The sound of buzzing surveillance drones over Gaza played from a loudspeaker on the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall, on the very spot where Mario Salvo rallied for free speech in the 1960s.
A student encampment of about 40 tents at the campus on Tuesday, up from 12 the night before, spanned the landing and sprawled onto the grass.
“Many of the students here have a sense that something is wrong, but they don’t know all the history,” said Ussama Makdisi, a UC Berkeley professor of history with a specialty in the Middle East and a chancellor’s chair, which is a high rank given to professors who have demonstrated unusual academic merit.
The Berkeley student camp-in was called by a coalition of groups, including the Black Student Union, the Jewish Voice for Peace at UC Berkeley, and the Indigenous Graduate Student Association.
In an online statement, they are demanding: “an immediate end to the Zionist colonization of Arab lands, including the genocidal siege of Gaza; full freedom and equality for Palestinians, from the river to the sea; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homes and properties.”
They are also asking the University of California to boycott, divest and sanction “from all companies profiting from the colonization of Palestine.”
“What these students are doing is that they are actually taking seriously all of the discourse of the university,” Makdisi said, referring to UC Berkeley’s brand as a legacy defender of civil rights.
“They are reckoning with a past of slavery and injustice and genocide. And they’re taking those lessons, they are taking the discourse of the university literally.”
Sitting beneath the ionic columns of the Sproul building was graduate student Malak Afaneh, the co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine.
A friend approached and delivered her graduation regalia. She gazed for a long while at the silk hood embroidered with the name of her Arabic association and with the text “By the Grace of the Almighty.”
After graduation, she will work at a law firm that does class-action civil rights employment litigation.
“Pro-Palestinian students on this campus experience numerous amounts of repression, censorship, silence, threats of disciplinary and criminal proceedings,” said Afaneh.
“And in my case, it escalated to physical violence.”
On April 9, Afaneh protested with her student group at a dinner in the home of law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, which ended in a confrontation with the dean and his wife.
As she prepares to graduate in May, she sees a future for herself doing legal work and eventually transitioning into academia.
Afaneh believes that people with the most privilege and economic power have refused to make a statement, while students have been able to speak out.
She also criticized the university for holding back on speaking out against the violence in Palestine.
Makdisi expressed concern that university presidents have framed Arab students as dangerous, and that Arab students and their allies, including Jewish students, are being doxxed.
He believes that the university’s focus on safety is misplaced, and that the real safety concerns are for Palestinians who have been shot, run over, stabbed, and doxxed.
Afaneh, who was born in Palestine, said that her mother felt a lot of pressure to assimilate to the American narrative of a good Muslim, which meant putting her head down and working in the hopes of making something for her family.
She said that because of her mother’s efforts, she had the privilege of going to Berkeley Law and being able to speak her mind.
The student encampment at UC Berkeley is a powerful symbol of the growing awareness among students about the oppression faced by Palestinians and the need for solidarity.
Student Encampment at UC Berkeley Demands Justice for Palestine
