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The Student Intifada on US Campuses with Samer Alatout
64 Plays6 months ago
Samer Alatout, Al-Shabaka policy analyst and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, joins host Yara Hawari to speak about his experience at a student encampment, where he was assaulted and detained by police. Alatout also touches on the overall significance of the student uprising in the US against the genocide in Gaza.
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Transcript
Trust in Community vs Institution
00:00:00
Speaker
Do I trust the institution? No, but what I do trust is the community that was created. And the community that was created is really powerful. The students are amazing. The faculty and staff that were involved in the encampment are amazing. This coalition that was built will not disappear. There are a lot of steps that are to be taken during the summer and the fall and the spring that I think will lead to a change in the form of discussion that's happening now.
Columbia University's Stand for Palestine
00:00:34
Speaker
From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine. Over a month ago, students at Columbia University in New York set up an encampment on campus grounds in solidarity with the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza facing the ongoing genocide. Their demands to the university administration are simple, to disclose and divest from those complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.
00:01:04
Speaker
This encampment shortly led to other student encampments across American university campuses and now even further afield, including the UK and beyond, all under the banner of disclose and divest from genocide. Whilst perhaps unprecedented in the case of Palestine, these encampments and protests follow a long legacy of student mobilization in the US against imperialism and war.
Student Protests and Challenges
00:01:27
Speaker
And just as their predecessors did, these students at these encampments have faced brutal repression from police and security forces. Hundreds of students and faculty members have been injured, arrested and even suspended from their institutions. They've also faced smear campaigns by the media and agitators who tried to paint the picture of hate-filled violent protests when in fact the opposite has been true.
Faculty Perspectives on Student Uprisings
00:01:50
Speaker
Palestinian-American Professor Samir El-Artout is the Butil Seaworld Professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a faculty advisor for the Students for Justice and Palestine chapter at the University, and a member of Ashavaka.
00:02:06
Speaker
Professor Lahatoud was at his local student encampment when he was assaulted and detained by police. And today he joins me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine to discuss the significance of this student uprising from the perspective of a faculty member. Professor Lahatoud, thank you for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine. Thank you, Yara. Professor, before we go into what happened to you, it would be useful to hear a little bit about the background to these protests and encampments as you understand them.
History of US Student Activism
00:02:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, there is a long history in the United States of student activism and university campuses have been famously busy with protest during, for example, the civil rights movement in the 1960s, during anti-war, anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and 70s.
00:02:58
Speaker
then anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s and now of course against Israeli apartheid occupation and genocide in US universities.
00:03:13
Speaker
So there is a long history of student activism and almost always those student activist movements have been brutalized by police force and police violence and almost always they affected change.
00:03:30
Speaker
So while they are ongoing, they are faced with violence. And then within a decade or so, they seem to be succeeding in changing the discourse around, for example, Vietnam War or civil rights or apartheid South Africa.
00:03:50
Speaker
They seem to have changed the discourses around those and you end up with a tidal kind of wave of change in general, not only at the university level.
00:04:02
Speaker
And so usually, when people talk about student movements in the US, people are often proud of those movements, of course, in hindsight. So for example, the university chancellor in the 1980s apologized about how the university dealt with the students during civil war. So they issued an official apology
00:04:28
Speaker
for how they brutalized the students in the 1960s and 70s. So they recognized that later on, but at the time that these movements happen, there is a lot of brutalization. That's really important historical background to today's student protests, which obviously are anti-war and anti-genocide, but they also have specific demands around disclosure and divestment.
00:04:57
Speaker
Is it common for American universities to have investments in companies that are complicit with the Israeli regime's oppression of the Palestinian people?
University Investments and Transparency
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how many people recognize how that investment happens, but there is, you know, each university has an endowment of some sort. And what that means is that the university has funds that come from gifts or profits from inventions at the university. So those funds
00:05:31
Speaker
Become huge at points for example my university has about four billion dollars harvard of course has a more than fifty billion dollars but in total i think the largest fifteen universities have about three hundred twenty billion dollars in their endowments.
00:05:49
Speaker
And so what the universities do is that they invest those endowments in funds, right, in diversified kind of portfolios of basically buying stocks in companies. And so usually these are hidden, though we don't know where these stocks are, but there is so much investment. For example, in Lockheed Martin or Hillwood,
00:06:14
Speaker
Packard or Motorola solutions, and all of these provide aid to Israeli genocide and Israeli occupation. So, for example, Lockheed Martin sells F-16s, and those were prominent in what happens in Gaza now and in other places, of course, in the last four decades.
00:06:37
Speaker
HP, which is Howard Packard, has biometric systems that are used by Israelis to surveil and to follow Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Motorola provides surveillance to Israeli security systems.
00:06:56
Speaker
Elbit Systems also, which is an Israeli company, builds drones and surveillance systems. And there are so many others. So the universities, because the funds that they have are invested in portfolios, which means a group of stocks,
00:07:14
Speaker
they do invest in these companies. And of course those endowments, I mean the money that comes, the profits that come out of that investment goes into doing research and salaries and stuff like that for the working of the university. I mean there is so much investment in Israeli companies. The problem that we are having now
00:07:36
Speaker
is that we don't know what the investment is. So for example, at my university, and I think this is very typical of other universities, the university's foundation, which has the money and invests it, is created as a separate entity from the university itself.
00:08:00
Speaker
So there is no control. The university does not control the foundation. And the foundation actually is not very open about its investment strategies or about its investments. So we don't know anything about what kinds of investments are there or where do they have them. The assumption is that they have them in these companies. Definitely sure. I mean, but but we need to know more about where this money is.
00:08:30
Speaker
And that seems like quite a reasonable demand to ask for disclosure. And it's not actually unusual for students to ask for divestment, right? It actually does fit in the context of this long history of student activism against US imperialism and war that you previously mentioned.
00:08:48
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, one thing that this movement of students at this time asks for, if you can see the slogans are disclosure first, right? Disclosure basically means that these funds should actually tell us, transparency in the investment should tell us where the money is invested. And that's a very basic democratic principle for especially public universities, but even private universities.
00:09:16
Speaker
to know where the investment is going so disclosure is really important and this is what we are fighting for now and then the other thing is divestment and divestment has been practiced often so for example during the anti-apartheid movement
00:09:33
Speaker
That was precisely what the students were asking for during the late 70s and 1980s. The students asked that universities divest from businesses that enable apartheid in South Africa. And like I said before, all of these companies that I mentioned are enabling Israeli occupation, genocide, displacement of Palestinians, et cetera.
00:10:01
Speaker
and the assumption that we cannot actually know if the university is investing in them and whether it's profiting out of death and war is really important and so the anti-apartheid movement succeeded in the end in forcing the universities to diverse but also it succeeded even in a larger scheme of things which means that
00:10:25
Speaker
businesses started to divest from South Africa and other private companies started to do that, not only the public. And divestment has been a demand of Palestinian civil society by consensus for nearly two decades now. So the students are very much answering that call that was made by the by the BDS movement in the early 2000s.
Growth of the BDS Movement
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what happened in the United States, I cannot speak for other countries or other regions, but in the United States, BDS
00:11:04
Speaker
became a somewhat normal discourse. What I mean by that is that there is so much push against BDS, of course, in the US, on a governmental scale. So the Congress is intervening. Even here, the assembly, for example, in Wisconsin and the Senate
00:11:27
Speaker
our local governments institutions have written laws that we cannot actually boycott Israel and we cannot divest from Israel, that any calls for that is illegal. But at the same time you find that there is a public discourse that is invigorated initially by BDS movement
00:11:51
Speaker
But here, because Palestinian voices are becoming much stronger, they are becoming profoundly effective.
00:12:03
Speaker
in the U.S. and which was not the case a few years back, right? And I think that has to do with maybe social media, but also with the fact that probably Palestinian American scholars and activists have been probably kind of reached to a point where they do not want to be silenced anymore.
00:12:31
Speaker
and in the background, and I think they are taking the risks and willing to take the risks. So, for example, myself or other people, a lot of people in the US, are taking so much risks, not from universities, because in the end I'm tenured, for example, which means that I have certain protections for my job.
00:12:52
Speaker
but also being able to stand firm against Zionist propaganda, against organizations that mobilize in order to attack Palestinian voices and Palestinian activists. So there is a sense in which we actually stepped beyond the line that used to scare us from speaking out.
00:13:15
Speaker
And so now when they speak against us, we speak and we defend and we argue. And I think there is something that has shifted and maybe more Palestinians are here in the US too.
00:13:31
Speaker
And more organizing happened in the last 20 years, right? And of course, the BDS successes that happened in the last 20 years also proved to have been effective somehow. And so the question is how to carry that forward into the future.
00:13:51
Speaker
And I think the student movement is taking all of that experience into account while working for divestment at this point in the United States.
Community Building at Wisconsin-Madison
00:14:15
Speaker
Columbia University was the first encampment in the US, student encampment, and there's been a lot of media attention on it. So I was wondering if you could perhaps tell us a bit about what's been happening at your university, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and perhaps also share with us what happened to you when you visited your student encampment. So at my university, the students started an encampment on the 29th of April on a Monday.
00:14:45
Speaker
And the encampment was amazingly beautiful. I mean, that's the thing that people don't understand sometimes, is that the students are able to create a world
00:14:56
Speaker
that we all look forward to live in. Our students built an encampment that included Jewish, Muslim, Christian, any number of religions, right? Any number of races, any number of countries of origin. Such a beautiful presence of a community and started to cultivate a communal context that is really unheard of within Madison. So many people will say, especially people of color and people who are
00:15:26
Speaker
from other places, from other countries. So many of them were commenting about how the encampment is the only place that they have felt that they are recognized, seen, and appreciated. And so there was a cultivation of a different kind of relation between people. And what happened is that the university refused to talk to the students before they take out the camp.
00:15:54
Speaker
And of course, the students refused to take out the camp because, you know, I mean, the tents were on the one hand symbolic because of what's happening in Razi. And the students wanted to symbolize that with a real image of tents and by sleeping there.
00:16:15
Speaker
And the other thing is that they felt that that relation between the administration and them is a relation of power that is undergirded by the notion that the administration can call the police and can resort to police violence at any moment.
00:16:35
Speaker
So there was a threat the whole time. If you do not take the encampment down, we will call the police. And if you don't take the encampment down, we will not talk with you. And in the meantime, we were talking to the administration asking them to talk to the students and they refused. So Wednesday morning comes and we hear that the police is coming and then we go staff.
00:17:00
Speaker
faculty and other students who are not in the encampment. We go there in order to kind of build a human chain around the encampment to protect them. And this is where I think maybe one should talk about, maybe I should talk about my role as a professor and how I see myself. I think often we forget
00:17:24
Speaker
the elements of being a professor that are really more important than just the pedagogical and the educational kind of elements. And those are that we are there to nurture the students, right, to protect them. And sometimes we protect them in terms of
00:17:41
Speaker
of livelihood. Sometimes we protect them in emotional terms. For whatever reasons, I take that really seriously, that we are there to love them and to have them. They are part of us, right? To cultivate this sort of community or kinship relations, right? Rather than relation of power that is built on law or regulations.
00:18:06
Speaker
So to cultivate that relationship is really important for me as a professor. And so when that happened, I stood between them and the police and I was all the time in contact with the police and the administration urging them not to escalate and to de-escalate when they came into the encampment.
00:18:25
Speaker
And they didn't, so they came forward. I think I was targeted, in part because I'm a Palestinian. But in general, if you look at it, the police violence led to the detainment of four professors.
00:18:44
Speaker
And guess what? All four professors are professors of color.
Faculty Support for Student Activism
00:18:49
Speaker
And that was a huge embarrassment to the university. And even the students, most of the ones who were attacked violently and arrested were students of color. And that's not because there were no white professors or staff or students. There were a lot. So that begs the question of
00:19:10
Speaker
how the police decides and whether they are trained well enough in protecting civil rights of minority or people of color in any case so they attacked us and i of course tried to stay my ground and i got hurt and i got i guess maybe you saw the pictures and videos because they
00:19:33
Speaker
It became a viral moment. I got injured. But in the end, after that, the administration said, we will meet with the students. I mean, they took the tents down, but in the end, the students put them up within an hour. So the encampment continued. And that proved to the administration that they are actually fighting the will of the students and that
00:19:59
Speaker
and that it will not work that way. And I think there was an embarrassment that kind of spread within the administration about the fact that for faculty of color, but also the violence, the police violence that was enacted, especially in response to a very peaceful encampment that was all about poetry, music, and celebration of life.
00:20:26
Speaker
So that's what happened. And then at some point I was in the mediating, kind of in the negotiation team. At some point I withdrew from it because I was really angry with the administration about how they are sending out messages that the reason I was detained is because I was violent. And I thought that they were doing that under handedly.
00:20:51
Speaker
And I decided to withdraw from the meetings, but comes Monday and there was a big break in the conversation between the students and the administration. The students withdrew from the discussion, from the conversation, because, rightly so, because
00:21:13
Speaker
They felt that the administration is not giving them anything and they are not moving on their requests. I kind of like tried to intervene so that the police is not called again and probably had a hand in getting the chancellor to meet with the students, which was a demand of the students.
00:21:33
Speaker
And so the next day she met with them. And I mean, we ended up with an agreement that does not fulfill the issue of disclosure and divestment. It does give some wins. For example, a person will be hired to look into people who come from war-torn countries and displaced people, especially Gaza.
00:21:59
Speaker
that's in the agreement. The agreement also stipulated that it's an agreement between the administration and SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been dehumanized for the last year across the US. And that actually was good. Then there was an agreement that they will bring three scholars from Palestinian academic institutions, like one a year with extensions possible.
00:22:28
Speaker
And also that they will review all of the international division programs with an eye on increasing potential for helping students who come from Haze or the West Bank. And so there were a few things, but I think the recognition is that the chancellor herself cannot dictate to the foundation what to do or not to do with the money. However,
00:22:58
Speaker
She committed to have meetings with the foundation and stuff like that. But now we have in the Faculty Senate, which is the governance institution of the faculty, we have resolutions that are going to go through hopefully in the fall, beginning of the fall on divestment and disclosure. So we are working on those already. Actually, they are almost ready to be introduced early in the fall.
00:23:29
Speaker
It's not a surprise that police patterns of brutality are reflected on these campuses targeting people of colour. For centuries, people of colour have always been the first ones to be brutalised by police and security forces.
00:23:45
Speaker
So that at all was not surprising. But I do want to take a moment and reflect on what you said at the beginning of the answer to that last question, that these spaces really cultivated what a different kind of society could look like. And I think in and of itself that is somewhat of a movement gain. You know, a lot of people are talking about what a win looks like.
00:24:07
Speaker
And I think there are so many gains that have been made, even if some students and some campuses haven't been able to achieve their original demands. And that sort of leads me on into my next question about these big conversations around, you know, when the
00:24:23
Speaker
encampment ends or when students enter into those conversations with administrations. There are so many different factors to take into consideration, you know, not all campuses are the same, not all student groups are the same, people studying and working in different environments. And so I think that question and that conversation will be ongoing, I think, for months to come. But do you have hope?
00:24:47
Speaker
Or do you trust the administration that they will continue this conversation around disclosure and divestment? Because even though that has been a promise by the Chancellor, as you said, a lot of people might not have faith in the fact that that might actually happen.
00:25:05
Speaker
That's a great question. Well, in the agreement, there are timelines for all of these things. So the students can always pressure the institution because of the timelines, like there are deadlines for when each of the demands will be accomplished or each of the wins. But I'll go back to your question about the new kind of world that the students have been successful in creating. And I think
00:25:32
Speaker
The argument from my perspective to the administration from the beginning has been that they are by threatening police force.
00:25:41
Speaker
that what they seem to imply is that the administration is the university. I said it often to them that the administration is not the university, that the university is a constellation of groups, students, faculty, staff, and the administration. And that shared governance means that we all have a stake in how the institution presents itself and represents us.
00:26:11
Speaker
And that we need to be able to feel that we belong, right, the students from the students perspective, they need to know that they belong. And the way that they know that they belong is by actually participating and governing the institution itself.
00:26:28
Speaker
And what my argument has been all the time is that the threat of violence builds a relation of power that basically pits the university administration and the students on two opposite sides and does not see them as working for the same institution, right?
00:26:48
Speaker
And so I argued often that the administration needs to actually try to think of the students as of it, for it, from it, right? They belong to us. And the same with faculty and staff. And that to work in order to cultivate those relations of kinship. That relations shouldn't be
00:27:10
Speaker
between administration, students, staff and faculty, those relations shouldn't be relations of power and force that are undergirded by
00:27:21
Speaker
by the threat of violence, but should be relations of kinship and belonging. Then the encampment can be seen as a protest by the students that is trying to tell the administration, we need a voice in the governance of the institution. We need a voice
00:27:41
Speaker
in investment, how investment is done, what are the ethics of investments, how do we decide on what to invest in where, right?
Hope in Community Coalition
00:27:51
Speaker
So I think the answer to your question, do I trust the institution to do that? No, I do not trust the institution. But what I do trust is the community that was created. And the community that was created is really powerful. So the students are amazing.
00:28:10
Speaker
the faculty and staff that were involved in the encampment or around it are amazing. And all of this, this coalition that was built will not disappear. And it's already working on next steps. So there are a lot of steps that are to be taken during the summer and the fall and the spring that I think will lead to a change in the discussion, in the form of discussion that's happening now.
00:28:38
Speaker
And I think the administration, one of the things the administration has been doing is that saying that the encampment is illegal, right? And that because it's illegal, we are bringing police force. And I keep thinking of how their understanding that the encampment is a state of exception, right? That it is an exceptional protest
00:29:07
Speaker
maneuver by the students and that that necessitates police force while they don't reflect and that's really ironic they don't reflect that the students are doing that because of the exceptional status of razi because there is a genocide and that's an exception right i mean if there is an exception of genocide that's happening in razi or anywhere in the world and the students take it upon themselves
00:29:36
Speaker
to actually stop that genocide or help in the steps that will lead to stopping the genocide and the occupation and the apartheid regime. It is because that is exceptional that they actually went the exceptional route of building encampment and the administration fails to see how Razi is actually exceptional or that it is a genocide and they need to rethink that.
00:30:07
Speaker
And I think just because some of the encampments have ended, it doesn't mean that the movement has. If anything, this has been and continues to be such a huge win for the movement. And I think we need to be more mindful and reflect on the gains that have been made.
00:30:22
Speaker
ones that you've highlighted have been the widening of this coalition of this community that insists that this genocide won't be committed in their name. This is my final question and may be a bit repetitive, but as a faculty member and as a Palestinian, how do you see your role in this student uprising?
00:30:46
Speaker
It's a really interesting thing because in a way I wanted to contribute as much as possible of my knowledge and whatever experience right in Palestine and here and through my studies and whatever my academic kind of understandings of the situation but also
00:31:05
Speaker
I wanted to be able to let the students lead because they are amazing. I mean, they are really even the student negotiators. I mean, we're just powerful, so powerful and very, very proud of them.
00:31:21
Speaker
And so the challenge of understanding your role as an advisor, in my case, or other faculty also as supporters, but at the same time that it is a student-led movement. And so to frame it in that way, sometimes you will have to back up and just let the students do what the students do. And my role is as a support. So I saw myself as supporter of the students.
00:31:51
Speaker
I did participate in the negotiations and the mediation with the administration, but for the most part I saw it as support of the students and students' ideas.
00:32:02
Speaker
And, you know, at times I gave them my opinion if they ask for it. But in general, I was just there to support them. And I said, I mean, like I said to the even to the Faculty Senate and to the Chancellor that, you know, if you bring the police again, I am going to be there.
00:32:22
Speaker
So it's like you're setting the whole community in an upheaval because I will not let the students be brutalized. Whatever happens to the students should happen to me and to the other faculty and staff. And so I hope they understood that. Professor, thank you so much for your time and I'm grateful for your safety following your experience at the student encampments. We hope to have you on Rethinking Palestine
00:32:51
Speaker
again soon.
00:32:56
Speaker
Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide. For more information or to donate to support our work, visit al-ashabaka.org. And importantly, don't forget to subscribe to Rethinking Palestine, wherever you listen to podcasts.