Colleges and universities across the US have turned into battlegrounds for the Palestinian solidarity movement, as students mobilize against their schools’ financial entanglements with the Israeli occupation. At UC Davis and Stanford, student-led struggles have made historic achievements. UC Davis activists recently passed a bill in student government to boycott and divest from all “corporations complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians.” At Stanford, students protesting their university’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza just ended the longest sit-in in the school’s history, camping out for over 120 days. The Real News speaks with student organizers on their recent achievements on their respective campuses, and how to keep the student movement in solidarity with Palestine going.

Panelists include: Batool, a Palestinian fourth-year political science student at UC Davis and vice president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), UC Davis chapter; Malak, a Palestinian second-year neurobiology major at UC Davis and treasurer of SJP, UC Davis chapter; Seena, a Palestinian fourth-year double major in cognitive science and political science at UC Davis, and the president of SJP, UC Davis chapter; Farah, a second-year student at Stanford and co-president of SJB, Stanford chapter; and Hana, a student at Stanford and one of the organizers of the Stanford Sit-In to Stop Genocide.

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome everyone, to The Real News Network Podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. Before we get going today, I want to remind y’all that The Real News is an independent viewer and listener-supported, grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. We have a small but incredible team of folks here who are fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices from the front lines of struggle around the world. But we cannot continue to do that work without your support and we need y’all to become supporters of The Real News now. Please head on over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today. I promise you, it really makes a difference.

Every day, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza continues to erase whole families, communities, and neighborhoods off the face of the earth. We are recording this on Thursday, February 22, and three days ago, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that Israel has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians since October 7, around two-thirds of them women and children. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been wounded in that time. As a full-scale ethnic cleansing unfolds before our eyes, as the slaughter continues, as Israel’s government vows to continue the slaughter until “total victory is achieved,” and as the US continues to be the number one supporter of this humanitarian calamity, people of conscience around the world continue to take direct action, with increased urgency. As we have covered, here at The Real News Network, college campuses have become a critical flashpoint of struggle and confrontation. Today we are returning to California, where students at Stanford University and UC Davis are continuing their fight for a ceasefire in Gaza and for institutional divestment from Israel.

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As Megan Fan Munce reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 14, “Pro-Palestinian students at Stanford University have camped out on campus for 120 days to pressure the university to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and to divest from Israel, among other demands. But the students will end their protests this week in exchange for meetings with university leadership to discuss their demands. On Tuesday, sit-in leaders announced on social media they had agreed to end the demonstration by Friday night after university administrators pledged in a letter not to pursue legal or disciplinary action against any demonstrators and to meet with representatives about their demands. For more than 100 days, dozens of Stanford students at any one time studied and slept in outdoor tents in White Plaza, even weathering a recent barrage of strong storms by using sandbags and physically holding down the tents.

Last Thursday, the university ordered the protestors to stop camping overnight, citing concerns about safety and confrontations between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups. When students didn’t comply, the university issued a new deadline to clear out by Monday night, but the demonstration continued. Instead, sit-in representatives offered to disband in exchange for amnesty and the opportunity to discuss their demands with university leadership.” As Rivers Stout reports in the UC Davis student paper The Aggie, “On February 16, the ASUCD Senate passed Senate Bill #52, which implements an ASUCD boycott of and divestment from ‘corporations complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians,’ according to the bill’s language. This boycott is in accordance with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a nonviolent global campaign promoting boycotts against Israel and organizations that they have deemed ‘complicit’ in Israel’s actions over the past few months, including Intel, Disney, Starbucks, and many more. Prior to the Senate meeting where the bill was considered, UC Davis Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) encouraged students to attend and speak during public comment in support of the bill through an Instagram post, which had more than 1,400 likes at the time of publication.”

To talk about all of this and more, I’m honored to be joined today on The Real News Network Podcast, by a group of students at Stanford and UC Davis, and we’re going to introduce you to them right now. I’m so grateful to you all for being here and I want to start by going around the table and asking if y’all could first introduce yourselves, and tell us a little more about who you are, how you got involved in this fight, why it’s important, and tell us more about what the political scene looks like on your campuses – Right now, in this moment, when Israel’s war on Gaza is intensifying, and those tensions are boiling over into the political realm, here in the US. What does that look like for you all, as students at these campuses?

Malik: Hi, my name is Malik, and I’m the treasurer of SJP. I joined SJP because I wanted to create a real change on campus, as a Palestinian myself. In terms of the climate on campus, we have a very Zionist administration. Our chancellor sits on the board of Leidos which provides surveillance weaponry to Israel. We don’t feel supported on campus because of this, and we have pretty good Zionist student groups on campus and presence; We’ve been surveilled, we’ve been stalked, we’ve been verbally harassed because of this. But there is an overwhelming majority of Palestinian students that do support us. We saw this when we passed BDS, how many people showed up to support us, and there were hundreds giving public comments. It showed that even though the administration might be Zionists, the overwhelming majority of students do support Palestine.

Batul: Hi everyone, my name is Batul and I’m the vice president of SJP here at UC Davis. The reason that I got involved with SJP and student organizing in general, is because I’m Palestinian. I’ve lived my entire life within this struggle and this liberation movement. I felt that when I came to this campus, I was able to join a group that made actual change and that was something I had been wanting to do. I just never knew how to directly get involved in that. SJP was my way of doing that when I transferred over here. The political climate on this campus, in terms of the student body, is predominantly Palestinian allies. We’ve seen that with this new phase of the most recent genocide in Gaza. Post-October 7, we’ve had an overwhelming amount of support from the student body in ways that, through my experience last year on SJP, I’ve never seen anything like this.

It’s clear that people are pushing for change. The narrative, in terms of the Palestinian occupation in general, is shifting. People are a lot more educated, they’re a lot more aware of what’s going on. With the urgency and how dire the situation is in Gaza, people are fed up with hearing the same things, whether that be from our Zionist institution here on this campus, or our Zionist government living in America. People are sick of hearing the same things over and over again and they’re more inclined to do what’s in their power to make change, in any way that they can.

We do have a Zionist student body who is really intense in what they do. As was mentioned earlier, we are constantly harassed; We’ve received death threats numerous times from Zionist students on this campus. They know who we are and they directly target us, in numerous different ways, but despite that, we are not going to fall victim to Zionist tactics. We’ve seen this before. We see it on the ground in Palestine. These tactics of intimidation do not slow us in our movement, they do not stop us in our movement, and we are always reminding ourselves to remain steadfast and confident in what we do. Because at the end of the day, we’re fully aware that while our university and our administration might not back us up, we’re not doing this for them, we’re doing this for the people in Palestine. That is what keeps us steadfast in our movement.

Cena: Hi, my name is Cena. I’m the president of SJP here at UC Davis. I got started in this movement on the UC Davis campus three years ago, in my second year, here. But I’ve been a part of the Palestinian liberation movement ever since I could remember, being Palestinian myself. I watched my father be detained in front of me when I was eight and then a year later I had to experience the martyrdom of my cousin Milad. Ever since that moment, I had become radicalized in my politics, in the ones of wanting to see a liberated Palestine, and to ensure human rights, for not only my family but every single Palestinian living there as well in the diaspora with the right to return home.

As for the political climate on this campus, I will say it is an overwhelmingly Palestinian-based allyship in our student body. Although we have an explicitly Zionist administration, as well as fully moving up the ranks of the UC region to the governor overseas, I as well as 12 other students have been arrested at a UC Regents meeting. Our administration is wholeheartedly not only complicit but actively committing these acts of genocide with their wallets. At the end of the day, we’re here on campus to provide a space where people can come and get educated and learn about the proper history of Palestine. That’s super vital, especially since a lot of our curriculums do not properly teach what’s happening in Palestine and the history of what it’s been. SJP provides a space for people on campus to come learn, get educated, and spread awareness, on everything going on back home.

Farrah: Hi, my name is Farrah. I’m a second-year student at Stanford and I am co-president of SJP. The main reason why I got involved in this type of work is I’m Egyptian. This cause is something that I was introduced to as soon as I knew about politics or the political climate. Palestinian liberation was something that was never questioned in my mind and was more at the forefront. Part of the reason why I got involved in SJP is Stanford’s activism climate was completely dead prior to the start of this year. Our SJP did not exist until October 8. We had nothing going on, on campus. After October 7, there was a need for the student body to be informed because we were living on a completely Zionist campus, run by Zionists with their money, and also their beliefs. Our curriculum is completely centered around Zionism.

My involvement in SJP, while it does mean that I have personal connections because I’m a modern-day Muslim, at my core, the reason why I’m involved in this type of work is because it is the right thing to do. I believe, especially being at a university like Stanford which is not only complicit but active in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and active in this occupation, it is my responsibility to amplify the voices of Palestinians. There are only 10 Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans combined, living on Stanford’s campus, and attending this university. There may be less than 10. The need for an organizing space was very present and the need for education was very present. I believe it is my responsibility, as a Stanford student and as a human being, to make sure that this work gets done.

Hanna: Hi, I’m Hanna. I’m one of the organizers of The Student to Stop Genocide. I got involved with the sit-in on the first day or second night, on October 21. The greatest value that the sit-in has provided is, as Farrah mentioned, Stanford was politically dead. Stanford is a campus where the vast majority of students are STEM majors and they’re quite disinterested and disconnected from any global struggles for human rights, for liberation, or at the very least, they were prior to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

What we have been able to do through our work as a sit-in and by collaborating with various other student groups like SJP and JVP, is transform the political conversation on this campus. The sit-in was on White Plaza which is a very central space on Stanford’s campus, and hundreds of people pass by every single day. Through that, we were able to provide a physical reminder of the ongoing atrocities and we were able to educate the Stanford student body and pull them into this cause. The sit-in petition eventually amassed around 3,500 signatures. When Stanford’s administration threatened to take the sit-in down – Which they did not once, but twice – Stanford’s community rallied behind us, in order to keep the fight going.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Well, let’s talk about the sit-in and the Divestment Bill. Let’s unpack for folks listening to what’s going on here. Let’s talk about how these movements got started, and how they evolved on your respective campuses, and take us there to the heart of the action. Over 120 days camping out on campus can’t be easy, or marshaling this mobilization of students to come and vote, to demand that the student government fully divest any financial ties whatsoever to Israel. Tell us more about that, unpack that for folks who may just be hearing about these struggles now, or who heard about them a little while ago but haven’t gotten a chance to hear directly from folks like y’all, who have been there on the front lines.

Farrah: Yeah, I can hop in. At least on Stanford’s campus, given that the organizing scene was so nonexistent before October 8, the way that it evolved was it began with a big push for education. It was obvious that there were students on this campus – And still to this day, there are most definitely students on this campus – Who were completely unaware of the genocide of Palestinians going on, and the occupation which has been going on for 75 years. That level of ignorance is something that we put an effort into, to try and get rid of. After that initial push for education, one of the biggest signs that we knew we were doing work that was meant to be done and one of the biggest indicators that we were getting our message across in the way that we intended, was the amount of anger that we saw from folks who were Zionists, pro-Israel, and very evidently were not on the side of Palestinian liberation.

We had been harassed, verbally assaulted, and physically assaulted, almost every single day for the first three weeks of the sit-in. Since then, not one day of those 120 days has gone by to where we have not had some incident, or some hate speech directed at us. This is not just directed at Arabs and Muslims or Palestinians, it’s also very much directed at our allied supporters as well. We have a lot of antisemitism that goes on. A lot of our anti-Zionist Jewish friends who are lead organizers of the sit-in have received some of the most vile comments that I have ever heard, as it relates to the way that this movement progressed. There’s a lot of work that we tried to do, especially with trying to teach people what not to believe in, what not to read, and that the Western media was very evidently trying to teach them something completely untrue.

The university also has been very transparent about the way that they responded to the ongoing genocide on Gaza, saying that they are aware that their response has been asymmetric towards Zionists and Israelis on campus. Now, where we’re at is making sure that all the energy we’ve built up and making people angry and making people remember what is going on, is one very small step forward. Now we are trying – And are very inspired by our friends over at UCD – For this push for divestment. It’s something that we are fully launched into, especially through our coalition called Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine, which I’m sure Hannah can talk about more.

Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah. Hanna, why don’t you hop in and round out the Stanford side, and then we’ll throw it to the UCD gang?

Hanna: As Farrah mentioned, the administration has said explicitly that they’re aware their response has been asymmetric and they have completely abandoned the Palestinian community on campus. When the administration wanted to shut down the sit-in, they shrouded this action in the language of concern for student safety. But that excuse falls completely flat when we’re faced with the fact that students were there continuously for 120 days, through New Year’s Eve, Christmas, and storms – During which, it was not the Sit-in to Stop Genocide tents or canopies that collapsed and posed a threat to other students, it was the very AstroTurf-ed camp, blue and white tent, that was set up by pro-Israel groups on campus, right across from us. The fact of the matter is that the university is much more interested in promoting a both-sides narrative, in which we can all have a rigorous, academic, intellectual debate about this and then not make any meaningful institutional changes.

This is not to say that the pressure on Stanford’s campus hasn’t led to any tangible changes. The sit-in has been able to secure some accommodations for Palestinian students and also the creation of the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Students Communities’ Committee, which is meant to investigate the experiences and challenges that these communities are facing, and recommend ways in which Stanford can improve. But unfortunately, these recommendations are not binding, so the administration is not under any obligation to follow those recommendations.

The fight is not over, and as Farrah also mentioned, we are now transitioning into a fully-fledged divestment campaign under the umbrella of Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine. As we know, every major human rights organization in the world – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories in the United Nations – They have all come to the conclusion that Israel is committing apartheid. This is a crime against humanity in international law. Stanford, by its document of investment responsibility, is bound to divest from entities that are complicit in crimes such as genocide and apartheid. We see this as a student movement that is going to have longevity because even when this assault on Gaza ends, Israel’s apartheid will continue, just as it has in the past 75 years.

Cena: Then transitioning into what’s been going on at UC Davis, with SB52, having been passed this past Thursday – Which is now a week ago today – The whole process of the creation of this bill, and the idea, was something planted by not only myself but the rest of my Board. It was a goal we had since the beginning of the year. We were able to bring it to fruition when there was one day when we finally sat down, and we thought it was time to accumulate all of the ideas, and the basis that we wanted for this bill, and create it into a final doc. Working alongside many other students – Who also are not part of the SJP board but allies and community members – As well as other senators, we were able to create this bill.

Being the author and another board member having been the co-author, as well as a senator at our student government, we worked intensely in having meetings and understanding all of the logistical ins and outs of how our student government worked, and how this would look like if implemented, since we were going to be the first university to institutionally boycott over 30+ companies on the BDS list. Moving forward from that initial phase, it took about a month or more of planning out how we were going to make it as “bulletproof as possible.” Because at the end of the day, when we brought it up to all of our student government, we didn’t want it to be shot down due to a logistical reason. We took advantage of the current climate phase we are in, of the genocide happening in Gaza, and there’s no time left. There’s no time left to waste, sit around, and allow for words of resolution to be accumulating. We had to turn our words of resolution into actions, of an institutional boycott.

We passed a BDS resolution here at UC Davis in 2021. Some alumni had been working on trying to pass BDS here at Davis for 20 years; We were just the board that was finally able to compile it, put it together, and bring it to our student government to have a vote. We were met with such a beautiful picture of community and we were overwhelmed by the support. Not only did the bill pass, but it passed overwhelmingly with 12 out of 14 Senate votes, voting yes. That’s as good as it could have gone for us and we couldn’t be more grateful that we got it to pass. Now we’re in the works of working alongside the committees and seeing how we’re going to finally get into the phases of taking things like Sabra or Starbucks drinks off the shelves of our marketplace.

Batul: To touch a bit more on what it meant for us to pass this BDS bill on our campus, speaking from my personal experience, we are constantly asked and expected to put our trauma on display, for people to understand what we’re going through. That is not something that should be the standard. Palestinians are the only oppressed people who are constantly expected to worry about the feelings of their oppressors and make them comfortable. When we do things such as reliving our trauma in public spaces, that’s showing that we don’t care if this makes people uncomfortable. Because at the end of the day, if it makes you uncomfortable to hear this, imagine how uncomfortable it was to live it, and experience it. You should also be asking yourself, why are you uncomfortable listening to these stories that people have experienced? It’s because you don’t want to take accountability and acknowledgment in your ignorance, and you are trying to avoid and divert from the fact that – Let’s say for example, student senators on our campus, or our chancellor – You’re trying to look away and turn away from the fact that you have the power to institutionally do something on UC Davis’s campus that means something. Because when we were able to thankfully pass this bill, we had an overwhelming number of people from other campuses across the country, reaching out to us and asking how we were able to do so.

When one university or one individual does something, that sets the precedent for other people to follow suit, and do the same thing. Now all these other universities and students who are pushing for divestment or boycotting from their campus are able to say, you can no longer tell me that this is not something that’s possible because it is possible. Because we saw UC Davis do it. That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge the historic-ness of what happened. Thankfully it happened on our campus, but if it were not to be us, it would’ve been someone else. The fact that it happened sooner rather than later pushes for other people to push for the same thing on their campuses because it has officially happened with us.

Malik: I want to add, that the bill was a huge material victory for our liberation movement here at Davis. During public comment, something we saw was that a lot of Zionists were making arguments that this bill would cause a rise in antisemitism. But one week later, we’ve already seen five explicit acts of anti-Palestinian racism to not only Palestinians but to our allies who are being recognized in public by Zionists and being verbally harassed because they were seen at this public comment.

Batul: If I could quickly add something on top of her point. Speaking a little bit more on the increase in anti-Palestinian racism, post-October 7 there was a rise in it, in general, but post the passing of this BDS bill, we have seen such explicit acts of anti-Palestinian racism. Five incidents in seven days is not normal and we have not seen any acknowledgment from our administration for the past four months. We don’t expect to see any acknowledgment from our institution moving forward with what’s been happening for the past week.

That’s why it’s so important for us to expose these incidents because our administration is not going to do that for us. Zionists need to be held accountable and they need to be called out on what they’re doing to Palestinians because when they make claims that we do the same things to them, which we do not, we receive consequences from our administration. That same standard should be applied to them, especially when the acts that they engage in are one, true; they’re things they actually do, and two, they are explicit forms of harassment.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well I could talk to you all for days. I know that this is not the end of the story and we can and will do more follow-ups with y’all and with more student activists on campuses around the country, as well as the different labor groups, the different advocacy groups, different folks from across higher ed, who are coming together to fight this fight. To everyone listening, we will be following up on this.

But since I only have y’all for a couple more minutes here, I want to do a final turn around the table and ask what happens next. This is going to come out on Thursday, February 29, what can folks on your campuses, alumni, faculty, students, staff, but also folks listening to this around the country, and what can they do to get involved? What can they do to help, and where can they find y’all?

Cena: As for what the future looks like for UC Davis when it comes to organizing and what we want to do with this historic passing of the BDS bill, we’re working alongside national SJP to try and make this a national movement and call to action; To encourage other student governments to start institutionally boycotting these companies complicit in the ongoing genocide happening in Palestine. As for us here at Davis, we have a lot of events planned especially revolving around education and we’re hoping to keep having these conversations and keep putting our administration in uncomfortable positions until they have to listen and they have to do something with our demands.

They hopefully will eventually, institutionally divest as a whole. Because the UC as a whole is directly complicit in so much weapon manufacturing that it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach, knowing that I’ve lost family in Gaza and I’m still here attending an institution that is directly funding the weapons being dropped on them. But at the end of the day, moving forward all we can do is not only enjoy this victory – Because being part of a liberation movement, a lot of times we don’t see these material victories. It takes a long time for us to see material victory – As of right now we’re enjoying it, we’re trying to spread awareness and spread the word to other chapters, and we’re looking forward to spreading more education and events throughout campus.

Malik: Then to add on, we are focusing on helping other campuses with their divestment, how they can go about processing media of their campuses and letting this be a domino effect for other campuses across the nation. In regards to events, we’re going to be having an anti-Zionism week in March, in collaboration with National SJP, where we’ll be having a lot of informational events and teachings with speakers.

Batul: To discuss moving forward, what we’re going to push for – Not only on our campus but in general – The number one thing is that we need to keep going. Over the past four months, while we did see a rise in mobilization and turnout for SJP at UC Davis’s campus, in the most recent couple of months we have seen a decline from that original mobilization and turnout. That’s because people… Whether they don’t care as much as they originally did, the fact that they moved Palestine low on their list of priorities, or people simply do not care as much as they did directly when October 7 happened – That’s horrible. People in Palestine are begging us daily to continue talking about what is happening to them.

At the end of the day, when there are people in Gaza – And Palestine as a whole – Being genocide-ed, thousands being genocide-ed every week, we do not have the room to stop, slow down, and be fatigued. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to advocate for their liberation, a permanent ceasefire, and a free Palestine from the river to the sea because that’s what they’re asking us to do. We need to listen to them and do what they need us to do as people in the diaspora.

Hanna: Here at Stanford, as everywhere else, we were very inspired by the UC Davis success of passing the institutional boycott; We’re very interested in also replicating that success. Even though the sit-in tents are no longer standing, our movement will continue to push for Stanford to divest from corporations that are complicit in Israel’s crimes. Our ultimate commitment was never to the physical space of the sit-in, but always to the fight for Palestinian liberation. I encourage all Stanford students, alums, and parents of Stanford students to follow up with us on our social media, either on Stanford SJP, or the Sit-in to Stop Genocide because we will be posting about our future actions. Also, join the coalition Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine because we will be trying to make that movement as broad and all-encompassing as possible in order to affect the most change.

Maximillian Alvarez: All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us on this installment of The Real News Network Podcast. I want to thank our guests Batul, Malik, Cena, Hanna, and Farrah, I want to thank you all for listening, and thank you for caring. One last time before you go, please head on over to therealnews.com/donate and become a supporter of our work, so we can keep bringing y’all important coverage and conversations like this. This is Maximilian Alvarez for The Real News Network – Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.