Much ink has been spilled in these last weeks over student protests at universities across the country. This letter is not about repressive police violence, anti-semitism, campus safety, or other fears that have emerged from national coverage of these events. For their work toward an honest view of the situation, we want to thank the Yale Daily News for thoughtfully and accurately reporting around-the-clock updates. For our part, we want to offer an analysis that the YDN cannot. We want to begin by considering the encampments as they are rather than as they have been portrayed.
Before we continue, we want to note that this issue of the Yale Herald is in part dedicated to the campus occupation in support of Palestinian liberation. Other parts of this magazine are more typical Herald fare: music reviews, reporting, and arts and culture writing. We believe that this content can, and must, coexist.
There are several full-page photos of the occupations throughout this issue. Across from this letter is a photo by Eli Osei, MC ’26, Herald staff, of Yale police officers preparing to arrest students at the Beinecke Plaza encampment on April 22nd. In the center spread we have placed a photo of Beinecke Plaza by Etai Smotrich-Barr, DC ’25, Herald staff, across from a photo of the new Cross Campus encampment by Tashroom Ahsan, DC ’25.
On April 15th, Yale student organizers and protestors set up one of the nation’s first encampments in solidarity with the people of Gaza. The Beinecke Plaza encampment was based around the theme “Books not Bombs.” Even though the university took down the bookshelves organizers had built and painted, the messaging was plenty clear.
Here is what the encampment was: an alternative vision of how the university could work. Instead of million-dollar gated dorms, there were tents, blankets, and sleeping bags shared by all. Instead of Blackstone-backed dining halls, there was food from local businesses and mutual aid donations. Instead of discussing liberation within the walls of an Ivy League classroom, students held teach-ins with professors and community members, read donated books, and learned from each other.
When the administration ordered the Yale Police Department to arrest students on April 22nd, it showed that the modern university is beholden to its corporate interests, not its interests in education. In a confrontation between the consumer base and the donor base, the university will arrest its consumers (and, in some cases, its laborers) to appease its donors.
Where can students turn if not to the university? The answer, at these protests, has been to each other and to the city of New Haven. On April 28th, it was a 1500-person strong march organized by a statewide coalition that gave campus organizers the momentum to set up an occupation of Cross Campus. A banner reading “Yale reinvest in New Haven” hangs in the middle of the new encampment.
There are at least three different but interrelated issues at play in the protests on campus. First, there is Palestinian liberation and an end to the horrific bombing of Gaza. Second, there is the demand that Yale disclose its investments in arms manufacturers and divest those holdings. Third, there is the issue of student and faculty free speech. These issues bring together a big tent coalition, but divestment is the strategic demand that holds the movement together: it takes the outrage over the relentless slaughter of Palestinians and weds it to Yale University’s investments. The demand to disclose and divest harnesses the power of young people insofar as they are students.
Police repression of student speech is therefore only the culmination of a long chain of events. The problem, ultimately, is with the bombings. When Yale and other universities punish students for protesting the sustained violence against Palestine, they admit to holding Palestinian destruction as the status quo. Yale’s response—insisting that its students remain neutral and inactive in the face of genocide—points to a larger Western attitude that mass death and suffering is the natural condition of Palestine, and of Palestinians.
Divestment is a narrow, technical demand. It is the stated demand because it feels achievable. It is achievable. It will require a coalition of committed researchers, ethical investing experts, and patient negotiators alongside the strong activism we have now. But the encampments are worth having and defending not just because they push for divestment, but because they push divestment to its logical conclusion. The encampment provides a broader horizon; it helps us imagine a future without the hedge fund. The encampment rejects the vision of university-as-corporation. It reminds us of the possibility of university-as-university.
We are told that we are too idealistic. Good! What else are young people for? Even if we don’t win divestment, we are working to help bring about the world we are demanding. We choose to understand the encampments as utopian. So we continue. Yale Corporation: disclose your investments, and divest.
Arthur Delot-Vilain, Editor-in-Chief
Madi Cepeda-Hanley, Managing Editor
Eli Osei, Arts Editor