Student Activism Under Fire: SJP Hosts Die-In Amidst Campus Crackdowns

Last week, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at UVa hosted a series of events as part of Palestinian Liberation Week, marking over six months of Israel’s assault on Gaza. The week culminated in a powerful Die-In on the Lawn for Gaza, with students protesting on the Lawn just one day after Columbia University called police on an anti-war student encampment on their own campus which led to multiple arrests and suspensions. Still, students showed up in red, sporting Keffiyehs to, in the words of SJP, “honor the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

Leading up to the Die-In, SJP hosted many events in collaboration with other organizations, including UVa Jewish Voices for Peace, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, Medical Students for Justice in Palestine, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Asian Student Union, bringing students together for educational and community-building events. On April 15th, the group hosted Part 2 of their fall event, “Palestine Isn’t Complicated,” which facilitated discussion and dispelled misinformation about the movement among students. This was followed by a panel discussion with doctors and humanitarian aid workers about Healthcare in Gaza the following day, shedding light on the dire conditions of medical care in Gaza at the moment, where nearly every hospital has been destroyed by Israel’s bombing campaign. Over the next two days, SJP led programs such as an April 17th event focused on “Art and Resistance,” and an April 18th co-event with Flux centered around Poetry for Palestine.

The biggest event was the Die-In on April 19th, ending Palestinian Liberation Week with a multi-hour protest at the Lawn during Days on the Lawn. Organized in partnership with UVa Apartheid Divest, this event continued a long and storied history of protest movements using Die-Ins as a strategic tactic, including during the Vietnam War, the AIDS Crisis, and, most recently, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. In all of these historical instances, protestors aim to fill physical space to draw awareness to massive death tolls, using their bodies  as a reminder to passersby of the violence being perpetrated across the world. SJP also released a statement via Instagram following the protest to describe the rationale behind the action. When the group held a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza in November of last year, approximately 11,000 people had been killed. Now, the death toll has catapulted above 30,000, and groups like SJP, along with a majority of Americans, are opposed to the US-backed massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israel. They say the intention behind the protest was to both honor the thousands of Palestinians killed in what many see as an ongoing genocide, as well as to call for action and divestment by the University administration in accordance with the disclosure and divestment referendum which passed with broad student support. However, despite being entirely peaceful at this and prior protests, SJP and other pro-Palestine organizations at UVa have become the target of accusations of creating an ‘unsafe’ environment for Jewish students, with critics attacking University administration and the Board of Visitors for allowing this protected speech. 

Fearmongers have been using safetyism rhetoric to challenge free speech rights for decades, and now they’re coming for UVa. Organizations like Israel War Room and others have paid for online ads promoting their campaign against Rector Robert Hardie of the Board of Visitors, even briefly driving a truck throughout Grounds calling for Hardie’s resignation, with a large photo of his face plastered under the words “Stop Antisemitism!” The campaign accuses the University of inaction when it comes to antisemitism on grounds, asserting that “Jewish students have been harassed, threatened, and physically assaulted,” and have filed reports with authorities on Grounds. However, nowhere on the site does the campaign say these incidents went uninvestigated or that students who may have been harassed were not provided with support. In fact, there exists no evidence that UVa has mishandled any of these recent accusations. 

Of course, the students making the reports should be heard and anyone engaging in violence or genuine antisemitic conduct should be held accountable. But that’s not what the campaign against Hardie is primarily concerned with: they take issue with the referendum organized this past February by UVa Apartheid Divest, which called on the University to submit itself to an audit to identify funds invested in companies profiting from Israel’s “apartheid regime and acute violence against Palestinians,” and for the University to divest from those funds. 

Despite the language of the referendum following a pattern established by prior campaigns for divestment from South African apartheid or fossil fuel companies, Israel War Room and the campaign for Hardie’s resignation calls it antisemitic, stating: “Hardie allowed an antisemitic referendum to take place on grounds, accusing Israel of committing genocide. UVA leadership should have intervened and prevented the so-called Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) vote from ever taking place,” and “… Nevertheless, UVA allowed this antisemitic referendum to proceed, placing the Jewish community in further danger.” 

This language not only attacks principles of free speech and student self-governance, but it also erases the participation of countless anti-zionist Jewish students in resistance for Palestine, chiefly organized through Jewish Voice for Peace. We should all be geared towards protecting and defending freedom of speech and debate at UVa, and this campaign works directly against that. Punishing the administration for refusing to quell protected speech on the basis of safetyism rhetoric repeats the same playbook that conservatives have criticized for years and further incentivizes the creation of an educational environment which chills any controversial speech in favor of comfort. 

The events of the past weekend have shaken the foundations of university traditions as student activists for Palestine face arrests on campuses across the nation. From Columbia to UNC Chapel Hill, from WashU to Yale, police intervention is marring the landscape of student activism. The campaign targeting Rector Hardie signals a dangerous trend, hinting at the potential for similar crackdowns at UVa. Let’s stand firm in safeguarding free speech on Grounds to prevent such injustices from taking root here. 

The opinions expressed within this piece represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jefferson Independent.