The Movement of College Encampments for Palestine: an introductory analysis

The mass mobilization of pro-Palestine students over the last couple months has truly been a sight to see. Spreading like wildfire in the states an eventually spanning the globe, this wave of student encampments has called “power” out by its rightful name: genocide enabler. 

Student activists have been occupying their schools and demanding the divestment of these various foundations from the settler-colonial project of Israel. A handful of other demands have been put forth as well, responding to each locale’s varying needs. Students at our UW-Madison also demanded a cop-free campus, for example. 

Of course, any earnest challenging of the state and its interests in the military industrial complex will be met with a vicious response. Brute force was employed around the world to silence these voices. The oppressive attack on Columbia’s student encampment, one of the first high profile encampments, invited solidarity from students globally, who responded with demonstrations of their own. These, of course, invited further repression until the encampment movement was virtually extinguished.

In this series of essays, we will be analyzing and discussing this iteration of student encampment activism through a revolutionary lens. What’s gone well? What could have gone better? In what ways did neoliberalism and the state put an end to various encampments? What revolutionary forms could provide the movement with more strength, longevity, & solidarity?

There’s no question that the pro-Palestine student encampments of 2024 will go down as a historic uprising. Communities are different; people are different. Thousands of students have stood shoulder to shoulder with their comrades who hadn’t done so before. Thousands of students have experienced the brutality of our militarized police force who hadn’t before. Activists of today joined activists from days past in the decades-long fight against imperialism. Paulo Freire’s central principle of conscientização, or “consciousness-raising”, could be seen in full effect the world ‘round. 

Teach-ins were held, libraries were erected; meals were served & buildings were occasionally occupied. Students and activists were able to find their voice and use it in struggle with their neighbors. Little can detract from that profound beauty. 

However there are no rose-colored lenses in the revolution. The lack of a revolutionary program among organizers, in combination with the all-powerful neoliberal establishment, produced some rather milquetoast results. 

This wool-over-the-eyes maneuvering was foreshadowed at Brown University, one of the first high-profile encampments to come to a formal agreement. The university agreed to vote on the demands in 4-5 months. The students agreed to pack up and go home. 

The UW-Madison agreement was similarly toothless; in fact our encampment organizers specifically agreed to effectively sacrifice a handful of protesters who had received felony charges (for putting up their hands and grabbing at police batons while they were crashing down on their heads). One of the university’s agreements was to “ask the police to drop peoples’ charges except for those with felony charges”. This author tried to imagine himself with a felony charge reading that agreement. This author can’t imagine the depth of that pain.

The pro-Palestine student encampments of 2024 were terribly important. Important and imperfect. What can we learn from this moment? What can we build next time that will be even better? 

Wolly V is a member of the Revolutionary Socialists of Madison (Wisconsin).