Notre Dame joins the campus movement

Hanna Eid 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

In breaking the campus’ draconian rules, the students at Notre Dame have blessed that piece of land with a fighting spirit.

While students at Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and Yale have revived the legacy of an unwavering student anti-war movement, the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, is continuing in the Egyptian government tradition of normalization and capitulation to the Zionists. Students at the University of Notre Dame (ND) are working to join this nationwide movement of pro-Palestine camps on college campuses.

Notre Dame is arguably the premier Catholic university in the United States, with a mixed history of radical priests and professors, as well as utterly reactionary professors and religious zealots. Since October, Notre Dame’s response has been mixed as well. The president of the university, Father John Jenkins, called for a ceasefire only after five months of the onslaught on Gaza. The university leadership and donor class, on the other hand, have continued to maintain their relationships with the military-industrial complex—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and other merchants of death.

On April 25th, before roughly 50 students and community members went to the quad where they attempted to camp in protest, the group met in front of the Basilica, under the golden dome with the statue of the Virgin Mary looking over them. Christians, Jews, and Muslims prayed together, quoting Prophet Issa, Prophet Mohammad, liberation theologians, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and the martyr Refaat Al Areer.

The air was filled with chants of ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Notre Dame, you can’t hide, you’re condoning genocide’ during the march. The students moved into a quad on the south side of campus where there was an event happening already, and began to set up tents in a patch of grass off to the side. After 20 minutes of chanting, about 10-12 police officers moved in and began ripping the tents down while violently shoving students out of the way. Yet the students remained, chanting, reciting poetry, and giving speeches highlighting how the university’s Catholic identity is at odds with their investment portfolio. I was able to speak to some of the student organizers, as well as supporters of the movement, and hear their perspectives firsthand.

Mohamed, a PhD student in the physics department, helped to rally the students together and offered these words, “I am here because this marks 221 days of ongoing injustice and murder of innocent civilians…I am here to pressure ND to release its investment portfolio and divest from these companies”.

It is important to note that the students at Notre Dame remained at the site of the protest for many hours in open defiance of the campus policy that political demonstrations may only last a total of 15 minutes, and must be approved in writing by the campus administration. This university policy was made in response to the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War, as well as the existence of Black and Chicano rights groups on the campus, and has been on the books ever since the 1960s.

The fact that the protest went on from 5:00 pm until almost midnight was seen as a victory for the student organizers. Some student organizers claimed that Notre Dame’s private police force was scared to fully disperse the students because the heavy-handed tactics of the Zionist-trained NYPD have been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism in the media and on social media. Around 9:45 pm, the students started to set up another batch of tents, this was met with another police swarm, this time more aggressive. Grabbing students, pushing them to the ground, and stepping over and around them, the police confiscated the last of the tents.

After this, the chanting and speeches resumed, with students giving speeches ranging in topics. One student from Lebanon spoke about Ghassan Kanafani to an inspired crowd, and another from Cuba spoke to me about how what Notre Dame is doing is “antithetical to the Catholic tradition...I am here because I study theology, the God that I study and love and worship is a God of justice”.

I also had a chance to speak to Professor Atalia Omer, a Jewish woman born in “Israel”. According to Omer, she was not only there to “counteract a narrative which dehumanizes Palestinians” but she was there “as an academic to support the brave students taking a stand, because campuses should be about the ability to speak”.

Before we parted ways, she said, “Occupation is not part of my Judaism”. This interaction alone refutes any of the slanderous and fabricated claims that pro-Palestine campus groups organizing these camps are anti-semitic or a ‘threat’ to Jewish students on campuses nationwide.

The tired argument of the Zionists calling everything under the sun anti-semitic is beginning to lose steam. Jewish Voice for Peace organizers were present at the Notre Dame protest as well as other campus protests and camps across the country. Much of the focus of the students was their refusal to be complicit in atrocities committed by imperialist powers. Atticus, a graduate student in the math department told me “we are here today in solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestine and all oppressed people across the world, we refuse to be complicit”.

The solidarity in the air at the Notre Dame protest was palpable, and while the students dispersed by midnight, they assured each other and the other local supporters that this was just the beginning. They have three demands which they intend to pressure the university to meet: firstly, they want an end to the 15-minute demonstration rule, secondly they want transparency regarding Notre Dame’s finances, and thirdly they want Notre Dame to divest from any links with "Israel"–academic and commercial.

The student movement in America had been dormant for some time, with universities attempting to pacify student activists with false promises and hollow DEI initiatives. With the ongoing genocide in Palestine, many American university students have said enough is enough. Academic institutions play a key role in any country, and when these institutions of higher learning are complicit in human rights abuses, the international arms trade, and suppressing students' voices, the time for change has arrived.

In breaking the campus’ draconian rules, the students at Notre Dame have blessed that piece of land with a fighting spirit. As I stood with the students during the prayer circle prior to the protest, and as space was opened up for people to say a prayer or reflection, I remembered and recited the words of Ali Ibn Abi Talib: “Do not despair of the path of truth if few follow it”.

May this movement continue to grow, and become stronger. Forward ever, backward never.