“I would never recommend to the Board of Trustees divestment of anything or any academic boycott of Israel,” Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University, testified before a House committee on May 23.
Northwestern University is a private university based in Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The morning of April 24th, a body of about 100 students, faculty, and professors established an encampment, joining the wave of similar encampments sweeping the United States and even universities globally. The police ordered the protesters to leave and halt all activities — an order the group initially followed, but then ignored. Tents were taken down, but then put back up by the protesters.
The demands of the student movement are simple: divestment from the zionist entity, perpetrator of the ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people, and full disclosure of university funding.
The encampment stood strong despite daily aggression by the police and zionist counter-protesters. The encampment endured despite specific zionist smears directly aimed to portray it as particularly “antisemitic.” Originally, campus police were to raid the encampment and attempt to disperse it, but the protesters held the line by outnumbering them. Protesters were even able to encircle the entire camp to prevent the police from entering. Unfortunately even this would eventually not be enough to outright offset police repression, as the State has virtually unlimited resources to call upon as needed. The police continued to state their intent to violently disperse and raid the encampment, but did not establish a clear date upon which this would happen. This was significant, it spelled life for the encampment: the camp was given both a material and morale boost, as they were able to continue expanding the camp, bringing in resources, etc — and more, the protestors felt encouraged to persist in the struggle. Police dispersal orders continued to be ignored.
The demonstration was seemingly winning. The encampment fluctuated in its population at first, but soon stayed consistent. As one of the protesters said, it was quite literally impossible for the police to infiltrate and arrest everyone at once. But the encampment would be defeated through other means.
A week later, and mockingly enough on May Day, the encampment suddenly ended. On day five of the encampment, the organizers came back with ostensibly happy news. A deal between the university and the organizers had been made — the university agreed to the possible future implementation of “pro-Palestinian policies” in exchange for the forced dissolution of the encampment zone. The organizers claimed it to be (and this is a direct quote) “tangible steps toward divestment.”
College president Michael Schill, however, made clear that the agreement was not in any way legally binding. From the outset, it was a proposal agreed to on completely hypothetical grounds, merely in word, and susceptible to being swept away as soon as the university finds it convenient. What exactly, however, was this “agreement”? The agreement consists of the following: 1. no protests for the rest of the academic year (ranging into June 2024) without approval from the college administration; 2. that the university “answers questions to internal-stakeholders about specific holdings” — granted, “to the best of its knowledge” and “to the extent legally possible,” and possibly (or possibly not!) within 30 days; 3. “Support for Palestinian faculty and students” which consists merely of funding two Palestinian professors and fully waiving tuition for five Palestinian undergraduate students; 4. A Muslim and Arab cultural center in 2026.
Even these meager and rotten breadcrumbs were enough to pacify the organizers and the organizers took the encampment with them. The negotiators of this agreement were not democratically chosen by the encampment, and there was no broad consultation with encampment participants about its fate. With haste, campus life returned to the mundane horror of “business as usual.”
This first clause of the agreement resulted in a May Day protest at the same location (without any accompanying encampment or direct connection to the protests for Palestine) promptly being declared disorderly and disobedient and thereby in violation of student conduct. It was immediately clear that the agreement implicitly carries with it a ban on the right of students and faculty to protest and boycott attendance at school. The second notable clause consists of much prattle and will likely only amount to merely bits and pieces of information about the university’s funding being made available to a few select people and within an almost arbitrary time range. The agreement does not allow any opportunity to combat or change the funding practices. The third clause provides no real support for Palestinian people at all. There are 2.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza, millions more in the rest of Palestine, and still millions more outside of occupied Palestine, but the most “generous” and “kind” university can provide is the opportunity for seven Palestinian people to go to their college for a few years! The last clause speaks for itself but is still worth haranguing. The “cultural center” has nothing to do with divestment at all, and is likely not taking funds that would have gone to the zionist entity for its completion and maintenance either. More importantly, the plan for a Muslim and Arab Cultural Center has been in development for approximately a year already, meaning the organizers accepted a promise for something already being planned, and treated that as a concession, as a real victory.
The organizers voted for this “agreement” by a 17-1 ratio. The tents, the megaphones and other sound amplifiers, all physical signs of the encampment, invitations extended to other parties from outside the university to speak — all of this work was sacrificed for the rest of the semester, and the prohibitions against further protests will likely arbitrarily extended into the next ones. It allows for the university to exercise repressive measures of all kinds against the students. By obligating the students to register directly with the university ahead of time before protesting, the university can proactively prepare suspensions and other academic discipline for organizers, and can prepare the police. It puts organizers, students, and faculty alike into danger, and prevents the possibility of bringing in help from experienced external organizers (e.g., SJP organizers).
The organizers betrayed the momentum of the student protests they supposedly represented for a deal which consisted of absolutely nothing those same organizers had originally asked for at the start of the encampment. Again, the encampment did not ask for anything unique — the slogan was for Northwestern to divest and disclose their funding. The organizers settled for no divestment and no disclosure. If there is to be any disclosure the administration evidently means it facetiously, as there are funds they consider “impossible to disclose.” What they feel can be disclosed is money provided in part by the tuition of exploited students and faculty, money which is deliberately and ordinarily spent by the college! Yet this was praised by the capitulating organizers as a concrete step toward divestment! They sang victory songs in the morgue of their project. The university has merely pacified the student organizers with a vague commitment to disclose any information regarding the funding at its whim. How are we to know that this information will not also end up being unrelated? How do we know the university will not simply argue that the funds that the organizers and protestors originally wanted disclosed are all “confidential” and therefore non-exposable? It is not my intent to in any way portray the protesters as wrong. They were wronged by the university and the organizers who capitulated to it on their behalf, but without their knowledge or consent – organizers who then had the audacity to announce that they had won the battle.
Further compounding this problem was that SJP, an experienced Palestinian anti-zionist organization, only came in after the start of the encampment, and were not amongst its main organizers. Whether or not they were internal organizers or external organizers, it would have been best for the students to have consulted them about this agreement.
An additional demand the organizers made was for the university to protect the right of speech, assembly, etc, for anti-zionist and pro-Palestinian students, faculty, and other people on campus grounds, who are being repressed and forced to conform with a largely apathetic liberal zionist university body. The university, like all other universities in the U.S. empire, are repressive and hostile places for anti-zionists, who are constantly at risk of being punished, ostracized, suspended, etc., for daring to not support the fascist zionist entity. Was the prioritization of the rights of these students in the deal to which the organizers agreed? No. Was a promise made by the university to hold itself accountable for this repression and to be held accountable in the future if it continued to perpetuate this repression of anti-zionism? Again, no. Was there even an attempt made by the organizers to make encampments themselves recognized by the university as merely a part of students’ right to freedom of speech, assembly, association, etc? Once again, no! They paved the way for the university to explicitly ban encampments, which the university already describes as “not peaceful assembly” or as obstructions to campus life and duties.
The organizers settled for hot air.
One thing is for sure: when an agreement like this is agreed to, it suggests that the bourgeois character of higher education has successfully scarred the minds of the students. Through all of the constant tasks the university throws at its students, it trains them to be tiredly unquestioning whilst attempting to complete them all. Bourgeois education gives knowledge to the ruling classes; to the subordinate classes, it gives advice on how to be good servants to their masters. This results in a student body that wants to be revolutionary, and organizers which fall for the easiest of bourgeois traps. They believe they’ve won, when in fact they were defeated and brought to betray the cause they claim to represent.
Like with the other encampments, the Northwestern encampment lived a lively life, but underwent a sudden death. Unlike with the other encampments, the Northwestern encampment voluntarily underwent a sudden death. It causes worse shudders insofar as it was not attacked by the enemy, and therefore behaved in line with the enemy.
