Lia Chien
Students at George Washington University in Washington, along with those at seven other area colleges, are making demands of their universities including divestment from companies that sell technology and weapons to Israel.
In the second week of the demonstrations that took hold of George Washington University’s (GW) campus, demonstrators successfully dismantled the metal barricades that separated the encampments from the college’s University Yard (U-Yard) and H Street. Now, passersby and protesters could walk freely between both locations, where scores of college students have set up camp to continue their ongoing protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and their universities’ involvement.
GW’s campus, scattered throughout the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., is positioned near the center of America’s foreign-policy apparatus. From the university, it’s about a 15-minute walk east to the White House, or seven minutes south to the U.S. State Department’s headquarters, the Harry S Truman Building.
GW is also where eight DMV-area colleges have decided to centralize their protest efforts and resources. The colleges include GW, Georgetown University, American University, Gallaudet University, and Howard University, all in D.C.; George Mason University in Virginia; and from Maryland, the University of Maryland and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).
During a visit to GW’s campus this past Thursday, students and faculty of these various colleges were present to voice their support for Palestine. Nestled along the scores of tents were food stations, medical centers, and even a library to sustain the students and their actions.
Maria, a GW student who declined to give her last name for safety purposes, is one of the organizers of the encampment. She says GW’s lack of funding transparency is a major red flag of their involvement with “the Zionist entity.”
“[GW is] more worried about protecting the opinions and protecting the financial ties that they have to this genocide than they are about meeting with students and being willing to collaborate on those concerns,” says Maria, who adds they have yet to hear from the administration about their demands.
At the intersection of H Street and 21st Street Northwest, a group of about 60 faculty members from the eight DMV-area colleges formed a line of support to ward off any counterprotesters bent on igniting violence. Unlike at the University of California, Los Angeles, or Columbia University in New York City, GW has largely been immune to episodes of violence. But still, the faculty were there to protect their students if needed.
“We support the students and their call to end the mass killing and to dismantle [Israel’s] apartheid,” Mark Lance, a philosophy professor at Georgetown, said. “Because of the counterprotests, there have been many incidents of people infiltrating, starting violence. We’re here to make sure that they have to walk through us before they can get to them.”
Collectively, the eight DMV colleges have five demands of their universities: drop charges against pro-Palestine student organizers, protect pro-Palestine speech, divest from companies that sell technology and weapons to Israel, disclose all endowment investments, and end academic partnerships with Israel (such as study-abroad programs).
Lia Chien
At GW, a group of about 60 faculty members from the eight DMV-area colleges formed a line of support to ward off counterprotesters.
Seven GW students were suspended by the university during the early days of the encampment, and eight have been suspended in total. In a prepared statement released Sunday, Ellen Granberg, GW’s president, called the encampment “an illegal and potentially dangerous occupation of GW property” and said the university is requesting outside resources—such as D.C. Metropolitan Police—to assist with its removal.
As a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1980s, Lance was heavily involved in his alma mater’s movement to divest from South Africa, then an apartheid regime. He lived in a shanty on campus for an entire semester, and wrote his papers on the ground.
“We had programming every night. Music, speeches, teach-ins. Eventually, after a year of pressure, [we] got the university to divest from the apartheid regime,” he recalled.
Lance’s hope now is that students can successfully get their universities to divest from Israel. The movement has spread throughout the country, from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, which recently struck a deal with student protesters to work toward Israeli divestment, to Brown University in Rhode Island, where its governing body will hold a vote in October regarding divestment.
Lance said it will take time for the divestment movement to take hold. “If it happens, it’ll take a year or two to accomplish the change. Because that’s the way things work, governments don’t pivot on a dime.”
Miriam, a Georgetown student, shared Lance’s sentiment in believing that pressure can move her university into divestment. Georgetown discloses more investments than GW, said Miriam, who declined to give her last name for safety reasons.
Georgetown invests $28.4 million of its endowment in Alphabet (Google) and Amazon, according to The Georgetown Voice. Both corporations help develop technologies for the Israeli military.
“They provide cloud technology services and other technology that is used to unlawfully do surveillance against the Palestinian people, to uphold the apartheid state, and to facilitate this genocide,” said Miriam.
Miriam is a Jewish student and activist. Despite the ongoing tension between some Jewish and pro-Palestinian groups, Miriam, who wore a keffiyeh around her hair, said she feels safer inside the encampment than out.
“That’s because everybody here believes in collective liberation, liberation for all people. That our safety is all intertwined with each other and that none of us are free until all of us are free and I know that I’m included in that as a Jew,” she said.
Julia, another Jewish peace activist wearing an all-black T-shirt with text in white reading, “Not in Our Name” on the front and “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” on the back, has been supportive of the student protest efforts for months, and disagreed with rumors that the protests are antisemitic.
“I’ve not heard one moment of any antisemitic remarks. Nothing but positivity, and there are a lot of Jewish people in all of these things,” Julia, who declined to give her last name, said. “This is all peaceful, this is all loving. This is not about hating anybody. This is about liberation for everyone and everybody who supports this cause that I have met.”
She added that “being pro-Palestine has nothing to do with being anti-Jewish, antisemitic.”
Even though students from both GW and Georgetown have yet to hear from their administrations, they aren’t backing down. Miriam says she and many others are prepared to stay through the summer. And Maria believes their collective power can win against the power of big money at their schools.
“The school’s refusal to have conversation about [a free Palestine] and to meet with us is a testament to their willingness to uphold and protect the interest of their investment and the interest of their money rather than their students and the will of the people,” she said.
