PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Dozens of Brown University students remain camped out on the school’s green while awaiting the president’s response to their demands, which include divesting in the Israel-Hamas war and dropping the charges against those arrested during a similar demonstration last year.
The Brown Divest Coalition set up the encampment Wednesday morning, with the intent to stay put until at least one of their two demands are met — or the university forcibly removes them.
“I can’t sit in a class and not think about the fact that my university is actively invested in a genocide,” Niyanta Nepal said. “I can’t think about the fact that I am sitting here in a very privileged position while people are getting bombs dropped on them.”
“We are all extremely mad and upset with the fact that we are all complicit with the crime,” she continued. “We don’t want a single penny from our university invested in that.”
The students are urging Brown University President Christina Paxson to take action.
“All eyes are on Brown’s president,” Nepal said. “All eyes are on her administration to make sure she actually values and listens to the voices of people in her community.”
“I don’t know what more encouragement she needs,” she added. “She has turned a blind eye to these atrocities.”
In a statement to 12 News, the university explained that the endowment “is not directly invested in defense stocks or large munitions manufacturers.”
The university explained that, while protest is an acceptable form of expression, it becomes “unacceptable when it violates university policies that are intended to ensure the safety of members of the Brown community.”
This is one of several demonstrations happening on campuses across the country. Demonstrators explained that their goal is to stand in solidarity with the students who have supported Palestine by participating in similar protests.
Though other demonstrations have escalated, the one at Brown remains peaceful. No arrests have been made and the students have not been forced off the green, even though the encampment violates university policy.
However, the university has written down the names of the roughly 130 students involved in the demonstration. Those students will likely face disciplinary action, such as probation or expulsion, according to the university.
If the demonstration were to escalate, the university said it would “act as necessary.”
The Brown University Community Council recommended Wednesday that the charges against the 41 students from the previous demonstration be dropped. The council also suggested the students present their case on divestment to the university’s corporation during its next scheduled meeting in May.
It’s unclear whether the council’s recommendations will be considered by Paxson, who is member of the corporation.
The university has a history of divestment, from companies involved in the South African apartheid and the genocide in Darfur to those that sell tobacco.
That’s why the students believe divesting from the Israel-Hamas war should be no different.
Arman Deendar said Paxson, “has a clear historical precedent and moral imperative” to meet their demands and “to recognize that 35,000 Palestinians are being murdered at the hands of the Israeli state.”
“She needs to call out these investments and recognize the institution’s complicity,” Deendar said.
Meanwhile, Rhode Island Coalition for Israel Executive Director Howard Brown described the demonstration as an “anti-Israel encampment” and stressed that the university needs to respond appropriately.
“It must be dealt with by suspension or more severe disciplinary action as defined in university policy,” Brown wrote. “Students and faculty are not a privileged class exempt from the consequences of their actions. Law enforcement must be called in if necessary to reinforce Brown’s own security services.”
“Brown, like the rest of the elite Ivy schools, has done little or nothing to effectively suppress and punish the vile expressions of murderous Jew-hatred on its campus,” he continued. “It defies belief that such expressions of hatred directed at any other minority group would be tolerated; those advocating for the death of the members of such other groups would no doubt have been immediately suspended and escorted off campus.”
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