This article describes the little-reported on success that Brown University had in disbanding student protest… by conceding to let activists present a case for divestment at an upcoming hearing before the university’s investment board.
There’s a lot of interesting considerations. The university did not agree to drop charges against forty students for rule violations, but the charged students themselves voted to accept the agreement under the belief that the overall offer was worth their own sacrifices.
Overall, I personally think this shows the irresponsibly unreported fact that negotiation with a protest IS an option that can serve the interests of both sides far better than state violence.
Not including amnesty as a prerequisite is wildly irresponsible. What leverage do they have now? The board can simply say “no”, and send the cops in to arrest anyone who tries to restart the protest.
This isn’t negotiating, this is the students unilaterally giving up everything in exchange for… The ability to ask again, but quietly and in a circumstances where there is no consequences for saying no?
Then they’ll have a situation no better than Columbia. The deal is we won’t protest if you divest. If either party reneges on that deal we go back to where we were before the deal. That’s the consequence of saying “no”.
They will vote on the divestment in October. By then all of gaza will have been starved or bombed.
100%. That said, if divestment happened today, withholding Brown’s share wouldn’t be enough to get Netanyahu to stop bombarding Gaza. This is about principle, trust, and politics more so than ongoing support at this point.
Its true that the witholding of a couple bucks coming from brown university wouldnt do anything directly by itself. However it would still be a big political statement that would make for a decent political wakeup call, if coupled with dozens of other universities and entities doing the same.
So while this one protest by itself is not a huge loss, what it stands for is peoples willingness to watch people die, doing nothing until after its too late.
I would amend that to say that this is about the future and eventual end of the occupation. I think it’s more material than you describe, but it’s a slow process.
The occupation will end when Hamas is defeated. Both the US and Israel has made that clear
What are you talking about? The occupation includes the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It predated Hamas, and continues – brutally – in regions in which Hamas doesn’t operate.
While the war in Gaza draws attention, folks in the West Bank have had homes firebombed with children inside and watched lynch mobs run whole towns off their land with military escorts. And that doesn’t even get into how Palestinian citizens of Israel are treated inside Israel. They’re legal citizens, but live with curtailed rights under a literal second-class of citizenship in a police state. They get disappeared, raped, and killed in prisons without charges over social media posts criticizing the government. What the hell does that have to do with Hamas?
We need to acknowledge that all these people are living under a military apartheid system, and demand negotiations for the formation of a democratic one-state solution. We already live in a one-state reality, just without civil rights for half the population.
The school’s deal is that the board will say no to the students and then the school will be prepared to put down any further protests without issue.
If the school intended to meet the students demands and divest, they wouldn’t need to charge 40 of them and get time to prepare to silence a future protest since there wouldn’t be a future protest.
The school’s ceasefire requirements are as serious as Israel’s “you give up the hostages and disarm, then we maaay consider not resuming the genocide after 2 weeks” peace offers
If the Palestinians show anything, no justice, no peace comes to mind. Say Brown does this assuming the fire is still there, people won’t stay silent for long. If a party chooses the path of the authoritarian they need to carry a pretty big stick. And even then, as Israel keeps showing, it doesn’t work.
Also, if you follow some links in the article, Israeli divestment has been an big, ongoing movement at Brown. This isn’t a flash in the pan. It’s a big step forward along what has already been a long and brutal road.
It’s not going away. And I truly believe that these students will win.
Yeah this was a pretty weak outcome. Im not sure they were enough of a crowd to keep the camp up for much longer and against police, but the result is basically worthless :/
They just need to be sure to let them know that this is a 10 day cease-protest trial period and that after that 10 days is up they will be moving the protest to the front lawns of the board of trustees.
Agreed. This was a copout.
Well, this is Brown we’re talking about. The students probably got too high and just accepted whatever deal was thrown at them without thinking about it.