Picture this: from under the prominent stone arch that connects the Pembroke dorms, the voices of 30 or so students echo: “Bryn Mawr in your ivory tower/this is called people power!” Earlier this month, the Bryn Mawr College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced a strike to continue their pro-Palestinian efforts. Through their Instagram, Bryn Mawr SJP called for the community to boycott classes, stating that the goal was “to disrupt the status quo, tear down [the] curtain of normalcy everywhere.” SJP encouraged students, professors, and staff to disengage from normal activities and instead engage with the schedule they presented, which included sign painting, a demonstration, and a teach-in.
On Thursday, November 21, students engaged in a strike from classes and work in solidarity with the people of Palestine. The organizers explained that given that the violence in the Gaza Strip began over a year ago, their motivation for the day was rooted in “keeping the momentum going.”
In the morning, students congregated inside the Campus Center, safe from the rainstorm emerging outside. Gathered around a large table filled with cardboard scraps and bottles of white, green, and red paint, students set to work designing signs in support of their cause. One participant, who asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, painted a Palestinian flag in the shape of a heart and stated, “I think it’s really amazing that the organizers of the event make it so easy to be a part of…. They’re making it super accessible and I think that’s really important and makes it so that more people can be a part of it.” The participant continued, describing that they “want to participate because [they] think that’s it’s really important to continue this work and continue showing up…especially since in the last year people haven’t forgotten about what’s going on, but have settled into it and stopped talking about it so much.”
Some attendees created signs to bring back to their rooms, often visible in dormitory windows, while others brought their signs to the afternoon demonstration.
At noon participants congregated on Merion Green to begin an hour-long demonstration. Due to the pouring rain, the demonstration was quickly moved to Pembroke arch, a center point of the college through which most students and visitors must walk through to access the main campus. The group split in half under the arch, leaving a large path for passersby. Students repeated chants such as “liberation is our mission\no more bombs with our tuition” and “from Philly to Palestine\occupation is a crime” throughout the demonstration. Some chants were tailored to Bryn Mawr, such as “Anassa Kata, Kalo Kale, divest from genocide today,” where Anassa Kata is the traditional college chant. Edits to the Anassa Kata first appeared last spring during the May Day tradition to call for collegiate divestment from Israel.
The voices of participants were echoed and amplified by the stone surroundings of the Pembroke dorms. Two coordinators gave speeches to the group, highlighting that the goal of the days events was to recenter attention on events in the Gaza Strip. According to Palestinian officials, 44,056 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed in the past 13 months. The speeches emphasized the destruction of hospitals, homes, ambulances, and families. One speaker described a “blood soaked, Bryn Mawr funded genocide” in their speech and emphasized experiences of Palestinians living through the conflict. The demonstration concluded with a march across the campus that spread down to the Park Science building, where students studying behind the large windows overlooked the protest.
A teach-in led by Dr. Tarik Aougab, an associate Professor of mathematics and statistics at Haverford College, concluded the day’s events in Dalton Hall. Dr. Aougab described the focus of the teach-in as discussing the “complicity of Israeli academia (universities in Israel such as the Technion, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Hebrew University, etc) in maintaining apartheid and genocide in Palestine. The talk was inspired by Maya Wind’s book “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom” and the talks she recently delivered at Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges regarding her anthropological and archival work.” Aougab continued by explaining that at the talk attendees engaged in discussions that focused on “dependence of the Israeli state and military on the weapons, drones, and surveillance technology developed by Israeli scientific institutions; the ways in which Israeli scholars of law craft legal frameworks to justify the continued dispossession (and annihilation) of Palestinians; and the role that universities play in changing “facts on the ground” by (often) being intentionally situated in predominately Palestinian neighborhoods, on contested land, and in settlements deemed illegal under international law…[as well as] talked about the ethics and the strategy behind the call for academic boycott, made by Palestinians for the last two decades.”
It remains unclear if more strikes will be held in the last weeks of the semester, but if the conflict continues into the spring semester, students appear motivated to continue reminding the community of violence occurring beyond the stone walls of Bryn Mawr.
