At 4:30pm on Friday 4/26 roughly 25 students gathered on the steps of President Gearan’s home for a pro-Palestine sit-in. The student demonstrators called for the transparency of HWS investments, and echoed nationwide sentiments for divestments from pro-Israeli resources.
At 5pm, the students marched through the campus Quad and gathered again on the steps of the Scandling center. Prior to leaving the Gearans‘ property, letters were left on his door and a sign reading “no blood on HWS hands” were left staked into the yard – these items were not visible and presumably removed within an hour of the demonstrators leaving.
Once at the Scandling Center, the demonstrators talked with passersby and handed out informational leaflets about their cause. The students remained on the steps of Scandling until about 7pm before dispersing for the night. The demonstration remained peaceful, with participants engaging in no other activities, there were not any speakers or chants during the event.
While the demonstration started on the steps of Gearan’s home, the sit-in was originally planned to exclusively take place at his residency during his weekly Open House.
The protest organizers felt that as the President frequently encourages students to attend the Open Houses and discuss important matters on campus, organizing the sit-in during this time would allow the students to directly voice their concerns to Gearan. However, several hours before the protest began, the Gearans canceled their weekly open house and the coalition adapted their sit-in to move to scandling. Some students have speculated that the open house was canceled in direct response to the scheduled sit-in, however the Gearans were in attendance at the Provenzano Gallery awards reception, and such claims are unsubstantiated. The Herald has reached out to both President Gearan, Campus Safety, and the organizers of the event and are awaiting further comment.
Pro-Palestine protests and encampments have spread to college campuses around the country, as have pro-Israel counterprotests. In the Finger Lakes, the University of Rochester and Cornell have both seen encampments established, and protests at Columbia University in New York City have made national headlines. The response from campus officials and local authorities has varied tremendously. At Brown University, the protest organizers agreed to dismantle their encampment after the administration promised to consider divestment proposals at the next meeting of the school’s governing body, reports the Brown Daily Herald. At Columbia, the Daily Spectator reports that the NYPD was called in to sweep the encampment there, and a few days later to dismantle the tents students had repitched and to remove those who were occupying a university building. At UCLA, the administration has received criticism for a delayed response to attacks from counter protestors, as reported by the Daily Bruin, whose student reporters were assaulted during the attempt to storm the encampment.
Colleges and Universities have faced scrutiny from Congress towards their response to demonstrations on campus. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard were pressured to resign after floundering in their testimony to a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The House of Representatives passed the “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023” 320 – 91, which requires the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when considering Title VI civil rights complaints. The definition was already applied to Title VI by an executive order by Donald Trump in 2019.
In a statement from the Hudson Valley congressman’s office, Representative Michael Lawler said “What is happening at Columbia, at Yale, at UCLA, and so many other schools, is reprehensible and alarming…When people engage in harassment or bullying of Jewish individuals where they justify the killing of Jews or use blood libel or hold Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government – that is antisemitic. It’s unfortunate that needs to be clarified, but that’s why this bill is necessary.”
The ACLU has condemned the bill, saying in a statement that ”The ACLU has warned this could pressure colleges and universities to restrict student and faculty speech critical of the Israeli government and its military operations out of fear of the college losing federal funding.”
Kenneth Stern, who drafted what became the I.H.R.A. working definition when he was working for the American Jewish Committee has criticized the use of the definition for this purpose. Stern, now the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate said in a February opinion article in the Boston Globe that “There were examples about Israel, not to label anyone an antisemite but because there was a correlation, as opposed to causation, between certain expressions and the climate for antisemitism. But it was never intended to be weaponized to muzzle campus free speech.”
On Thursday, school staff found a partially burnt Palestinian flag on school grounds. In a statement sent to students, President Gearan said that “ We do not yet know when the flag was burned or by whom, however it is a disgraceful act that is utterly antithetical to our values and has no place on our campus. Every one of our students, faculty and staff has the right to study and work without fear of intimidation — and Hobart and William Smith has the duty to ensure that our campus environment upholds that right.”