“History Repeats Itself” USC Alumni Reflects on Campus Protests

Since the successful encampment occupation of Columbia University’s student-activists, civilian interest in the war on Gaza has nearly doubled, a number that keeps increasing thanks to the thousands of other student-activists and organizers that have heeded the call and responded with encampments and protests of their own. These calls have inspired waves of hope for the surviving Palestinias currently in the Gaza strip who can’t help but feel a movement–or at the very least, a ceasefire–is possible with the help of students across the globe. And if history is any indicator, a win in mass divestment could serve to build a greater mass movement–or at the very least put an end to the profits companies have gained from the occupation and dehumanization of the Palestinian people.

Although the students of Hampshire College were the first to successfully organize to get their administration to divest from companies involved in Israel’s occupation of Palestine back in 2009, the call Columbia University’s students staged has since been answered by public, state, and private colleges across the country–and even abroad, in Paris, Italy, Germany, and Canada. As of Friday April 26, 2024, there are more than 40 protests across US and Canadian college campuses alone. 

As coverage increases with more colleges joining the list, it has become alarmingly clear that to look at an encampment protest on one campus–along with the administrative and police response–is to see just a different version of the same patterns and truths being upheld on another campus; the same patterns and truths the world saw during the Vietnam War, the height of the apartheid in South Africa, and with other timeless issues like fossil fuel investment, police brutality, and local gentrification. 

Again we see blatant hypocrisy from the administrations on freedom of speech. 

Again we see violent and disproportionate police aggression and violence as a response to peaceful demonstrations. 

Again we see cowardice and silence from administration leaders. 

But most of all, we are again reminded that these colleges and universities, at their core, are still institutions with overwhelming political leverage and financial power–and keeping those two things at bay is more important than protecting the voices and lives of their students.

It all becomes part of the same cycle when, to the cost of human life and the profits of the elite, the history of administrations’ cowardice keeps repeating itself–except when change is actually made, even if it is a mere ripple. For history also repeats cycles that allow for the success of organizing and collective solidarity so long as people keep showing up–many of them students, faculty, and staff, including those often regarded as spoiled and individualistic. When it comes to demands for divestment, specifically, students have a large history of showing up and bravely risking arrest, doxxing, violence, and even their life. Unfortunately, not much has changed in this regard to ensure students’ protection of speech and safety.

As demonstrators continue to be met with overwhelming police force at the orders of administrative leaders–often with city, state, or riot troops–a reminder of the Kent State massacre looms over. As administrations did over 50 years ago in protest of the Vietnam War, administrations today reflect that same pattern to, first and foremost, honor their nature as institutions before the voices and safety of their students. Without a radical and immediate change in values and practice, administrations will keep toeing this dangerous, hypocritic line, and face steeper consequences, of which history will not be reasonable to forgive or forget. 

As for everyone else, if showing up is not within reasonable means, students still require and expect your support by, at the bare minimum, doing what their administration has failed: listening to them and understanding why they are protesting. Afterall, a common first step of trying to neutralize any campus protests is to restrict the campus to only students, limit coverage, and lift their gates. As such, these protests are not just demands aimed at their administrations–they are also calls for support from their local neighborhoods, larger communities, and all people who collectively impact the mass culture. Therefore, despite how ironic it may be, it is important–in fact, crucial–to not simplify these protests as just disputes between students and their administrations.  

While the bravery of student protestors and the militant response they are facing should be given the coverage and attention it deserves–their voice, their demands, and why they are specifically protesting should remain at the forefront. 

University of Southern California 

At the University of Southern California, the Divest From Death Coalition, which includes Jewish Voice for Peace USC and USC S.C.A.L.E’s team of student advocates and organizers, hoped to count on the support of other students, alumni, and community members. Like so many other campuses with long-standing campaigns to get their administration to divest from Israel months and even years before the assault on Gaza began, the essentials of the encampment, demonstration, and protests had already been a developing project before Columbia’s first domino set off the sequence.   

On the first day after setting their encampment, demonstrators were met with an aggressive cohort of DPS officers who took down their tents and attempted to arrest one of the coalition’s organizers. Officers tried to drive him away in a patrol car, but demonstrators surrounded the car and were successfully able to de-arrest him. While the organizers continued with leading their scheduled itinerary of solidarity, which included sessions for yoga and a vigil, chants and a circular march around Alumni Park, outside of the campus, LAPD and Metro PD, a special task force armed with batons and less-than lethal weapons to manage “large crowds”, prepared to enter the campus. 

It is important to note that no member of the administration made any attempts to communicate with demonstrators about this decision, much less discuss their demands or why they were organizing to begin with, according to leaders of the demonstration. Instead, the administration approved and allowed for over 90 arrests of students, faculty, and community members to be made at Alumni Park throughout the rest of the day and night. 

The manner by which officers arrested demonstrators included throwing people to the ground and at least one instance of an officer’s knee to the neck. Several open letters from alumni, faculty, and entire academic departments soon followed in strong condemnation toward the administration for making these conscious decisions. Groups cited president Folt and the administration’s double-standards regarding encampments for other ‘school spirit’ events like UCLA vs USC, a deep failure to protect students from physical and legal harm, and what many claim to be an ongoing campaign to limit freedom of speech, as initially triggered by their decision to revoke valedictorian Asna Tabassum of her three to five minute speech (which she had not even drafted yet), citing safety and antisemite accusations made by pro-Israel groups for her views on the Israeli government. Asna is a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim majoring in biomedical engineering and with a minor in resistance to genocide.

The administration subsequently replied with no direct response to either the organizers or the public, but would instead announce the decision to forego the commencement ceremony for this year’s graduating class, as well as cancel speeches from Jon M. Chu and Billie Jean King, and ultimately switch to hybrid setting with satellite ceremonies. Other invited speakers like novelist C Pam Zhang, withdrew their invitation as a boycott response.

This all occurred within the first couple of days after the demonstration set its roots at Alumni Park. While keeping up to date with the announcements, changes in policy, police response, and official statements from USC’s divestment campaign alone proves to be a daily–sometimes hourly–feat of its own, two crucial things across all school campaign across the country stand out and should be highlighted, not only for the sake of properly honoring this moment in history, but also to understand why it is even happening at all, and how everyone else who is not a student can be a part of it now, as opposed to defaulting to thinking and writing about it once it is in the past. 

How things have changed and How things have stayed the (almost exact) same

The main difference, by far, is the students themselves. From California, to Texas, to New York and everywhere in between, students are organized, inter-connected, self-sufficient, and committed to each other with a relentless empathy that demonstrations of the past eras simply do not match. This is because, at the core of all of them, is their values, which are reflected during these demonstrations. To join and sit with demonstrators is not just to “protest” in the sense that generations of the past had largely taught us–with just signs, posters, and chants. They are teach-ins, meditative practices, educational films, poetry and art, curated conversions with allies, providing each other basic needs like shelter, food, literature, legal and emotional support–and all at no cost, with an overwhelming support coming from faculty and local communities. Everyday I spent there left me feeling a bit more hopeful than when I came in–not just about the realistic possibility of having demands for divestment met, but also hopeful about the power our empathy can continue to have in the future.

Even just at USC, this has to be one of the most sizable organized demonstrations in several years. As far back as October, the same members of the coalition organized to protest similar demands, but nowhere near a comparable scale. Even going back to 2018 when Ben Shapiro visited the campus, triggering a debate on freedom of speech which the administration was quick to uphold then, the event brought out a large group of protestors, but again, the numbers paled small in comparison to the estimated 250 demonstrators that met at Alumni Park in support of Palestine just the first two days. 

In the following days thereafter, that number has exponentially decreased as a result of limiting gates of entrance, new visitor restriction policies, clear-bag protocols, and fences around where the encampments used to be. Though students are committed to not be deterred by an administrative crackdown, it is perhaps now when they require the most support from their external communities. Even for most people who live packed lives with limited spare time, the least we could do is remember that, no, students, nor police are the face of what is being called to attention–it is and has always been about Palestinians and that we demand their collective freedom and autonomy. To quote USC Divestment from Death’s, “ultimately, it is through agency and collective power of ordinary people that we can shape our collective future”.

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