Protests fueled by Yale refusal to divest in weapons makers
NEW HAVEN — This week’s pro-Palestine protests and high-profile arrests at Yale’s Beinecke Plaza, like those at Columbia University and elsewhere, aren’t just about Israel’s Hamas-related bombing in the Gaza Strip and thousands who have died so far, or the resulting threat of famine.
They’re also fueled by protesters’ demands that Yale divest of holdings in weapons manufacturing companies contributing to Israel’s offensive — and have grown in the days since Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility announced that the Yale Corporation won’t divest.
The decision was announced several days ago, disappointing many protesters, who say that, if anything, is has energized the protests.
“I think there’s been a lot more action since,” said Chisato Kimura, a second-year Yale law student who is among the spokespeople for the protesters, who have been largely peaceful.
The ACIR, which works to support “ethical management” of Yale’s $40-plus billion endowment, concluded April 17 that military weapons manufacturing did not meet the threshold of “grave social injury,” a prerequisite for divestment, according to a statement from Yale.
That’s because it supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security, Yale announced.
But “the policy will be expanded to cover assault weapons manufacturers that engage in retail activities to the general public,” the ACIR said. In 2018, Yale adopted a policy prohibiting investment in assault weapon retailers because “retailers supplying assault weapons to the general public cause grave social injury,” the Yale announcement said.
“They’re wrong, I think,” Kimura said. “Truly, if genocide doesn’t count as grave social injury, I don’t know what does.”
Since Yale police arrested what Yale President Peter Salovey said were 60 people at a pro-Palestine encampment on Beinecke Plaza early Monday morning, protesters moved first to the intersection of College, Grove and Prospect streets outside Yale’s Schwarzman Center and Woolsey Hall, where they blocked traffic for much of the day, then to Cross Campus, the grassy lawn between Sterling Memorial Library and College Street.
The university has since released a lower of number arrests at 48 total, including 44 Yale students.
Pro-Palestinian students continued both to protest and also just hang out, talk and study on Cross Campus Wednesday morning, though in a quieter and smaller fashion than the hundreds of people gathered Monday and the hundreds again on Tuesday.
“A lot of folks are gathered to study, just hang out ... We’re just really having a lovely morning in solidarity with each other,” Kimura said Tuesday.
“Yesterday, the response to peaceful protestors protesting and using their First Amendment rights on this campus was to arrest 50 students, and so I think that seems to be the university’s response,” Kimura said.
Protesters, some wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, the black-andwhite or red-and-white scarves that also are used as headdresses throughout the Arab world, mingled with people just walking, biking or scootering by.
Some of those passersby Wednesday morning wore traditional, fringed Jewish prayer shawls, known as tallit, or tzitzit.
Undergraduate Aly Moosa said the largely underreported announcement, which came as 12 Yale graduate students and two undergrads were engaged in a hunger strike, which ended Sunday, has inspired additional protests.
“If we’re contributing to war, if we’re contributing to genocide, it doesn’t matter if you draw a distinction between (military) weapons manufacturers and assault weapons” manufacturers and retailers, Moosa said.
“As you can tell, people are energized,” he said, surrounded by a couple of hundred others, many sitting on the Cross Campus grass or in chairs brought out onto the lawn. They will continue to fight both for divestment and “for Palestinian liberation,” he said.
At least 34,262 Palestinians have been killed and 77,229 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since Oct.7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement Wednesday, Haaretz.com reported. That followed Hamas attacks on Israeli communities and military bases in southern Israel on Oct. 6 and 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking what initially were about 240 hostages. About 130 people remain missing, with authorities saying that some of them are likely dead.
Kimura said earlier that the protesters’ demands have been clear to the university, and they’re ready to meet and negotiate in good faith if the university discloses its investments.
“We’re waiting for Yale to come to the table to disclose their investments,” she said.
“We as community members of Yale New Haven have a right to know exactly what Yale is invested in,” Kimura said. “We put a lot of money into this institution, and so I think its pretty common sense to say we want to know what Yale’s invested in.”
She also responded to reports that Jewish students at the university felt unsafe saying that if the reports are true, they need to be addressed. Kimura also stated that the protesters were a diverse, welcoming group that included Jewish students.
“At the end of the day, what we’re here to do is bring attention to what’s really happening in Gaza,” Kimura said.
The Yale protest came as a coalition of pro-Palestinian activists from throughout Connecticut get ready to hold a statewide “March for a Free Palestine” at noon on Sunday on the New Haven Green.
Organizers and/or endorsers include Yalies for Palestine and groups from Hartford, New Britain, Bristol, University of Connecticut, Wesleyan, Central Connecticut State University, Islamic Association of Central Connecticut and the CT Democratic Socialists of America.
The Yale protests also came as police cracked down on protests at Columbia University and New York University in New York City, where protesters also erected tents. Those protests attracted anger and frustration from officials over reports of anti-Semitism from protesters.
The unrest at universities also coincided with the start of Passover, which began at sundown Monday.
Students at Brown, Princeton and Northwestern universities held protests Friday and over the weekend. Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson College, both in the Boston area, started their own protest encampments, according to news accounts.
Other institutions that saw protest actions included Boston University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Nine people were arrested Tuesday morning at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus after forming an encampment that went against school policy, according to CNN.