<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Students at a growing number of U.S. colleges are gathering in protest encampments with a unified demand of their schools: Stop doing business with Israel — or any companies that empower its ongoing war in Gaza.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The demand has its roots in a decades-old campaign against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. The movement has taken on new strength as the Israel-Hamas war surpasses the six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza have sparked international calls for a cease-fire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Inspired by ongoing protests and the arrests last week of more than 100 students at Columbia University, students from Massachusetts to California are now gathering by the hundreds on campuses, setting up tent camps and pledging to stay put until their demands are met.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We want to be visible,” said Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who noted that students at the university have been pushing for divestment from Israel since 2002. “The university should do something about what we’re asking for, about the genocide that’s happening in Gaza. They should stop investing in this genocide.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WHAT DO THE STUDENTS WANT TO SEE HAPPEN?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are empowering Israel’s military efforts in Gaza — and in some cases from Israel itself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The demands vary from campus to campus. Among them:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">__ Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">__ Stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that aid the country’s military efforts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">__ Stop investing college endowments with money managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">__ Be more transparent about what money is received from Israel and what it’s used for.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Student governments at some colleges in recent weeks have passed resolutions calling for an end to investments and academic partnerships with Israel. Such bills were passed by student bodies at Columbia, Harvard Law, Rutgers and American University.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">HOW ARE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES RESPONDING?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Officials at several universities say they want to have a conversation with students and honor their right to protest. But they also are echoing the concerns of many Jewish students that some of the demonstrators’ words and actions amount to antisemitism — and they say such behavior won’t be tolerated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sylvia Burwell, president of American University, rejected a resolution from the undergraduate senate to end investments and partnerships with Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Such actions threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community,” Burwell said in a statement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Burwell cited the university’s “longstanding position” against the decades-old Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Protesters in the movement have drawn parallels between Israel’s policy in Gaza — a tiny strip of land tucked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to about 2.3 million Palestinians — to apartheid in South Africa. Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized control of the strip in 2007.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Opponents of BDS say its message veers into antisemitism. In the past decade alone, more than 30 states have enacted laws or directives blocking agencies from hiring companies that support the movement. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it a “pernicious threat” in 2019, saying it fueled bias against Jews on U.S. campuses.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Asked this week whether he condemned “the antisemitic protests,” President Joe Biden said he did. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden said after an Earth Day event Monday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At Yale, where dozens of student protesters were arrested Monday, President Peter Salovey noted in a message to campus that, after hearing from students, the university’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility had recommended against divesting from military weapons manufacturers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">President Minouche Shafik at Columbia said there should be “serious conversations” about how the university can help in the Middle East. But “we cannot have one group dictate terms,” she said in a statement Monday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">MIT said in a statement that the protesters have “the full attention of leadership, who have been meeting and talking with students, faculty, and staff on an ongoing basis.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">HOW MUCH MONEY ARE THE SCHOOLS RECEIVING?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On many campuses, students pushing for divestment say they don’t know the extent of their colleges’ connections to Israel. Universities with large endowments spread their money across a vast array of investments, and it can be difficult or impossible to identify where it all lands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Education Department requires colleges to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources, but there have been problems with underreporting, and colleges sometimes dodge reporting requirements by steering money through separate foundations that work on their behalf.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to an Education Department database, about 100 U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel totaling $375 million over the past two decades. The data tells little about where the money comes from, however, or how it was used.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some students at MIT have published the names of several researchers who accept money from Israel’s defense ministry for projects that the students say could help with drone navigation and missile protection. All told, pro-Palestinian students say, MIT has accepted more than $11 million from the defense ministry over the past decade.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">MIT officials didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“MIT is directly complicit with all of this,” said sophomore Quinn Perian, a leader of a Jewish student group that is calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. He said there’s growing momentum to hold colleges accountable for any role they play in supporting Israel’s military.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We’re all drawing from the same fire,” he said. “They’re forcing us, as students, to be complicit in this genocide.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Motivated by the Columbia protests, students at the University of Michigan were camping out on a campus plaza Tuesday demanding an end to financial investments with Israel. They say the school sends more than $6 billion to investment managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors. They also cited investments in companies that produce drones or warplanes used in Israel, and in surveillance products used at checkpoints into Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">University of Michigan officials said that they have no direct investments with Israeli companies, and that indirect investments made through funds amount to a fraction of 1% of the university’s $18 billion endowment. The school rejected calls for divestment, citing a nearly 20-year-old policy “that shields the university’s investments from political pressures.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE STUDENTS?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Students at Harvard and Yale are demanding greater transparency, along with their calls for divestment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Transparency was one of the key demands at Emerson College, where 80 students and other supporters occupied a busy courtyard on the downtown Boston campus Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Twelve tents sporting slogans including “Free Gaza” or “No U.S. $ For Israel” lined the entrance to the courtyard, with sleeping bags and pillows peeking out through the zippered doors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Students sat cross-legged on the brick paving stones typing away on final papers and reading for exams. The semester ends in a couple of weeks, reports AP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I would love to go home and have a shower,” said Owen Buxton, a film major, “but I will not leave until we reach our demands or I am dragged out by police.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd/fas</div>