Editor’s Note: For weeks, pro-Palestinian students and faculty at Connecticut’s colleges and universities have been gathering to protest the war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
Tensions at some schools have heightened, but others have maintained a fragile peace. Connecticut Mirror photojournalist Shahrzad Rasekh spent time visiting with the students and teachers protesting the war on several campuses.
On a rainy afternoon in mid-April, groups of students gathered in circles in the Yale Rotunda. A white poster sat propped against a column with large bubble letters reading, “Tell us … What brought you here?”
“Solidarity,” one Post-It note read.
“Empathy,” read another.
“As an American Jew, I do not want to be complicit in the oppression and killing of Palestinians”
“Bombs are still falling on my friend and her family”
Several of the responses simply read “sumud,” a Palestinian Arabic term referring to a concept of steadfastness.
Since last fall, students on campuses across Connecticut have carved out spaces — at picnic tables, on library steps, and more recently in academic buildings and on campus greens. They have painted posters, read poetry to each other and discussed history, their families and their grief.
Leaders within the student groups have developed a series of demands of the leadership of their institutions: to call for a permanent ceasefire and to disclose and end their financial ties to Israeli companies and military manufacturers. As long as the demands remain unmet, the students say, they’ll remain steadfast.
The students say these spaces have offered solidarity and support for people deeply shaken by the war’s violence, the 35,000 killed and the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Across the encampments, students urge their institutions and onlookers: “All eyes on Gaza.”
On some campuses, administrators cited safety and policy breaches to push back on the camped-out students this spring. Others, on campus and beyond, have perceived the groups’ signs, slogans and chanting as an affront, a painful reminder of Hamas’ attack on Israel and historic violence toward Jewish people.
But the gatherings only grew. Yale students established their encampments after Columbia University took measures to remove tents there. Then came the “UCommune” at the University of Connecticut, the “Wesleyan Liberated Zone,” and Trinity College’s “Liberation Zone.”
The protests have swept campuses across the country. On Thursday, hundreds of people were arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dozens were arrested after Columbia University students occupied a building last week, the graduation ceremony at the University of Michigan was disrupted on Saturday, and dozens were arrested at the University of Virginia’s graduation. At some campuses, riot police were called in to disperse protesters.
Students at Yale and UConn were arrested in recent weeks, and the tents have been cleared. Wesleyan and Trinity students remain camped out. But across all the Connecticut campuses, students say, the cultural conviction of steadfastness — “sumud” — persists.
Trinity College
Wesleyan University
At a faculty-supported rally at Wesleyan University last week, Prof. Matthew Garrett reminded students that there are no universities left in Gaza — all 12 universities have been bombed. He read a list of the 94 professors who were killed by Israeli bombardment between October and February, requesting students to chant their names back. By the end of the list, some students were comforting their weeping peers while faculty members embraced.
Wesleyan President Michael Roth said “the university will not attempt to clear the encampment.”
University of Connecticut
Yale University
“As an institutional investor, Yale aims to protect American students from mass shootings, but refuses to recognize that its investments in the very F-35 fighter jets bombing schools and universities in Gaza right now also constitute ‘grave social injury,’” said students in a statement, referring to the criterion that led Yale to divest from assault weapon retailers in 2018.
On April 15, a group of students at Yale University set up two “books, not bombs” bookshelves in Beinecke Plaza. The structure, modeled after Yale’s 1986 student protests for divestment from South African apartheid, was dismantled by the administration just hours after its erection. That day, students announced that they would continue to occupy the plaza until Yale’s board of trustees committed to divest from military weapons manufacturers.
