is taking tell a different story. A photo circulating on social media this week shows a line of state troopers in riot gear standing just behind the sign. The officers – some armed with semi-automatic rifles and others mounted on horseback – had been sent to the campus to disperse students protesting the Israeli offensive in Gaza and proceeded to violently arrest at least 50 people, including a journalist.
The protest at the University of Texas at Austin is part of a student uprising that has spread to campuses across the United States and was inspired by the Palestine solidarity camp at Columbia University in New York City. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s inadequate response to the peaceful protest camp has been the catalyst for the growth of the student movement.
The camp at Columbia University emerged as a deepening of protest after months of anti-war demonstrations following the 7 October Hamas attacks and the relentless and persistent Israeli air and ground attacks in the Gaza Strip. The Republican-controlled Congressional Education and the Workforce Committee accused Columbia University of tolerating the spread of anti-Semitism on campus. Last week, while the chancellor was appearing before the committee to explain herself, dozens of students, many of them Jewish, set up tents and a banner reading ‘Gaza Solidarity Camp’ on the campus lawn.
Later that night, the chancellor said the protesters were a ‘clear and present danger’ and called for the intervention of the NYPD. During the proceedings, police arrested more than 100 students. However, NYPD Patrol Division Chief John Chell stated that the protesters acted peacefully and cooperatively. After police dismantled the initial encampment, students quickly set up a new one, which remains in place at the time of writing.
Following the violent crackdown at Columbia University, Palestine solidarity camps have been established at a number of universities across the United States. These include Harvard University, Tufts University and Emerson College in Greater Boston; Emory University in Atlanta; Princeton University and Cornell University; and the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, camps have been organised at California Polytechnic State University in upstate California and at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the heart of New York’s Manhattan borough.
At Brown University, located in Providence, Rhode Island, students pitched tents to the chant of ‘From Columbia to Brown, we will not abandon Gaza! In November 2023, Hisham Awartani, a Palestinian-American student from Brown, was shot while walking with two friends in the Vermont town of Burlington. The young man, who has been paralysed, had gone to visit his grandmother for Thanksgiving.
Not surprisingly, Columbia University has been the epicentre of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people. In April 1968, hundreds of students occupied campus buildings to demonstrate against the Vietnam War and plans to build a gymnasium in Harlem, a neighbouring neighbourhood of the university with a largely black population. The students referred to the proposed gymnasium as ‘Gym Crow’, a reference to the racial segregation laws known as ‘Jim Crow laws’. On that occasion, Columbia authorities also called in the NYPD and more than 700 people were arrested.
Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez participated in the 1968 demonstrations at Columbia University. During a conversation with Democracy Now! this week, 56 years later, Gonzalez recalled those events:
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‘The Columbia strike lasted several weeks. The first week consisted of an occupation, but the brutality of police repression, as a result of which more than 150 people had to be hospitalised on the night of 30 April, sparked a widespread strike across the university. More than 10,000 students blocked access to the university for the rest of the semester’.
Juan compared the response of the university authorities then with today:
‘In 1968, we occupied the buildings and did not allow classes to be held. [In the current protest], classes are being held normally. The students were camping peacefully in the gardens. So the disproportionate nature of the university’s response, the speed with which they responded, without even consulting or listening to the faculty, is really astounding.
The repression of Columbia University students in 1968 occurred just three months before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This year, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago again… in just over three months.
Sarah King, a Columbia graduate student, was arrested during the initial encampment and has since been suspended and banned from campus.
Speaking to Democracy Now, she said, ‘The camp itself is really nice. It’s been a real place of celebration and interfaith solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are currently in over 200 days of genocide.’ King, who is Jewish, responded to accusations that the protests are anti-Semitic:
‘The worst persecution Jewish students on campus face is from Columbia University. The institution has disproportionately sanctioned us because many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Camp and are trying to prevent genocide from being committed in our name’.
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday approved a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, of which $26 billion has been allocated to Israel.
During the interview with Democracy Now, Juan González added: ‘Universities in the United States have to realise that the youth of this country do not support the constant wars, which are imperial wars, in which our government participates or funds, and that something has to change.’
‘What starts here changes the world’. A simple slogan for the University of Texas at Austin has quickly become a call to action for thousands of students across the United States demanding peace in Gaza.
