In spring of 2024, college campuses across the United States erected Palestine solidarity encampments to protest their universities’ ties to the State of Israel and corporations supplying its genocidal bombardment and siege on the Gaza Strip, which have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023. Although these peaceful encampments differed in the scope of their demands, there was one consistent call between them: for universities to disclose and divest their endowment funds from companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
In response to this relatively milquetoast—and historically precedented—demand by students taking a stance against the unabated slaughter, starvation, and sickening of Palestinians, university administrations and police cracked down, arresting more than 3,100 students participating in encampments. My own alma mater, the University of Connecticut, was no exception. Our peaceful Palestine solidarity encampment—nicknamed the “UCommune”—demanded the university divest from the U.S. and Israel’s genocide and cut ties to the military contractors arming it. (One of UConn’s top industry partners is Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of weapons giant RTX and the sole producer of engines for the F-35 fighter jet used by Israeli forces).
Instead of taking the opportunity to negotiate in good faith with students voicing serious human rights concerns, the administration of UConn President Radenka Maric responded by arresting twenty-five students and one alumnus participating in the encampment. This fall, the administration has enacted changes to university policy that effectively prohibit any protest that is not sanctioned or handheld by the university—while continuing to idle on the issue of divestment. Many universities across the United States have done the same.
The policy of silence and silencing adopted by universities across the country will have upsetting consequences not limited to their complicity in the daily atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. If universities shut their eyes and ears to the demands of Palestine solidarity activists and restrict avenues for students to voice those demands, they are guaranteed to be met with discontent from students, parents, alumni, and donors of conscience. Having participated in the movement for Palestinian freedom at UConn, I am recognizing the same pattern on a national level.
In late August, the Democratic National Convention officially named Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee for the 2024 presidential election. Surrounding the hermetically sealed chamber of Democratic fervor inside the United Center in Chicago were pro-Palestine protests demanding that Harris push for an embargo of weapons on Israel. Yet despite 83 percent of Democrats supporting a ceasefire and recent polling showing that the Vice President would see increased support among Democratic voters if she pushed for an arms embargo, Harris continues to support arming Israel in violation of U.S. federal law and at the continued expense of Palestinian lives.
Democrats even snubbed the request of the Uncommitted National Movement for a Palestinian speaker to be given a two-minute time slot to address the convention. The speech Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American state representative from Georgia, hoped to deliver at the convention would have encouraged voters to commit “to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses [Romman’s] identity as a Palestinian as a slur.” DNC organizers denied Palestinians even this modest demand, which could have been a boon to the party from a movement that mobilized more than 700,000 people to vote “uncommitted” in Democratic primary contests around the country.
Harris’s curt accusation that pro-Palestine protesters interrupting her Detroit rally in early August “want Donald Trump to win” has the situation backwards: If the Harris-Walz campaign continues to sideline the demands of her base for an arms embargo on Israel, they will bear responsibility for ushering in a potential Trump victory and the ensuing consequences, not the voters they ignored.
From college campuses to the national stage, our leaders must earnestly engage the political demands of their constituents, be that for divestment or cutting off weapons from a genocide. Failure to do so not only comes at the immeasurable cost of more Palestinian lives, but with the legitimacy of our institutions. Those leaders can choose failure at their own expense.