Even before the extraordinary activism for an end to the genocide in Gaza and the liberation of the Palestinian people at Columbia University last spring, the students of Smith Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, set a high bar for the coming wave of campus unrest across the U.S. with their 11-day occupation of College Hall, Smith’s administration building.
For us as residents of Northampton, Massachusetts, it was awe-inspiring to watch Smith students’ activism as those first days passing sleeping bags through the windows of College Hall turned into weeks and months of creative actions demanding the school’s administration end its complicity in genocide.
Outdoor student and faculty teach-ins in the snow and mud of early spring set the stage for ongoing pro-Palestine cultural and political education events as the lush grounds of the college responded to the lengthening days and warming temperatures. Local media covered the occupation of College Hall, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! noted the intense dedication of Smith SJP’s occupation.
You claim to be a school that encourages activism, and yet, when it comes to opposing genocide, not only do you not celebrate your courageous students, you seek to silence, question, and condemn them.
During a memorial service for Gaza martyrs in front of College Hall, in somber silence amid flowers and flickering votive candles, we gazed up at the uppermost tower of the hall, to see that the flag of Smith College had been replaced by students with a flag bearing the Palestinian colors that read, “Smith Divest Now.” The tall, ornate, iron gates in front of College Hall were decorated with small Palestinian flags; flowers; and red, black, green, and white streamers. Despite increasing animosity from Smith’s administration, campus activism to end the genocide in Gaza continued through graduation, only fading as students dispersed for the summer months.
As on so many campuses across the U.S., students returning to Smith last fall were met with a new set of policies hammered out by the administration over the summer in an effort to prevent further activism for Palestine. Only after the new policy was leaked to the college community did Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton concede that there was a new set of rules governing, in minute detail, the “time, place, and manner of expressive activity” on campus.
In a College-wide message, Willie-LeBreton claimed that her new policy was simply a response to urging by the U.S. Department of Education and national organizations (and unlikely bedfellows) such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Zionist organization at the forefront of efforts to suppress anti-genocide activism and speech by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism; the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that campus protest policies be revisited. (For those familiar with the Palestine Exception, it was crystal clear that the new policy was designed to quell continued pro-Palestine activism.)
On October 24, Smith students walked out of classes to protest the new policy, which states, “Speech is not protected when it is libelous, slanderous, threatens violence, incites riot, intends to cause personal injury, infringes upon the rights of others, or is otherwise unlawful.” The policy included a time frame within which students are allowed to make noise while protesting, banned face coverings to conceal identity, forbade protestors from “interrupting academic life,” and more.
As fall deepened into winter, community advocates for an end to the genocide concluded that Smith’s administration needed to hear from us in support of Smith SJP. Shortly after a discussion with a community organization called “Northampton Neighbors” in which President Willie-LeBreton emphasized the importance of ties and communication between “town and gown,” organizers with Demilitarize Western Massachusetts and 16 other local and state-wide groups called for a rally and press conference—Western Mass Stands with Smith SJP—for February 27, on a public sidewalk on Route 9 in the heart of the campus.
As the rally began, in cold showers between snow banks, we made the two statements provided below in describing the three demands of the rally—that Smith College must:
- Divest from Israel’s genocide,
- Issue a public statement condemning genocide and scholasticide in Gaza and throughout Palestine, and
- Rescind the draconian “expressive activity” policy clearly targeting pro-Palestine student, faculty, and staff activism.
After our description of the community demands, a slew of speakers from community organizations supportive of Smith SJP, including Smith Alumnae for Justice in Palestine (AJP), spoke to the press and assembled community members and students.
A college spokesperson responded to a reporter with the Daily Hampshire Gazette with the following statement: “Smith is a strong supporter of free speech and the right to assemble. However, it is important to note that this gathering was held on Northampton city property and was not a Smith-sponsored event.” The reporter noted, “Officials did not address the demands made at the protest.”
In addition to faculty and student groups from UMass-Amherst and Hampshire College and many community anti-genocide organizations, we were gratified to secure public endorsement of the rally by the Peace & Justice Committee of First Churches of Northampton, by Interlink Publishing (the only Palestinian-owned publishing company in the U.S., located in Northampton), and two state-wide organizations—Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) and Pax Christi MA.
We hope that communities and non-academic organizations across the country find ways to stand with all college and university students on the vanguard of the movement for a free Palestine and an end to the ongoing genocide—until Liberation and Return. We echo Smith SJP’s chant: “Disclose, Divest, We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest.”
Community Demand No. 1: Divest from Genocide
We residents of Northampton, western Massachusetts and beyond are here today to demonstrate our support for the courageous Smith College Students for Justice in Palestine who are demanding that their school join the global struggle to stop the hideous, unchecked genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people.
What can Smith do?
Smith SJP has been pleading with Smith President Sarah Wille-LeBreton and the Smith Board of Trustees for more than a year to DIVEST, to sell every single penny of stock that the school owns in so-called defense corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX/Raytheon, General Dynamics, Hexcel, and Northrup Grumman. Also on the list is L3 Technologies, which has a plant in Northampton, less than a mile from here.
The students selected these stocks because all of these corporations are profiting tremendously by providing a wide array of weapons and military services that the Israeli government is using right now, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year to kill, maim, and terrorize Palestinian people and to drive them from their land.
Smith President Willie-LeBreton says Smith will not sell these stocks because Smith has such a small investment in genocide, about $67,000 worth.
If the amount is so small, why not sell the stock?
Is it because if Smith, seen as one of the prestigious “Seven Sisters,”, divests, it will put a stink on these blood-soaked genocide stocks that might hurt their value on Wall Street? Would selling these stocks cast shadows over the careers of members of the Smith Board of Trustees who are in the investment business?
We implore Smith College to lift itself out of the vile quagmire of genocide and honor SJP’s call to DIVEST.
Community Demand No. 2: Condemn Genocide and Scholasticide in Gaza and Throughout Palestine
United Nations experts and many others have expressed urgent concern over Israel’s scholasticide in Palestine. Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian scholar and emeritus fellow in politics at Oxford, coined the term in 2009. Nabulsi has described scholasticide as the systematic destruction of educational institutions and points out that Israel has a long history of attacking education in Palestine dating back to 1948. The transnational organization Scholars Against War has since built on Nabulsi’s definition, listing 18 acts as scholasticide, including killing students, teachers, and other school-related personnel; destroying educational institutions; blocking the construction of new schools; and “preventing scholarly exchange in all of its forms.”
In addition to the injury and deaths of tens of thousands of students, teachers, and university professors and the destruction of all 12 university campuses and the majority of schools in Gaza, Israel has deliberately targeted mosques, churches, libraries, the Central Archives of Gaza, cultural heritage sites, and UNRWA. A U.N. report states: “These attacks present a systemic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society. They have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future. When schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams.”
As with all other activities conducted by Israel with impunity, indeed with the full partnership of the United States, scholasticide throughout Palestine is being normalized, in part through the silence of educational systems in the West.
Smith College? Silent on scholasticide. The trustees of Smith and President Willie-LeBreton have such a mutilated and truncated understanding of ethics that they apparently believe their silence on Israeli scholasticide is some sort of elegant neutrality. We call it what it is. Complicity. Partnership in destruction of education, of culture, of history, of a people. A component of full-scale genocide. President Willie-LeBreton and Smith College Trustees, we DEMAND that you issue a public statement categorically condemning Israel’s scholasticide and work actively to support, in consultation with your students and faculty and following the leadership of the Palestinian people, the rebuilding of Palestine’s educational system.
Community Demand No. 3: Protect Free Speech on Campus
The third demand of this community rally in support of Smith SJP is that President Willie-LeBreton immediately rescind her new “Policy Governing Time, Place, and Manner of Expressive Activity.” Did Smith College actually believe that we as a community would see the beautiful, vigorous, anti-genocide advocacy for Palestinian liberation on this campus last year, and not notice the muting of that advocacy this year? We know, in fact, that like so many other U.S. colleges and universities, Smith used the summer months to devise ways to shut down the activism that was so vibrant at Smith last year.
We see you, Smith College. We see you, Palestine Exception. We know it is no coincidence that a new “Expressive Activity” policy has been imposed on students the semester immediately following the brilliant activism the preceding spring. You claim to be a school that encourages activism, and yet, when it comes to opposing genocide, not only do you not celebrate your courageous students, you seek to silence, question, and condemn them. We see you, Smith College. We see that you comfortably fit in with those institutions of higher learning that say, to quote Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her apt paraphrasing of so many university administrators, “We want ALL students on campus to feel safe. The pro-genocide and the anti-genocide ones.”
President Willie-LeBreton: Rescind your draconian “Expressive Activity” policy. Celebrate your anti-genocide students. Learn from their humanity. Protect them from external attack, arrest, deportation. We community members implore you: Wash clean your blood-soaked Ivory Towers by following your students’ lead in opposing a historic genocide.
