What is a pro-Palestine protest? Here’s why U.S. college students are protesting

Dozens of protesters at the University of Texas were arrested Wednesday during a peaceful, pro-Palestinian protest hosted on the campus by the Palestine Solidarity Committee.

“UT Austin does not tolerate disruptions of campus activities or operations like we have seen at other campuses,” the UT Division of Student Affairs said in a statement before the protest. 

After about 45 minutes of the crowd marching south on the mall from the Gregory Gym area, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and campus police ordered the protesters to disperse or “be arrested as per the penal code.”

Here’s why UT-Austin students are protesting:

What is a pro-Palestine protest?

Pro-Palestinian protests are demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights, typically calling for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Protests began in the wake of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s assault on Israeli communities Oct. 7, killing almost 1,200 people.

Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians — militants and civilians; men, women and children — and has fueled a dire humanitarian crisis.

Where is Palestine located?

Palestine is recognized as an independent state by the United Nations and more than 135 of its members, but it is not recognized by the U.S., according to History. The UN considers it a single occupied entity, but the official borders are undetermined, BBC News reported.

Though its borders have shifted over the years, Palestinian territories used to be what is now Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. 

When searching for “Palestine” on Google Maps, the map zooms in on the Israel-Palestine region, and both the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories are labeled and separated by dotted lines. But there is no label for Palestine.

In an email statement, Google said it doesn’t label the borders because there isn’t international consensus on where the Palestinian boundaries are located. 

Why are college students protesting?

The Palestine Solidarity Committee, a registered UT student group and a chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine, planned a protest Wednesday at the UT campus in solidarity with students across the U.S., including at Columbia University, Yale University and New York University, who are calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

Across the country, pro-Palestinian student protesters have occupied campuses in tent encampments this week in a campaign to urge their universities to divest, an action students over the decades have demanded from their schools’ administrators.

At pro-Palestinian rally at UT-Austin, protesters arrested

Multiple protesters on UT-Austin’s campus were arrested during a pro-Palestinian rally held by students.

What is ‘divest’?

The word “divest” refers to diverting money from a university’s endowment — the pool of money a college has and tries to grow through investments. Some of the biggest university endowments in the country total nearly $50 billion and comprise thousands of funds.

The protesters opposed to Israel’s military attacks in Gaza say they want their schools to stop funneling endowment money to Israeli companies and other businesses, like weapons manufacturers, that profit from the war in Gaza.

“The university would rather enforce and put money into policing our communities and policing their own students then they would to supporting them,” said Anachí Ponce, a UT student who attended the protest. “These are students who are protesting a genocide and the lack of action from UT administration for the way that they haven’t been super helpful against hate crimes against Muslim students on campus.”

“It’s like, why is our money being used to fund bombs overseas?,” said Layla Saliba, a student protester researching endowment investments with the group Columbia University Apartheid Divestment. “Let’s reinvest this money in our community instead,” she said.

In addition to divestment, protesters across the U.S. are calling for a cease-fire and student governments at some colleges have also passed resolutions in recent weeks calling for an end to academic partnerships with Israel.

Are universities investing in Israel?

Protesters have called for a halt to investments in Israel, but experts say that might be too simplified a take on what colleges have done with their funds. To begin with, it’s difficult to define what an “investment” in Israel entails, said economist Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies college finances.

She said bigger investments are more obvious than smaller ones tucked away in mutual funds — an investment tool that pools money and spreads it out over many assets, and a type of financial tool on which many colleges rely.

Universities hire private companies to manage their endowments to preserve their funds over the long run, Baum said.

Debates about the investments of college endowments are complicated, Baum said, because some university stakeholders argue the money needs to produce the biggest return on investment possible to fund teaching and necessary programming and services.

“The purpose of the endowment is to have money that will allow the university to permanently provide educational opportunities so that they don’t have to go out and raise new money every year to continue operating,” she said.

The bigger a university’s endowment, the more is at stake. That’s one reason why pro-Palestinian student protesters at wealthy universities are fighting so hard this week, she said. There’s a lot of money involved.

“There are always going to be differencesof opinion about what you don’t want to invest in,” Baum said.