Pro-Palestinian students protest against the war in Gaza outside a university campus.
Photo: KEYSTONE/AP/Mary Altaffer
Brown University, a prestigious campus in the northeast of the United States, announced Thursday an agreement with its pro-Palestinian students, the first of its kind in the crisis shaking the American student world over the war in the Strip. from Gaza.
The president of Brown University in Providence (Rhode Island), Christina Paxson, welcomed in a press release the dismantling of a ‘camp’ of students and pro-Palestinian activists at 5:00 p.m. (11:00 p.m. Swiss time) in exchange for the promise that the university’s board of trustees will rule on possible ‘divestments from companies that enable and profit from the genocide in Gaza.’
Cutting ties between large private American universities and patrons and companies linked to Israel is part of the demands of the student and activist movement which defends the Palestinian cause and is up against the war waged by the Jewish state against Hamas in the Strip. from Gaza.
The agreement with Brown is the first concession granted by an elite university to the national movement which has spread over the past two weeks throughout the United States, from California to the west (Universities of UCLA, USC… ) to the northeastern states (Columbia, Yale, Harvard, UPenn) via the central and southern states such as Texas and Arizona. Brown students and administration must still discuss the contours of the agreement from May to October.
In the camp, demonstrators jumped for joy and hugged each other while singing according to an AFPTV journalist.
The demonstrations on American campuses have revived in the United States the tense debate since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between freedom of expression, constitutional rights and accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Brown’s president acknowledged that ‘the destruction and loss of life in the Middle East has led many (students) to call for significant change.’
The university leader, two of whose counterparts at Harvard and UPenn had to resign this winter for comments deemed ambiguous before the United States Congress on the fight against anti-Semitism, also denounced ‘the escalation of incendiary rhetoric (. ..) and rising tensions on campuses across the country.
/ATS
