What can colleges learn from the pro-Palestinian protesters' deal at a UC campus?

Transcript:

Emma Gallegos: Last April, students at UC Riverside set up what they called a Gaza Solidarity encampment in the middle of campus. Protesters unfurled banners calling for a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and, like many other pro-Palestinian students across the nation, they demanded their university cut financial ties with Israel and its supporters.

Saaamia Alkam was one of those student protesters who joined the encampment. She has a personal stake in the conflict. She grew up in the West Bank, one of two Palestinian territories, along with the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel.

Samia: I spent around half of my life in the West Bank in a small village called Aya. And most of my like attitudes and opinions about Palestine were shaped while I was living there. 

Emma: Saaamia has spent a lot more time on UC Riverside’s campus than most other students.

Samia: I study education policy and I call myself a super, super, super senior because I just finished up my seventh year here. 

Emma: She’s not only a doctoral student at UC Riverside, but she completed her undergraduate education there, too. She says she’s found a home at a university that prides itself on welcoming students like her from the Middle East.

Samia: That was something that drew me to the campus pretty heavily. My sisters attended UC Riverside as well for the same reasoning. And I felt really passionate about UC Riverside, because of the level of diversity that we have. I was an intern at the Middle Eastern Student Center when I was an undergraduate student. I was heavily involved with our Middle Eastern Student Assembly, which was our student advocacy group on campus. I was heavily involved with our students for Justice in Palestine. 

Emma: Samia knew that support for Middle Eastern students was a point of pride for the UC Riverside administration, too.

Samia: The number of brochures that I am on, uh, you know, advertising the Middle Eastern experience on campus, and we have the Middle Eastern Student Center on campus, which is the first of its kind in the nation. We pride ourselves in our diversity. We pride ourselves on being progressive. We pride ourselves on being justice oriented. 

Emma: That’s why Samia, who stepped into a role as lead negotiator, hoped that things would play out differently at UC Riverside than at other campuses. University campuses have been roiled by turmoil over the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Pro-Palestininan protesters made little progress in finding common ground with administrators on University of California campuses. UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz called police in riot gear to dismantle encampments. Police arrested protesters, sometimes in violent clashes.

Samia: There is a different culture at UCR than the other universities for sure. Um, there was this kind of tension between us and administration when it came to negotiations because they were really hesitant to bring police on campus the way that the other universities were.

Emma: This is Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. I���m guest host Emma Gallegos. This week: how pro-Palestinian protestors at UC Riverside were able to quickly and peacefully negotiate a settlement with the administration.

Emma: Just days after students at UC Riverside set up their encampment, counterdemonstrators  at UCLA attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment there. That moment, Samia says, was a key point of leverage for negotiations with the administration.

Samia: When we saw the way that administration was dealing with students at UCLA and UC Irvine, that also put pressure on our campus to say, Is this something we want to reach UC Riverside as well?

Emma: Samia reached out to a faculty member who would end up being a key ally for negotiations with UC Riverside Chancellor Kim Wilcox. Samia had recently served as a teaching assistant for Christine Victorino, a faculty member who had previously worked in Kim’s office.

Samia: And she had such a deep knowledge of administration and the chancellor in particular that we were able to truly understand, look, how are we going to reach a consensus? How are we going to reach an agreement in a way that was acceptable for us? And we could pressure administration in, in the right ways, because at the end of the day, we were more interested in the ends than the means, right? The encampment was only a means to get our demands met. And those demands were issues that we have been working on for years.

Emma: EdSource’s higher education reporter Michael Burke has been covering  the pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses in California.

Emma: Hi Michael.

Michael: Hi Emma.

Emma: Thanks for being here today. So you wrote about negotiations, um, on UC Riverside’s campus, and you wrote that the, the pro-Palestinian camp that was set up lasted four days and negotiations lasted two. And so I wonder if you can just tell me why that has been unusual this year.

Michael: I mean, at all the campuses, um, the protestors are, you know, obviously they wanna make a deal, they have demands or requests. But at cRiverside, I think the biggest difference was that the chancellor in particular was eager to make a deal. 

Emma: What has been happening this spring at other campuses, particularly around California?

Michael: Yeah, so there’s been a, a lot of, I guess, chaos for, for lack of a better term, especially at the UCs. You know, UCLA was the one that I think got the most, you know, media attention nationally. And there was a lot of violence hospitalizations, uh, the administration there, you know, got criticized for not, um, you know, being more prepared for that. But then just even beyond that, I would say that there just hasn’t been much negotiation between, you know, student protestors who have set up encampments and, and, and their administrators. 

Emma: So Michael, what were the protestors at UC Riverside demanding?

Michael: The students kind of went into it originally wanting Riverside to divest financially from any direct or indirect ties to, to Israel and, and the war in Gaza. Um, you know, whether that’s like weapons manufacturers, you know, it’s the same thing that a lot of protestors across campuses are asking for. 

Emma: I wonder also if you can talk a little bit about Sabra hummus and why students have singled that company out.

Michael:  Yeah, so this has been going on for many, many years. I found a New York Times story from back in 2010, this, that students at college campuses were wanting their campuses to not sell this Sabra brand of hummus it goes back to one of their parent companies that owns them. It’s called the Strauss Group.They’re an Israeli food company that pro-Palestinian activists have always kind of scrutinized. They have supported in the past, uh, or still support, um, the Israeli military, you know, the IDF. 

Emma: So it sounds like Riverside protestors had something of a secret weapon in Christine Victorino during these negotiations. Is that right?

Michael: Yeah, it was actually, it was really interesting. She had worked in the chancellor’s office for seven years as a chief of his chief of staff. Kim Wilcox is the chancellor. Christine Victorino was his chief of staff. And yeah, she had sort of a very, um, you know, unique insight into the chancellor’s office and kind of how they operated. 

Michael: And yeah, so she helped the students kind of prepare and know sort of how he might react to certain things, you know, what might be realistic that he would agree to. And it wasn’t like, you know, she wasn’t going against his wishes by doing that. She actually approached him before she agreed to be their advisor and asked if he was okay with her doing that, and he encouraged her to. So yeah. But she was definitely played a, a pretty key role, I would say.

Emma:  Christine served as an advisor to the student negotiators. She would even role play with the students, taking on the role of the administration in mock negotiations.

Samia: Like I would say, okay, and what if I were to say to the chancellor, A, B, and C, and she, she would say, he would respond to you in this way, and to that I would say A, B, and C. 

Emma: Christine also helped the student negotiators understand the university’s finances. One of their demands was immediate divestment of any endowment funds related to Israel. Christine explained that Riverside’s endowment is managed by the systemwide office, so that demand just wasn’t going to be possible — at least not right away.

Samia: Prior to these negotiations meetings, I didn’t really have a good understanding of the endowment and where the endowment was being invested and which parts of the endowment were being operated by the Office of the Regents and which ones were being operated by the foundation trust on campus. These were things that were so enigmatic for me. And what she provided to us was that kind of navigational capital that we were really lacking. And now I can thankfully say those processes have been clarified for us so much better. And so she was really valuable in that way.

Emma: Armed with that knowledge, the protesters decided that instead of asking for immediate divestment, they would demand that the administration remove UC Riverside’s current investments from the UC Investments Office.

Negotiations with the administration went quickly. A crucial moment came when Saaamia pulled out her own Palestinian identification card, which limits her movement to the West Bank. This, she said, was concrete  evidence of her belief that Israel is acting as an apartheid state.

Samia: I wanted to indicate to him in a really visual way that it is unacceptable for the university to continue sending our UC Riverside students to an apartheid state when it clearly violates the UC anti-discrimination policy based on country of national origin. My country of national origin is Palestine through my Palestinian passport and through, and if I were to apply to a study abroad program to Israel, I would be rejected because I can’t enter those regions regardless of my American passport. I don’t have the kind of mobility that other Americans do when I’m in Palestine.I risk arrest, I risk prison time. I risk so many things if I even were to try. And if I were able to get some kind of special permission or permit or visa for me to enter those regions, the US State Department has recommended against any type of Arab or any Palestinian, any Muslim from even entering that region because of the Israeli offensive forces and the way that they manage Muslims and Arabs in general on their land, not just Palestinians with Palestinian passports.

Emma: Samia says that administrators were taken aback.

Samia: And at that point it was undeniable. There was physical evidence in front of them to show this is discriminatory, right? It was physical evidence to show, yikes, this does violate the UC anti-discrimination policy and it’s something that we have to think about. 

Emma: That moment marked a turning point in negotiations, which ended on May 3 — just two days after negotiating began and four days after protestors had set up their encampment on UC Riverside. Protestors agreed to take down their encampment in exchange for a list of demands met by administrators.

The first demands had to do with the way that UC Riverside invests its money. The administration agreed to disclose where its money is invested and the size of those  investments. It also agreed to set up a task force that will explore removing funds from the UC Investments Office.

Samia: I think a lot of people have had rightful concerns to say that task forces are where revolutions go to die to say, yeah, yeah, we’ll have conversations about it. Yeah, we’ll look into it. Yeah, that’s fine.

Emma: Samia says Success will require people with actual financial expertise on the task force who are also willing to wrestle with the morality of university investments,

Samia: We want to position ourselves to really get to the bottom of this and say, is there a financially viable and ethical way for us to move forward with our investments? 

Emma: According to Samia, this is just a first step. Keeping up the pressure on the administration will be key, she says, — not just for UC Riverside, but for the broader pro-Palestinian movement that wants the entire UC system to reconsider how it invests its money.

Samia: It is a UC wide movement because we need buy-in from the regents. We need buy-in from the other chancellors. And it’s going to take a while and it’s gonna take a lot of effort. But I think that, you know, the, the minute that first encampment was established at one of our UC campuses that pushed the first domino.

Emma: UC Riverside protestors also walked away from the bargaining table with one tangible win that other campuses have not secured: the cancellation of study abroad programs that take students to Israel.

The chancellor’s office released a statement on its website saying that through dialogue officials learned that the abroad program was not consistent with university policies.

The university also agreed to look into whether campus vendors should be permitted to sell Sabra Hummus. The administration agreed to take specific steps, including setting up meetings with its vendors.

Samia: That was extremely important for us to have reached an agreement, for us to make concrete change on those points and to not just keep our encampment up for awareness.

Emma: The administration did not respond to a request for an interview but in a statement, Chancellor Kim Wilcox said that he was proud to reach an agreement generated through “constructive dialogue” that resulted in a “peaceful conclusion.”

Samia broadly credits the UC Riverside community for making support of Middle Eastern students such an important part of the university’s culture. That culture and that image, she said, put her and the rest of the negotiating team in a prime position to reach a deal.

Samia: And for the administration to step outside of that paradigm and to step outside of that culture that we have on campus would’ve been devastating for them in their image and our, the image that we’ve cultivated as a university.

Emma: Samia also credits protestors on other UC campuses who were not able to win concessions from their administrations.

Samia: I’m so unbelievably thankful and grateful for students at other universities who were in different positions than us, because they also were pressuring our university as well to say, I don’t know if we want a situation like that, right?

Emma: And she hopes that the agreement with UC Riverside can help those protestors, too.

Samia: I think that one of the things that our agreement has illustrated to the other students is that they cannot be gaslit, right? They cannot be convinced to say the agreement that we got is impossible because we reached that agreement. So students at UC San Diego, UC Irvine, and UCLA and all the other UC campuses can stand there firmly and say, you can opt out of Israel study abroad program. You can’t sit here and tell me that there’s too much red tape. That it’s impossible, that it’s illegal, that you need the Academic Senate to approve it, that you need the Regents to approve it. It is possible. It is possible. You can listen to your students, you can protect your students. You can actually engage in dialogue with them.

CREDITS:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. A production of EdSource.

You can find links to Michael’s story in our podcast notes and at EdSource dot org.

Our producer is Coby McDonald.

Special thanks to our guests Samia Alkam and Michael Burke.

And to our managing editor, Adam Eisenberg.

Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

This episode was brought to you by the Stupski Foundation.

I’m Emma Gallegos. Host Zaidee Stavely will be back next week. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.