The path for many student protests against the war in Gaza has reached a fork: they are either put down by force or have a consensual end. While Columbia University in New York, one of the main scenes of protests in the world, opted for the forced route – it evacuated the campus after days of police repression and canceled its graduation ceremony – other institutions have taken the route peaceful to end the camping. Among the main demands that pro-Palestinian protesters repeat to end the mobilizations are the withdrawal of investments in companies linked to Israel and giving more support to the educational sector in the occupied territories. Some of the centers where mobilizations have been registered have offered timid concessions to put them down.
One of the last to reach an agreement with the students has been Trinity College Dublin. The university issued a statement this Wednesday in which it pledges to withdraw its investments from Israeli companies that are on the UN blacklist that are active in the occupied Palestinian territories, after five days of camp. He also says that he will “do more” to facilitate access to university for Gazan students. “We perfectly understand the reason for the camping on our campus and we sympathize with the students in our horror at what is happening in Gaza,” the bulletin states.
Local media report that the closure of the campus, located in the heart of the Irish capital, cost the university an estimated loss of income of 350,000 euros, mainly due to the closure of the exhibition of the Book of Kells, an ancient Celtic manuscript, which receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
Trinity College has followed the path of Brown University which, like Columbia, is part of the prestigious Ivy League in the United States. On April 30, Brown announced that he would allow five students to present their arguments in favor of divestment from “companies that facilitate the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” Although the board won’t vote on that proposal until October, it was enough to reach an agreement and end the encampments. In addition, it was agreed that no person related to the protests would face sanctions such as suspension or expulsion. Other American universities have reached similar consensus, such as Northwestern, Minnesota, Rutgers or Riverside.
In Spain, the Conference of Rectors (CRUE), which brings together 77 public and private universities – in several of which camps have been set up in recent days – will review “collaboration agreements with Israeli universities and research centers that have not expressed a firm commitment to peace and compliance with international humanitarian law.” The spark, which was lit in the United States and has spread throughout Europe, has also caught fire in Spanish cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. The CRUE says that it endorses “the feelings of the campuses and the demand that is spreading from them so that, from different instances, measures are adopted to stop the escalation of violence.” The Spanish students, however, have decided to continue with the camping trips, considering that they do not see “an answer” to their demands.
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The dilemma of universities
The students’ main request is summed up in one word: Divest [desinvertir en empresas israelíes]. In principle, the mobilizations asked for a cut in contributions to defense companies, but as the camps continue, the demands grow. The feeling is summed up by a student from the British University of Oxford in an interview for the Al Jazeera network, whose words went viral. on social network: “Right now, students are not aware of where their money goes when they pay tuition. We want to know where all the money goes. Then, with that knowledge we want to achieve total divestment from all weapons manufacturing companies. […] “We should be learning and contributing to education, not international conflicts.”
But in addition to the lack of transparency of finances at different universities – Oxford, for example, admits anonymous donations – several academic campuses rule out ending cooperation with organizations linked to Israel for fear of losing the financial support of important donors of origin. Jew. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots football team and a major contributor to Columbia, said he was not “comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.” A few days later, and given the protesters’ occupation of a building on campus, the rectorate allowed the police to enter to quell the mobilization.
The economic ties of universities on both sides of the Atlantic with companies linked to Israel are multiple. For example, Caterpillar or Rolls-Royce, whose machinery and vehicles are used by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories, cooperate with Columbia and Cambridge universities, respectively. In Oxford, protesters criticize the institution’s links with the Barclays bank, which they accuse of providing financial services to defense companies that supply equipment to Israel in its offensive on Gaza, which has already left nearly 35,000 dead.
Riot forces have also been present in institutions such as Science Po, in Paris; the Free University of Berlin, in Germany, or the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. The latter keeps all its buildings closed until Sunday after the spiral of violence in recent days, which resulted in around thirty arrests. The NGO Amnesty International has requested an evaluation of the police action, considering that the agents “did not distinguish sufficiently between the peaceful campers and the violent group.”
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