EXPLAINER

Many campus protesters have taken down Gaza solidarity encampments after colleges agreed to consider divestment from Israel.

College campuses around the world have exploded in recent weeks in protests by pro-Palestinian students and faculty members against Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 people have been killed.

In university after university, protesters are demanding that their schools sever any direct or indirect financial and academic links with Israel, including by divesting from companies with ties to Israel.

The protests have led to an array of different responses from universities. On Monday, Columbia University cancelled its main graduation or commencement ceremony. Many universities have called police and other law enforcement agencies on to campus. In the United States alone, more than 2,000 students have been arrested. Both protests and the campus crackdowns have also spread to other parts of the world – from Canada to Australia, and in multiple European nations. On Monday, students at Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom also set up encampments.

Yet, even as tension continues to soar at several campuses, students and administrators in some universities have managed to negotiate agreements that have acceded to some of the demands of the protesters.

So how have these universities managed protests – and what deals have students and administrators struck in these cases?

What are the compromises universities and protesters have struck?

For the most part, the agreements that have helped calm tensions have revolved around a few common themes:

• Some universities have agreed to divest from companies with links to Israel, while others have said that they will consider the demands and take them up with bodies in charge of overseeing their investments. In some cases, universities have agreed to demands to disclose their investments, without committing to divest.
• Other universities, including some that have also conceded ground on divestment-related demands, have agreed to invest in setting up new centres or hiring new faculty in a bid to create greater awareness about Palestine.
• In exchange, students on these campuses have agreed to end their encampments.
• In some cases, universities have chosen to take no action to disperse encampments, allowing them to continue. These include Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the University of California, Berkeley.

Which universities have agreed to specific student demands?

• Northwestern University, based in Illinois, US struck a deal with its protesting students on April 29 to take down most of the tents. It allowed them, however, to continue their protest – just not through an encampment – until June 1. The university promised to provide students with ways to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees, including re-establishing an advisory committee on investment responsibility in the fall (autumn). The advisory committee could consider divestment proposals from university members. The institute agreed to disclose its investments through its endowment funds to “internal stakeholders”, which include current students, faculty, staff and trustees. Northwestern also agreed to cover education at the university for five Palestinian undergraduate students.
• Brown University in Rhode Island agreed on April 30 that the Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, would vote on divestment from companies affiliated with Israel during a meeting in October. In return, students cleared the encampments that had been in place since April 24.
• Also on April 30, students and administrators at Evergreen State College in Washington agreed to a pact. Students removed a week-long encampment. The university set up task forces to assess – among other things – investment policies and the possibility of divestment, and look at whether the school’s policies regarding grants help governments engaged in illegal occupations abroad.
• On May 1, the University of Minnesota announced a compromise under which it promised to provide protesters with information on public companies it has invested in. However, the university made it clear that non-disclosure agreements barred it from disclosing information about private companies that the school has invested in. It added that the administration had recommended to the University’s police department that it avoid arresting student protesters. However, the university said it will not ban employers from career fairs because it does not “support restricting student career opportunities”. Students had been demanding that firms with ties to Israel not be invited.
• Student protesters from Rutgers University in New Jersey reached an agreement with the administration on May 2. The university agreed to create an Arab cultural centre and hire staff and instructors who have knowledge about Palestinian communities alongside naming Palestine, Palestinians and Gaza in future communications. It also agreed to work with students, faculty and staff to support 10 displaced Palestinian students to complete their education at Rutgers. No students, staff or faculty involved in the encampment will face retaliation, the university promised. The students’ request for divestment is also under review.
• Goldsmiths University in the UK reached an agreement on May 3 after students set up encampments in the university’s library. Goldsmiths agreed to a new ethical investment policy. The protesting student group will have an opportunity to present their “evidence of Goldsmiths’ complicity with Israel” to the institute’s finance committee. Goldsmiths also agreed to name one of the media department’s lecture theatres after Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera reporter who was killed by Israeli forces while she was on assignment in the West Bank. The institute will also conduct a review of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism which critics have described as so broad as to effectively bar most criticism of Israel.
• The University of California, Riverside (UCR) issued a statement on May 3 saying an agreement has been reached to peacefully end the encampments. The university announced it would publish several details of its investments online. UCR’s School of Business has also discontinued multiple global programmes, including those in Israel. Students also want the university to ban the sale of Sabra Hummus, a packaged hummus brand owned by PepsiCo and the Israel-based Strauss Group, from campus. The university said it would review the demand.
• Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Canada’s British Columbia also saw an agreement on Saturday, May 4, following negotiations, making it the first Canadian institute to see a deal. TRU’s student group called the People’s University of Gaza at TRU did not have encampments and began their push towards divestment through an email sent to the administration on April 30, a TRU student protester wrote in a statement to Al Jazeera. The TRU administration has agreed to disclose their investments within 30 days of the students filing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. A student at TRU told Al Jazeera that they have already filed the request. Once TRU discloses its investments, students will draft a divestment proposal. However, TRU has refused to publicly condemn and demand an end to “acts of genocide in Gaza,” which was one of the students’ demands. “We will continue to engage with the institution on this matter,” a press release by the People’s University of Gaza at TRU said.

What’s happening on other campuses?

Columbia announced on Monday that there will be smaller, school-level ceremonies during this week and the next, instead of a large commencement.

Also on Monday, pro-Palestine student protesters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) resisted a university deadline to clear the encampment. This was after the institute’s president issued a warning letter to students where he asserted they would be suspended if they did not disperse voluntarily. Harvard authorities issued a similar letter to students on Monday, saying that the students who continue with the encampment “will be referred for involuntary leave from their Schools”.

Students at more than 100 universities are protesting across the US. Their counterparts in at least 20 campuses outside of the US are protesting and several of these protests are also encampments.

What are the reactions to the encampment deals?

While some students and those supporting them have welcomed the breakthroughs with university officials, others have criticised the deals as inadequate. Northwestern University is a case in point.

Immediately after the deal, two Palestinian students at the university said they were proud to “have a seat at a table that we’ve never had before,” student-run newspaper The Daily Northwestern reported. Similarly, the student protesters at Brown celebrated the deal after the encampment was dismantled.

Here is another idea #ColumbiaUniversity, instead of turning your campus into a police state https://t.co/AIBV4N0dZ5

— Matteo Farinella (@matteofarinella) May 1, 2024

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However, not everyone has hailed the deals as a win.

this is NOT good. The divestment is NON BINDING and the vote won’t happen until OCTOBER. Administration win for this https://t.co/ty2OGN2WwM

— lucas 📕 (@lucas_s21122) May 1, 2024

The Daily Northwestern reported that some students were disappointed that the deal did not involve divestment.

On the other hand, critics of the pro-Palestine protests have also accused the universities of buckling under pressure in reaching the agreements.

Not only is it a major cave, it’s also got major anti-Semitic implications

Dude weird it’s like the “until our demands are met” Rutgers protester-agitator branch planned it that way https://t.co/7n3HuNXNbu

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— AAPL Tree (@AAPLTree) May 3, 2024

On May 1, two graduate students and one first-year undergraduate student at Northwestern University sued the institute in a breach of contract lawsuit, saying that the university breached its own rules by allowing the encampments. The lawsuit also criticised the agreement for allowing student protesters to stay on campus until June 1.

(JTA) — Pulitzer Prizes were awarded Monday to reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have become steeped in controversy since their publication, including a nonfiction book by Jewish author Nathan Thrall and breaking-news reporting and photography of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks by Reuters and The New York Times.

The Pulitzer board also presented a special citation to journalists covering the war from Gaza, noting that “an extraordinary number have died” while doing so. 

Thrall, a Bard College professor based in Jerusalem whose work is often highly critical of Israel, won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction for his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.” Published days before Oct. 7, the book focuses on a Palestinian father’s efforts to uncover news about his son following a bus crash; the Pulitzer jury called it “a finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank.” The book also focuses on several Israeli characters whose lives intersect with Salama’s.

Reuters won in the breaking news photography category for its of-the-moment images of the beginning of the Oct. 7 attacks. Since the newswire published the images, it faced accusations from a pro-Israel media advocacy group that its photography staff had advance knowledge of the attacks, a charge the company has denied.

The Pulitzer jury did not mention the controversy in its citation, which praised Reuters for “raw and urgent photographs documenting the October 7th deadly attack in Israel by Hamas and the first weeks of Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.”

Staff at the Times won the Pulitzer for international reporting for a series of reports on the attacks and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, including work focusing on the intelligence failures of Israel’s military and the ways in which its government had propped up Hamas for years, as well as its strategy of bombing areas where it had instructed Gazan civilians to flee.

The Pulitzer jury did not cite “Screams Without Words,” a controversial Times report about rapes allegedly committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, in its comments. Published in December, the story has drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian media outlets that questioned the Times’ sources and from survivors and family members who said the paper’s characterization of what happened to people they knew was not true. The criticism led to a high-profile newsroom leak of internal debate over the piece and also has helped fuel some denials that Hamas committed rape during the attacks.

While Thrall’s book predates the Oct. 7 attack, his book tour was conducted in its shadow and has been a frequent magnet for controversy. Some tour stops canceled planned talks by Thrall, saying they would be “insensitive” in the midst of Israel’s war, in a sign of how the broader arts and culture landscape has been divided over Israel since the attacks. After the book’s publication, a local Jewish federation protested Thrall’s plan to teach a Bard course on whether Israel’s treatment of Palestinians could be considered apartheid.

At least one media outlet also canceled a planned sponsorship by his publisher, while Thrall himself turned down a speaking engagement at the University of Arkansas after the school, in accordance with state law, required him to sign a pledge promising not to boycott Israel. Thrall is currently in Berlin, where he said the Open Society Foundation, funded by progressive Jewish megadonor George Soros, paid to distribute free copies of his book.

Elsewhere in the awards, the Pulitzer committee honored Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian Jewish dissident, with the prize for commentary. Kara-Murza, who has accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year for treason and won the Pulitzer from his cell.

“Here There Are Blueberries,” a play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich that draws on real Nazi photographs of Auschwitz acquired by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, was a finalist in the drama category but did not win. The show premiered at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2022 and is currently playing at the New York Theatre Workshop. And in the memoir category, Jewish author Andrew Leland’s “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight” was also a finalist.

The Pulitzers are overseen by the journalism school at Columbia University, which has been at the epicenter of a nationwide campus pro-Palestinian encampment movement and which canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony earlier on Monday in the wake of the protests. Several days before announcing the awards, the Pulitzer committee also issued a special acknowledgement of student journalists covering the campus protests.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed Tuesday that it has gained operational control of the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing.

The IDF released a statement saying its forces began a “precise counterterrorism operation” in eastern Rafah.

Acting upon intelligence showing the area was being used for “terrorist purposes,” IDF troops obtained operational control of the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing, the statement said.

Intelligence gathered by the IDF and the Israel Securities Authority prompted the operation aimed at killing Hamas terrorists and dismantling “Hamas terrorist infrastructure within specific areas of eastern Rafah.”

ISRAEL BEGINS ‘TARGETED’ STRIKES AGAINST HAMAS IN RAFAH

Before the operation, the IDF urged residents in eastern Rafah to temporarily evacuate to the expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, where the IDF facilitated the expansion of field hospitals and tents, and increased water, food and medical supplies. International organizations working in the area were also encouraged to temporarily evacuate before the operation began.

“Following intelligence that indicated that the Rafah Crossing in eastern Rafah was being used for terrorist purposes, IDF troops managed to establish operational control of the Gazan side of the crossing,” the IDF said. “On Sunday, mortars were fired from the area of the Rafah Crossing toward the area of the Kerem Shalom Crossing.”

Four IDF soldiers were killed during the operation and several others were injured after the mortars were fired.

ISRAEL URGES PALESTINIANS TO EVACUATE RAFAH AHEAD OF EXPECTED GROUND OPERATION IN HAMAS STRONGHOLD

The IDF said it began a “precise counterterrorism operation” in the eastern Rafah area. (IDF)

“Furthermore, as part of the operational activity, IDF ground troops and [Israeli Air Force] fighter jets struck and eliminated Hamas terror targets in the Rafah area, including military structures, underground infrastructure, and additional terrorist infrastructure from which Hamas operated in the Rafah area,” the IDF said.

Since the operation began, about 20 Hamas terrorists have been killed and three operational tunnel shafts have been found. No injuries were reported, the IDF said.

The IDF said ground troops are “continuing to operate against Hamas terrorist operatives and infrastructure in the area of the Rafah Crossing in eastern Rafah.”

There is no timeline for how long the operation will last and it is unclear if the crossing is open for humanitarian aid.

Fox News’ Yonat Friling contributed to this report.