BY ASHA NADKARNI AND LAURA BRIGGS
This submit is a part of a weblog sequence, organized by Annelise Orleck, that may concentrate on latest crackdowns on protests at US faculty and college campuses in opposition to Israel’s battle on Gaza. You may learn the primary submit and an introduction to the sequence right here.
Like many campuses, the College of Massachusetts Amherst had sustained protests within the 2023–24 tutorial 12 months calling for the college to divest its holdings from firms that had been supplying weapons for Israel’s battle, with its siege of Gaza and obvious aim of ethnic cleaning of Palestinians. UMass has the doubtful distinction of being one of many universities with the best numbers of campus arrests within the final 12 months. For school who’ve been on this campus for a very long time (in contrast to lots of our present directors), the brutal arrests of scholars, school, and neighborhood members engaged in nonviolent protests was notably surprising as a result of it felt so out of character with the college’s historical past.
It additionally appeared mockingly out of step with the college’s credo, “Be Revolutionary.” Buying and selling on regional and nationwide mythologies of American independence, this has been the UMass model brand since 2019. In a promotional video this revolutionary spirit is described as “not ready for change, however creating it . .  asking questions and questioning solutions . . . To not merely be totally different, however to really make a distinction.” Such canned and overblown sentiments are precisely what you’ll anticipate from a promotional video, however they nonetheless reference a reality: UMass has at all times been a really activist campus. The truth that we’ve got one of many oldest girls, gender, sexuality research departments and one of many oldest African American research departments—the W. E. B. Du Bois Division of Afro-American Research—within the nation speaks to the activist spirit of this campus, as these departments had been created in response to pupil protests and calls for. We’re conversant in encampments, too—from protests demanding divestment from South Africa (talked about on the president’s web site for instance of UMass international management) to demonstrations of solidarity with Occupy Wall Avenue and, only a 12 months earlier, an encampment protesting the housing precarity of scholars within the context of overenrollment.
The primary main occasion to happen final 12 months was an October 25 class walkout by college students protesting the genocidal actions of Israel within the Gaza strip. Protesters tried to occupy Whitmore (the primary administrative constructing on this campus), which resulted within the arrest of fifty-seven individuals (fifty-five college students and two employees members). College students had been occupying the constructing to protest the college’s ties with Raytheon—a weapons producer with shut ties to the college—and to compel the college to reveal and divest. There’s a lengthy historical past of scholars occupying Whitmore (together with actions the college now celebrates, like a week-long occupation in 2016 that efficiently known as on the five-campus UMass system to divest from fossil fuels). On this case, nevertheless, the police had been known as as quickly because the enterprise day ended. The arrested college students had been placed on probation by means of the Scholar Code of Conduct course of, an unnecessarily harsh sanction that prevented college students from attending research overseas applications, impacted their capacity to acquire housing, and will have an effect on their functions to graduate faculty.
Protests, rallies, and actions continued all year long, together with school participation in a New England professors’ letter in December calling for an finish to US funding for Israel within the face of overwhelming proof of human rights abuses and battle crimes. In early April, Palestine Authorized filed a criticism with the Division of Schooling Workplace of Civil Rights, saying that the local weather at UMass for Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian college students was deeply hostile, and the administration had completed little in response. Eighteen college students mentioned that they’ve “been the goal of maximum anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass college students, together with receiving racial slurs, demise threats and in a single occasion, truly being assaulted.”
As at different universities, college students expressed their opposition to the battle and to the crackdowns by college directors by means of two peaceable encampments in late April and early Could demanding an finish to the college’s monetary connections to weapons makers supplying Israel. College students erected the encampments to amplify their requests that the college disclose and divest such connections. In addition they as soon as once more requested the chancellor to drop the college sanctions imposed upon the scholars and employees concerned within the peaceable sit-in in October.
Timeline introduced within the roundtable “’Be Revolutionary:’ Activism and Protest at UMass Amherst” with Sarah Ahmad, Kiran Asher, Cameron Awkward-Wealthy, Laura Briggs, Asha Nadkarni, Tatiana Rodriguez, and Sigrid Schmalzer on the 2024 Affiliation of Postcolonial Thought symposium on “Need and Collectivity.”
The primary encampment was allowed to face for only one night time earlier than police confirmed as much as disband it at 6 a.m. within the morning. The scholar activists regrouped and constructed a second encampment that was brutally dismantled by a militarized police pressure (simply to provide a way: 117 state and native police vehicles had been counted on campus, at a value of over $100,000 to taxpayers). This pressure was known as whereas the chancellor was in a gathering with pupil activists about their divestment calls for, which is just about the definition of unhealthy religion negotiations. 134 college students, employees, school, and neighborhood members had been arrested.
As has been nicely documented, police used extreme pressure in making arrests and plenty of college students sustained accidents—together with a damaged leg, a dislocated shoulder, and plenty of who had been bruised. These taken into custody had been ushered to the Mullins Middle—the campus sports activities enviornment—the place they had been compelled to stay in tightly mounted zip ties for so long as ten hours and denied entry to loos, water, and medical care.
Two weeks later, the college started claiming that there had been an antisemitic incident on the second encampment that compelled them to reply, however repeated requests by college students and school for particulars of the incident or the criticism had been met with silence.
The Undergraduate Scholar Authorities Affiliation and the Graduate Scholar Union promptly took votes of no confidence within the chancellor, with the college and librarians following shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, even within the wake of those votes college administration appears unrepentant. As the brand new tutorial 12 months unfolds, it seems that the very last thing they need is for college kids to “create change” and “make a distinction” because the promotional video invitations them to do. Damaged bones and brutalized college students taught us that if the query is free speech about Israel and Palestinians, a “progressive” campus directed behind the scenes by Democratic state management is not any totally different than another.
The authors educate on the College of Massachusetts Amherst, the place Asha Nadkarni is professor of English and director of American research and Laura Briggs is professor of ladies’s, gender, sexuality research.
