Updated May 2, 2024
Recently around the country we have seen an influx of Pro-Palestinian demonstrators continue to turn out at schools across the country despite the risk of detention and suspension. These students are often asking for their schools to divest their resources from Israel, the United States military or defense companies as well as bring attention to the growing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
Across the nation these protests have been met with violence and arrests. Ohio State University students alleged police snipers were positioned to potentially fire at students, over a hundred students at Columbia University have been arrested and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is suggesting expelling students who cross participate in protests and express anti-Israel sentiments. These cases are not isolated, almost every protest has been met with some form of violence. Many of these students have risked their lives, their degrees, professional careers and overall image to protest what is happening in Gaza.
I want to make my stance on this crystal clear: students should be empowered to protest and call their university’s practices into question. American universities have seen students protest the apartheid in South Africa, nation-wide racism, the Vietnam War and with hindsight we celebrate these student protesters. This is no different, universities should be an epicenter of social and political change.
“Whenever universities themselves have been perceived by students to be complicit or wrong in their stances, they have been challenged by their communities of students and teachers. If the university cannot tolerate the heat, it cannot serve its primary mission,” Serge Schmemann, former Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times, said in his opinion piece on the student protesters.
If we champion free speech, if we wish for students to practice their constitutional rights and if we wish for students to be involved in the democratic process, then we must not meet student protestors with state-sponsored violence and opposition.
The protests in support of Palestine are meant to inspire a sense of human empathy and compassion for those suffering. These are protests where students are organizing to educate people on the current crisis and proliferate information about what people can do to inspire change at institutional levels.
When people like Gov. DeSantis say students who protest are un-American and deserve to be incarcerated or expelled, he is admitting that he is a coward. When university school boards say these students will have their degrees revoked and they support police violence being used on their students, they also are admitting they are cowards. Education occurs at all levels and these protests should not be broken apart by violent force, rather they should be used as educational material where universities and government can understand that there is public outcry for them to renounce their support of a government like Israel.
These students are using their education and legal liberties to speak for a cause bigger than themselves and are asking their institutions to side with them. If you meet every dissenting opinion with police-sponsored violence, then you are telling students that their right to free speech is only allowed if it agrees with the university.
And I promise you that failure of the government and universities to earnestly listen and understand Pro-Palestinian demonstrators will only galvanize them and give them more conviction because what it proves is that what their protesting is socially important. In fact we know these protests are working. Videos from Gaza of people thanking the student protestors for bringing attention to their humanitarian struggle have gone viral. This is a testament to the power of student protests. It’s time universities and governments understand these students’ demands and work to fully accommodate their demands, not just meet them with violence and hostile opposition.
A previous version of this article misidentified the author of the quoted New York Times opinion piece. The Owl regrets the error.
