Race Equity Caucus / Caucus d’équité raciale of the York University Faculty Association
Student encampments are establishing themselves across colleges and universities in North America and around the world. Through these encampments, students are demanding that their colleges and universities disclose their investments in weapons manufacturers and Israeli institutions and corporations complicit in Palestinian genocide. Beyond financial disclosure, these students are demanding that their colleges and universities completely divest from Palestinian genocide, which they identify as the 75+ year settler occupation of Palestine by Israel as well as the escalating violence since October 7th, 2023. As educators within these institutions of higher learning, we must explicitly show solidarity with students across North America as they call for divestment from genocide.
Since November of 2023, 11 of the 15 universities in Gaza were wholly or partially destroyed by Israel; a month later, that number grew to include all universities in Gaza. Scholasticide has been used to describe the systematic assault on Palestinian education, educators, and students within Israel’s long-standing settler colonization and occupation of Palestine. This destruction not only includes the demolition of institutions of higher learning but also the targeted killings of students and educators. That institutions of higher learning are the site of encampments is both poetic and a testament to the ongoing movement to build Palestinian solidarity in North America through education.
On Saturday April 28th, the traditional council of the Kahnawake nation released a statement sharing the historical context of colonial genocide in Turtle Island: “through the same colonial infrastructure…exported to israel to genocide upon the Palestinian People, under the united nation’s creation of the so-called state of israel.” The statement extended solidarity with the student encampments at McGill University specifically and throughout North America. Drawing upon its authority, the council affirms “in accordance with the Two Row Wampum Peace Treaty, we [the Kahnawake nation] grant the full right to those who are occupying McGill and other campuses throughout Turtle Island to be upon the said lands, with the expressed intent of engaging their administration to divest from the colonial genocide of israel upon the Palestinian People and from the war machine in general.” It is crucial to the decolonial movement that the Indigenous stewards bestow expressed permission to students at McGill University to occupy the university to demand divestment from genocide. Academic institutions must take this statement seriously and honour their land acknowledgements as more than mere rhetoric.
As we have seen throughout North America, student encampments have been met with administrative responses that call for police to “clear out” student encampments. This disciplinary response has escalated police violence towards both students, community members, and educators calling for disclosure of and divestment from Palestinian genocide. As the days go on, a clear pattern has emerged amongst universities and colleges that have called on the police to clear encampments: police violence is rampant against students, community members, staff, faculty, and the press, and leads to mass arrests, bodily harm, and the destruction of student and public property.
Given these trends, we can expect – and therefore warn against – police responses to the student encampments. We call on colleges and universities with student encampments, including McGill University, University of British Columbia (UBC), University of Ottawa, and University of Toronto, and McMaster University, to recognize permission given to students by the Kahnawake nation to occupy space at McGill University and across Turtle Island in opposition to university investments (material and ideological) in Palestinian genocide. We also urge all of the aforementioned campuses against inviting police to brutalise community members both a part of, and outside of, the university and college community.
As racialized educators committed to equity we recognize that hostile responses to students demanding divestment from genocide is related to broader dynamics surrounding anti-Palestinian racism. We recognize that Palestinians have the right to full humanity and dignity, which is what student encampments calling for divestment in opposition to genocide seek to achieve. We stand in solidarity with our students in Toronto and students throughout North America and the world calling for disclosure and divestment from Palestinian apartheid, occupation, and genocide.