As campuses across the nation protested the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Yale University students began a hunger strike and peaceful campus occupation in mid-April. They demanded Yale Corporation disclose investments in companies providing weapons to Israel in its war on Gaza and to divest from them. Students occupied Beineke Plaza, site of many past campus political protests such as a 1986 shanty town erected to call for the university’s divestment from corporations invested in apartheid South Africa.
As hunger strikers rested under a canopy, students held teach-ins, and the faithful responded to the call to Muslim prayers. The Yale Corporation met on April 20 but made no announcement that it had even considered the student’s demands. Two days later, early on the morning of April 22nd, campus police raided the plaza while most were still sleeping, and arrested 47 people, almost all students.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with a several of those protesting at Yale, including one of the 14 hunger strikers, some of whom were then on their 7th day of fasting.
HUNGER STRIKER: We had released a statement on our Instagram page at Yale Hunger Strike that we will continue to hunger strike until we receive a direct response from President Peter Salovey and the board of trustees, who can choose to not heed this recommendation from the advisory committee. Right? Because the advisory committee has said that the investment in authorized arms manufacturing does not qualify for grave social injury, which is the condition of divestment.
However, of course, we are insisting that given this genocide, it constitutes grave social injury. And just because the U.S. is authorizing arms manufacturing that directly feeds into the genocidal assault on Palestine currently doesn’t make it any less of a grave social injury. Right? Part of this is so that our voice would be heard by Yale, but also many of us are not doing this for Yale so much as we are humbling ourselves before Palestinian people in struggles for liberation.
And I would say that we have also seen a lot of student and faculty support of the occupation of Beineke Plaza and of course also of the hunger strikers who are also sitting at Beineke Plaza. Of course, many of them have participated in teach-ins and many have combined to drop off Covid tests, masks, Pedialytes. Flowers. There’s been an overwhelming amount of love that I think has also been an affirmation in our shared political commitments. And we all hope that by being here and by channeling the memory of all of those who have come before us in organizing in struggles for liberation, that we can also convince the institution to divest.
MELINDA TUHUS: After Beineke Plaza was cleared on April 22, students and community supporters immediately took over an intersection of two New Haven streets through campus and remained there until late afternoon. Zachary Herring is a recent Yale grad and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
ZACHARY HERRING: Why is this educational institution invested in war? They won’t disclose these details, but they’re not denying it. And so I think they’re saying like, disclose the details and divest, divest from this war.
MELINDA TUHUS: Several speakers condemned Yale administrators’ claims that the totally peaceful student occupation was violent and that some New Haven residents with a history of committing violence had taken control of the action for which at least one administrator later apologized. Late in the day, a faculty supporter of the students who wish to remain anonymous spoke to the hundreds of people who had occupied the intersection all day.
RALLY SPEAKER: So this administration seems, sees fit to arrest our students. We as classroom leaders can model for them a different kind of leadership based on critical care and compassion as the students’ chants continue to resound: Books not Bombs! Books not Bombs!
CHANTS: BOOKS NOT BOMBS. BOOKS NOT BOMBS.
MELINDA TUHUS: Then after negotiating with the New Haven Police Department, student leaders agreed to vacate the intersection at rush hour and moved their planned seder and Muslim prayers to a site on campus. There were no additional arrests. The hunger strikers ended their strike after eight days.
SPEAKER 2: This is our city and we wanna respect that. And also the target of what we’re doing is not New Haven. It’s Yale.
Those were voices of Yale University students engaged in a hunger strike and occupation, calling for Yale to divest from companies, providing weapons to Israel.
[Web editor’s corrections: A previous version of this transcript had incorrect student chants. It should be “BOOKS NOT BOMBS.”]
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