“The Student Pro-Palestinian Movement: Institutional Repression and Resistance”

More than any student movement in recent decades, the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States has been met with unprecedented repression from university administrations and governments. Student organizations have been unrecognized, peaceful protests have been banned, participants have been jailed, student activists have been suspended and expelled, and non-citizens deported. The goals of the movement and the motivations of the activists have been repeatedly misrepresented by authorities and many in the media. This paper examines the reasons for this crackdown, comparing it to the relatively lenient responses to a comparable movement in the 1980s against apartheid South Africa, which also included protests, encampments, demands for a change in U.S. policy, expressions of solidarity with the oppressed, and calls for divestment. The paper acknowledges the presence of some extremist elements within the pro-Palestinian movement, the special sensitivities regarding Israel (including by otherwise liberal college administrators and political leaders), and pressure from politically-influential Zionist organizations. However, the paper makes the case that the unprecedented bipartisan effort to stifle dissent must be seen in the context of a larger effort to suppress challenges to U.S. support for governments in violation of widely-recognized standards of human rights and international law, part of the grwoing efforts in Washington to undermine the post-WWII international legal system in favor of cruder forms of U.S. hegemonic reach. Indeed, it was the very successes of the BDS movement targeting South Africa which has led corporate leaders and foreign policy elites to take extraordinary means to stifle such dissent. The paper concludes with some analysis on how the popular resistance to U.S. support for the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide could be strengthened in the face of such repression.