By Lara Lovric
Pro-Palestine student protesters at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London escalated their protest yesterday by occupying the university’s finance office, demanding that the institution divest from companies that are directly supporting Israel.
The protesters set up their encampment, which they called the Liberated Zone for Gaza, more than three weeks ago but have yet to receive a formal response from the university.
However, SOAS did make details about its investments publicly available in a statement released two days after the camp was set up.
The protesters were not impressed.
“I don’t feel like either SOAS or any of these institutions are particularly democratic,” said the encampment’s representative who spoke to Count using the alias Foxglove. “…[on Thursday] we were thrown physically out of a board of trustees meeting for trying to present our demands to them.”
Student protesters across the world have been setting up solidarity camps since the middle of April, calling on their universities to disclose funding information, divest from companies that are directly supporting Israel, boycott institutional relationships with Israeli universities and commit to the rebuilding of Palestine’s higher education sector.
The SOAS Liberation Zone for Gaza is also demanding that the university start advocating for the “UK government to implement an arms embargo and to call for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire,” according to a statement posted on social media.
Foxglove said support from student and staff unions has been overwhelming, but that “those bodies that represent the community are not being reflected in the management.”
In contrast to their university administrations, some academics have come out in support of protesting students. At UK’s Durham University, more than 200 members of staff signed an open letter in solidarity with its protesting students.
“We are proud of our students, and of their intervention, and we support their right to protest and free expression,” they stated.
Meanwhile, multiple universities in Australia, Denmark, Canada, Slovenia, Spain, the UK and US have fully or partially agreed to their students’ demands.
We asked six university executive boards across England for comment but none responded by the time of publication (King’s College, SOAS, Queen Mary University of London, LSE, Imperial College London, Durham University)
Feature image: Protest signs at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Photo credit: Lara Lovric.