Within
days of the October 7, Hamas-led surprise
massacre in Israel and the relentless
retaliation of airstrikes in Gaza by Israel,
students at many universities began to
organize protests over the Israel-Gaza war and
subsequently the disproportionate casualties
of Palestinians and the larger issue of the
conditions of Palestinian existence in Israel
during the 75 year old Middle East conflict.
College campuses, largely predominately white
institutions (PWI) have become divided with
students engaging in fierce arguments over
whether Hamas militants’ slaughtering of
Israeli people could have been avoided,
whether Israel’s unrelenting response was
justifiable, how Israel has treated
Palestinians, and whether condemnation of the
Israel government is a slight against all
Jews, among other issues.
The protests continue to
escalate at hundreds of schools with
protesters camped in tents on campuses,
disrupting classes and school activities,
risking suspension, expulsion and provoking
arrests, and demanding a cease fire and an end
to continued airstrikes in Gaza. The anti-war
and pro- Palestinian protesters are demanding
that their schools divest in companies they
claim are complicit in the war in Gaza. For
example, students at University of California,
Berkeley and New York University call for
divestment in Israel across the board, while
student groups at Yale and Cornell are
insisting that administrators discontinue
investments in manufacturers of weapons.
Others call for an end to U.S aid to Israel.
These actions have prompted
college officials to craft statements against
the war, though those carefully worded
statements have skillfully avoided siding with
either Israel or the Palestinians, and have
been more centered on the restoration of peace
while avoiding comment on any action or
process of divestiture. Because of the cautious
balancing act inherent in most of the
statements, many have been criticized by
student groups, and none have been sufficient
enough to stem the rising tide of the protest
movement. PWIs are struggling with allowing
protests while preventing anti-semitism and
intimidation.
The media has centered its
coverage around the student movements at elite
and selective PWIs, especially Columbia, Yale
and Harvard , and other such schools where
some Jewish students have been terrorized and
made to feel insecure and unsafe by physical
assaults, anti-semitic placards, posters,
bulletin boards, and threatening verbal
outbursts. Undoubtedly, the prestige of those
schools , their illustrious and influential
“who’s who” alumni, and endowments of $13.6
billion (Columbia), $ 42.3 billion (Yale), and
$49.4 billion (Harvard) are also factors why
these protest movements and those of similarly
situated schools have commanded center stage.
Those schools - at this point - have not been
pressured or inclined towards divestiture, but
if it emerges on the table at one, others may
be more inclined to capitulate.
Protesters and administrators at
Northwestern and Brown have reached agreements
to dismantle the encampments. The agreements
include appointing Palestinian faculty
positions and funding scholarships for
Palestinian students, and disclosure of school
investments to students who request such
information at Northwestern, and at Brown
university leaders said they would discuss,
and ultimately vote on divesting funds from
companies connected to the Israeli military
campaign in Gaza. It is important to note that
students actively involved in the protests at
these PWIs and elsewhere are racially and
ethnically diverse, including significant
numbers of African-Americans.
Though
not near the vortex of the protest movements
in terms of publicity, HBCU students have not
been on the protest sidelines at any stage of
the conflict, and it is perplexing that they
have not received the attention and scrutiny
their protests warrant. Much of this may have
to do with the smaller numbers of Jewish,
Middle East and Palestinian students enrolled
at those institutions, and their appreciably
smaller endowments. Or, there may be an
unfounded assumption that the protest energies
of HBCU students are exclusive to domestic
social justice and civil rights issues than
with international affairs and foreign policy
- as if those energies cannot co-exist. HBCU
students have a long history of protests
beginning in the 1920s when the “New Negro”
movement on several campuses successfully made
the case for curriculum changes for more
liberal arts rather than industrial training,
and for the hiring of African American
presidents to replace White presidents to lead
those institutions. HBCU students, while best
known for anchoring the Civil Rights Movement
during the late 1950s and 1960s, also staged
campus protests which helped swing public
sentiment against the Italian-Ethiopian War in
the 1930s, the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s,
and the Gulf War and apartheid in South Africa
in the 1980s.
The
current student protests at HBCUs on the
Israeli-Gaza war, are in many ways identical
to those at PWIs, but at the same time are not
carbon copies and, more importantly, have
evolved from a dissimilar historical context
than those at the elite and selective PWIs,
and that alone makes those protests worth
examining. The division and conflict among
students at some PWIs, is not the same at
HBCUs where all of the protests have been
decidedly pro-Palestinian. And, unlike the
campuses of many PWIs, so far there have been
no counter protest movements, or climates of
student versus students confrontations or
altercations. There have also been no
encampments, arrests, police interventions,
student disciplinary procedures or plans to
alter graduation exercises.
If
Columbia is the epicenter of the PWI student
protests, then Howard ($865.3 million), with
the largest endowment of HBCUs, is the
epicenter of the HBCU protests. Within days of
the Israel-Hamas war, hundreds of Howard
University students assembled in the heart of
the campus, and one student, Aaron McIntyre,
speaking through a bullhorn, urged hundreds of
students within the range of his voice not to
ignore the international conflict. “If we
stand up for Palestine,” he admonished the
crowd, “we stand up for oppressed people
everywhere.” The rally which was billed as a
“walkout” to stand in solidarity with
Palestinians, was held on the same day the
students at Columbia first staged their own
rallies. After a short delay, the Howard
administration responded to the protest
affirming its policy of the right of “peaceful
and constructive forms of student protest as
fundamental aspect of free speech and
expressions,” said Dr. Cynthia Evers, Vice
President of Student Affairs. That was
followed by a carefully worded and morally
centered official Howard statement calling for
an end to the “personal suffering of of the
Israeli and Palestinian people because
violence and hatred must never be tolerated.”
The university went on to lament the “innocent
children and adult victims of targeted hate”
that have been the result of the conflict.
What was unspoken in the statement was
Howard’s position on divesting, an issue that
was first raised by some Howard faculty in
2007, when they proposed a resolution for the
school to divest from companies offering
“material support to Israeli occupation.” At
that time the proposal was rejected by the
president, Patrick Swygert, saying it did not
represent the position of Howard, and he
promptly wrote a letter to the American Jewish
Committee (AJC) of his “complete and
unqualified rejection” of the resolution which
he hoped would reaffirm Howard’s relationship
with that organization and others “who are
promoting peace and reconciliation.” Thus, the
more recent Howard statement is an indicator
that Howard’s position is unchanged, and it
received mixed reviews from the students and
faculty, some more lenient than others feeling
that a position leaning towards the
Palestinians may not have been in the best
interests of the school’s relationship with
philanthropy, the wider financial community,
and especially with the federal government
which provides an annual appropriation for
Howard’s basic operating expenses. Others felt
that the statement missed an opportunity for
Howard to have taken a more forceful
institutional stance on the geo-political
injustices endured by the Palestinians.
Other
Howard students, such as Bri Robertson, a
freshman international affairs major, who has
been active in pro-Palestinian protests, were
hoping that the administration would have
shown more support for the Palestinian cause.
Howard’s Students for Justice in Palestine
(SJP) chapter demanded a boycott of companies
who are “profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza”
primarily from the U.S. State and Defense
Departments which provide $3.3 billion
annually for weapons used in what it charges
as “the lethal and unlawful targeting of
Palestinian civilians.” The students also
unsuccessfully sought to block those companies
and the U. S. State Department from attending
a campus career fair. In coalition with dozens
of other D.C. students, Howard students staged
no encampment on its own campus, but joined a
pro-Palestinian encampment on the George
Washington University campus as part of a
nationwide effort by SJP calling on their
higher education institutions to divest from
Israel amid the ongoing war. Howard professor
Greg Carr has perhaps best assessed the
difficulty of Howard adequately responding to
the demands of the protesters. HBCUs “are not
financially autonomous or independent or self
determining. So what you see is this perpetual
attempt by HBCU administrators to shield the
institution from this precarious position,”
Carr opined. “At the same time,” he says, it
can be less than satisfying to many
constituents when it may be more prudent “to
assert some statement of our values.”
Hampton
University students staged a protest by
walking out of college buildings after the
continued Israel airstrikes in Gaza, demanding
an end to U.S. aid to Israel. “With us being
on a HBCU campus,” says Manual Antonia
Rodriguez, a leader of the protest, “the
Palestinian conflict and the struggle they
experience to this day has been coexisting and
integral to a lot of the Black struggle.”
Rodriguez is a member of the campus chapter of
the Dissenters, a national organization on
antiwar activists. One of the goals on the
protest, said Dante Belcher, another member of
Hampton’s Dissenters chapter, is to demand
from defense companies who have supplied the
Israeli military with money and weapons for
decades. The demands of the Hampton protesters
echoed those of student protesters at other
HBCUs such as at Morgan, where the students
clothed in black and with covered faces staged
a protest during a career fair at the school’s
Student Center, holding up signs saying “Free
Palestine,” “Stop Funding Genocide,” and
“Unite HBCUs against Zionism.” Morgan security
peacefully escorted the group out of the
building. The students said the reason for
obscuring their faces was to remain anonymous
to avoid retribution from Morgan’s
administration. There is no indication that
Morgan, which supports peaceful student
protests, has any plans for a student penalty
for the protests.
Rokiyah Darbo, a sophomore
student at Spelman College, learned there was
an institutional infrastruture in its Women’s
Research and Resource Center which initiated
one of the first Students for Justice in
Palestine chapters at an HBCU. It was launched
in 2014 over the police killing of Mike Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri when Spelman students and scholars
conceptualized a link between the policing of
Americans of color and the Palestinians,
contending that there is a commonality to the
racial, gender, and economic injustices faced
by both. In October of 2023, Darbo organized
activists such as the Black Alliance for
Peace, SJP, the Muslim Student Association of
Kennesaw State University, along with fellow
students, students from Clark-Atlanta
University, Morris Brown, Morehouse, Morehouse
School of Medicine, and citizens from the
Atlanta community numbering several thousand
in a protest march through the city calling
for a ceasefire.
On
October 25, at North Carolina A&T State
University, students led by Ziora Ajeroh, who
started the campus’ first chapter of
Dissenters, participated in a national college
student walk-out, demanding a ceasefire in
Gaza. The walkout was conducted at other HBCUs
with Dissenter chapters including Xavier
University. More than 50 A&T students also
gathered around the campus Reflection pool, a
location commemorating the 1969 Greensboro
uprising where a student was shot and killed,
and had discussions about the conditions of
life in Palestine and the struggles of
colonized people. One Palestinian student
enrolled at A&T was encouraged to “speak
on her experiences as a member of the
Palestinian diaspora and what that means to
her,” said Ajeroh.
Beyond
Howard, a number of HBCU presidents have
written statements calling for peace in the
Middle East. Rochelle Ford, president of
Dillard University, which is home to the
National Center of Black Jewish Relations, was
more specific in her statement which called
the Hamas attacks in Israel “unadulterated
evil being unleashed on the world.” She also
shared her thoughts about Palestinians in Gaza
being unfairly blamed and punished “for the
terrorist acts by the Hamas extremists, who
also oppress Palestinians in Gaza, doing more
harm to the struggle for freedom and
autonomy.” She has received criticism from
students and alumni for appearing to be more
partial to Israel than Palestine and for a
letter she drafted with Ari Berman, the
president of Yeshiva University titled, “We
Stand Together With Israel Against Hamas.” It
was a courageous position taken by Ford, who
stresses a shared humanity that must not be
violated by either Israel or Palestine, and
insists on separating the violence of Hamas
from peaceful Palestinians. Still, the optics
of her alignment with Israel - during what has
become a one-sided war - has been troubling on
her campus. So disappointed were some of the
students, that they led a silent walkout in
protest of both her and Israel’s polices
towards the Palestinians and the war which has
left over one million innocent Palestinians,
including children, vulnerable to hunger,
disease and death.
Of all the student protests on
PWI and HBCU campuses, perhaps the most significant and certainly the most
anticipated has yet to occur. When Morehouse
College officials announced that President Joe
Biden would be this year’s commencement
speaker, the response was anything but
celebration. The next day a group called
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
issued a statement urging that the invitation
be recinded. “As faculty members at academic
institutions in and around Atlanta - including
Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta - we did
not see this coming,” the statement read.
“This is not the Morehouse College that
history has known and that we have come to
treasure.” It went on to say Biden has been
insensitive to the “wrongs, sufferings and
injustices” inflicted on the Palestinians.
Some alumni released a letter encouraging
members of the campus to “make your dissent
known” while students expressed their
displeasure at a town hall the day the
announcement was made.
Morehouse
College President, David A. Thomas, said that
the invitation was extended to President Biden
before the start of the Israel -Gaza war and
that the administration would not reverse
course. He went on to emphasize the prestige
it brings to Morehouse and that Biden’s visit
reflects and enhances the “stature and
importance” of the institution. The political
implications of the commencement months away
from the presidential election cannot be
overstated. Biden has been deliberate in his
efforts to reach and solidify himself with
young black voters, many of whom are
frustrated with his continued aid to Israel in
light of the unceasing Israeli decimation of
Gaza. The Morehouse faculty has differing
opinions on the invitation. Andrew Douglas, a
professor, says some have told him that “under
no way are they going to sit on a stage with
Joe Biden,” while professor Stephen Dunn, who
supports campus dissent, believes this to be
“an incredible opportunity” for Biden to
explain his policy of continuing aid to
Israel, and to make his case as to why he is
deserving of their vote. Because Biden will be
physically present on the campus, the media is
following the evolving drama at Morehouse more
than the protests at any other HBCU.
The
support and identification of HBCU students
and faculty for the Palestinians is not as new
as the more recent student protests might
imply. In fact, it can be traced back decades
to when African American civil rights
advocates, student activists and revolutionary
organizations identified with the Palestinian
struggle for freedom. “People like the Black
Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael (Howard
University) and SNCC embraced the Palestinian
cause,” writes historian Michael Fischbach, in
his book Black Power in Palestine, “not out of
abstract revolutionary solidarity, but because
they saw themselves as a kindred people of
color fighting a global system of oppression
that was backed by the United States.” Saeed
Mohammed, a Howard student from South Africa,
remembers wearing “Free Palestine” hoodies
from as early as elementary school.
Increasing support for the
Palestinians by both HBCU students and faculty
is well documented and extensive. It is
reflective of the current national African
American mood. While 38 percent of Whites side
mostly or entirely with Israel in the war in
Gaza, just 13 percent of Blacks do, according
to a recent Pew Research Center poll. This
represents a shift in the views of some Blacks
who earlier on saw a correlation of their
struggle with a Jewish diaspora still trying
to brace itself from the horrors of the
Holocaust by building a new nation. Others at the
same time were troubled with the distribution
of authority in the building of Israel to the
detriment of those they saw and continue to
see as “people of color.” The shift continued,
especially when Black activists forged
solidarity with Palestinians during the Black
Lives Matter movement.
HBCU administrators, however,
have to weigh institutional expressions of
those reshaped feelings against what they
perceive as the best interests of their
schools, as well as the long history of
productive alliances the Jewish community has
had with HBCUs and the Black community. These
alliances go back to those who were among the
founders of the NAACP, such as Julius
Rosenwald - executive at Sears and scion to
the founder - who in 1912 collaborated with Booker T. Washington
to establish Rosenwald schools in the rural
South for Blacks. By 1932, 5,000 schools were
constructed across 15 Southern states,
educating one-third of rural Black children in
the South.
The
Jewish-HBCU collaboration began during WWII
when 53 exiled German Jews - 10 with the
financial support of the Emergency Committee
in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars - joined
the faculties at HBCUs including, Howard,
North Carolina Central, Tougaloo, Talledega
and Hampton. The high water mark in the
alliances came during the Civil Rights
Movement when the American Jewish Congress
(AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
worked closely with Martin Luther King’s
Southern Leadership Conference ( SCLC) to
address legalized societal limits imposed on
both minorities. That turbulent period
witnessed Jewish college students traveling
South, joining the 1964 Freedom Summer
campaign of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee ( SNCC). Michael
Schwerner and James Goodman - two Jewish
students - along with James Cheney, a Black
activist, were murdered by members of the Ku
Klux Klan because of their involvement. At
Spelman College in Atlanta, Howard Zinn, a
revered faculty member and eminent Jewish
scholar, was summarily terminated because of
his leadership role in the student protest
movement. August Meier, another prominent
Jewish scholar, taught and developed Black
history courses at Tougaloo, Fisk and Morgan
from the mid-50s through the mid-60s.
In July of 2023, only months
before the Israeli-Gaza war, administrators
from North Carolina A&T, South Carolina
State, Morgan, Alabama State and the Thurgood
Marshall College Fund traveled to Jerusalem for a meeting designed to
“forge relationships with Israeli institutions
of of higher learning.” While it was never
articulated or acknowledged, both sides sought to reaffirm
the mutually beneficial Jewish-Black
relationship which has been fraying over the
years largely because of growing
African-American resentment to the treatment
of the Palestinians and the United States’
foreign policy with Israel. The Israeli-Gaza
war which came soon after that trip has
resulted in turmoil on HBCU and PWI campuses
for which the leaders have been unprepared and
could not have anticipated. The demand for a
ceasefire is out of the control of college
administrators, but when it occurs, it may not
be enough to stop the protesters who are
insisting there must be some measure of
divestiture in Israel, and more recognition of
Palestinian needs. But more importantly, it
will be difficult to return to the pre-war
status-quo in U.S. foreign policy with Israel
and the Palestinians. It is a complicated
conundrum and the student protests must be
recognized as the continued beginning of the
search for lasting solutions to a 75-year-old
problem, one which began with the creation of
the State of Israel in land occupied by the
Palestinians. It is the international problem
of the color-line.