Reflections on the 2024 Student “Sit-Ins” for Palestine
Last year saw the involvement of thousands of student protesters who flocked to the common outdoor areas of their universities with tents, signs, and slogans. Their goal was a free Palestine, and they engaged in political demonstrations of “solidarity” with the oppressed Palestinian people by camping on their university campuses. The primary demands they issued were loose calls for the federal government to stop supporting the settler-colonial entity of Israel, and for their specific university endowment to “disinvest” from Israel, as in, to sell their shares of Israeli companies or companies that support Israeli militarism.[1]
Unsurprisingly, the social activism industrial complex did not sit idly by. The students were helped along by prominent non-profit organizations; Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – who claimed to have established 127 encampments, calling them “Popular Universities”[2],[8],[10],[11],[12],[13],[15],[21],[26],[27] – Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), [3], [4], [5], [12], [21], [26], [27] and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) [6], [7], [8], [26], [27] all helped market and organize the encampments. Additionally, purportedly “socialist” political organizations jumped on the bandwagon as well, showcasing their opportunism and complete lack of socialist understanding as they bowed to liberal spontaneity. Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA),[9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [26], [27] Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), [8], [14], [15], [16], [26], [27] Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),[13], [17], [18], [19], [20], [22], [23], [24], [26], [27] Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),[20], [21], [26], [27] and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) [20], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27] all played a role in organizing encampments, arm-in-arm with the bourgeois non-profits.
Despite their lack of organizational or theoretical understanding, the student “sit-ins” that took place in the spring and summer of 2024 were a global event, with university students from within over forty countries holding demonstrations for Palestine and expressing their support for other protesting students around the world.
That was a year ago, and since then nearly 3,200 of those protesters have been arrested within the United States alone, with countless others arrested globally.[28] Worse, Israel was not dissuaded by these students and their sitting, and is continuing with its settler-occupations and violent displacement of the oppressed Palestinian people. The movement that these students participated in, a movement that, for at least some of them, resulted in dire consequences regarding the capitalist authorities, has fizzled out, bringing no real results. The longest period of encampment was Stanford University at 120 days,[29] while the vast majority of the U.S. “liberated zones” did not make it 3 weeks before they were cleared out by either university administration or the police.29 The encampment at Columbia University, which headlined the entire movement in April 2024,16, [30], [31] only lasted 14 days,[32] while UCLA barely made it a week[33] and University of Alberta’s impromptu people’s campground was closed in only 48 hours.[34], [35]
While social activism and protests within college campuses continue, the encampments have ended. For the most part, students are back to their studies, and new tuition-payers have replaced those incarcerated or expelled. Now, however, the university administrators have developed in their tactics of dealing with revolting students. UCLA did not even wait for their encampment to end before implementing “the creation of a new position: a chief safety officer who would oversee campus security operations, including the campus Police Department.” [33] Despite what liberal liquidationists may believe, the addition of increased security personnel is not in the interest of a revolting student body. In addition to increasing security and police presence, the universities are doubtlessly making use of their teams of lawyers to construct new anti-protest student policy. They will be quicker to expel and prosecute next time.
Why did the university sit-ins of last year begin? They began as part of the spontaneous movement; as an honest reaction to the renewed oppression towards the lower-classes; namely, the renewed vigorous deployment of open-warfare, genocidal displacement, and elimination-tactics towards the Palestinian people at the hands of the illegitimate settler-colonial entity of Israel in early October of 2023. By that winter, this situation had took hold of the entire world’s media and news, culminating in many protests and demonstrations and leading to the pro-Palestine student sit-ins of 2024, with one of the first and most prominent taking place at Columbia University in New York City, beginning in April of that year.
What does it mean to say that the student sit-ins were part of the spontaneous movement? We will quote Lenin’s work, What is to Be Done?, here:
...the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle.[36]
Many university students are learning about the social, economic, and political world in a context that is much broader than the petty family or town consciousness for the first time. In engaging with this broader worldview, they align themselves with oppressed groups, especially during moments of intense social antagonism, like that which occurred as a result of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine which escalated after the actions of October 7th. Though they become “political,” these students’ alliance with the oppressed is not one that is thought out, planned, or even anticipated. For many, their involvement comes from an honest reaction to alleviate oppression, but, because they lack consciousness, their praxis takes the form of whatever is most readily available. Not knowing how to end oppression, or even really what it is in a class and economic sense, these students lack a dialectical materialist worldview and have been sucked up, instead, into the realm of idealism, uncritically accepting the incorrect, non-material ideas that saturate class society, and are incapable of actually opposing it. Erroneous ideas like “raising awareness” and “pressuring the government” are all basic idealist tenets of bourgeois liberal society, and were the deplorable ideological foundations that led to what would be laughable if it weren’t so shameful: the attempt to liberate the Palestinians via loitering on university common grounds.
The social root that makes possible the development of idealist philosophy lies principally in the fact that this kind of philosophical consciousness is the manifestation of the interests of the exploiting class.
— Comrade Mao Tse-tung, “Dialectical Materialism,” June 1938
Spontaneous revolt is not limited to students. All strata react to social contradictions, especially in times of intense antagonism. The unconscious reaction towards liberation — or, at the very least and more commonly, to the alleviation of immediate oppression — runs through every section of society, though, when it occurs within abjectly oppressed strata, it opposes the ruling class structure to a greater degree than when it occurs within the higher classes. Lenin calls strikes and the destruction of productive machinery by striking workers as spontaneity in What is to be Done?, and Mao’s analysis of the reasons behind the “peasant terror” taking place in Hunan during the peasant revolts in the 1920’s also shows an understanding of revolt as spontaneous; a more or less unconscious reaction to oppression.
...the local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords have themselves driven the peasants to this. For ages they have used their power to tyrannize over the peasants and trample them underfoot; that is why the peasants have reacted so strongly.[37]
— Comrade Mao Tse-tung, “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan.”
The participants in these revolts were materially oppressed by the ruling class, and, when the situation became intolerable, they chose to take their vengeance out on the nearest thing that represented their oppressors: the expensive capitalist machinery in the example of Lenin, and the landlords and oppressive “kulaks” in the example of Mao. These spontaneous acts of “terror” targeted actual facets of the ruling class because the targets of the people’s vengeance constituted immediate oppressive and alienating forces in their lives, tied to bourgeois ruling-class profit. In both cases, for all their lack of social consciousness, they understood their slavery to the capitalist machinery and to the rural landlords in a visceral, material, though incomplete, way.
The riots of 2020 that occurred as a response to the state-sanctioned street murder of the proletarian, George Floyd, are a recent example of a spontaneous revolt that shows greater material capability than our sitting students. Although the George Floyd riots, too, were clouded by the idealism of the ruling class and were spontaneous in nature, due to their greater proletarian character, they did occasionally target real material sources of oppression, despite their theoretical and organizational failures, like in the case of arson towards the Minneapolis Police station that occurred on May 28. The spontaneity of the oppressed is energetic and geared towards revolt, while those of the parasitical classes will show a more passive character.
As a class, university students cannot be considered proletarian or lower-class, which explains why they, riddled with bourgeois idealism due to their adjacency to the ruling class, find it appropriate to sit when they are drawn into the struggle, playing up the role of a revolutionary while doing so. Widely, students come from the higher classes, with many, especially those who go to the more “prestigious” universities, possessing parents who are thoroughly bourgeois, owning companies or large portions of the ownership of companies, which is stock. Those who do not possess capitalist property usually come from higher-paid families of wage-workers, or the labor aristocracy. This high-paid stratum of wage workers typically work in finance, management, or office jobs performing intellectual, “white-collar” work, managing the laboring strata for corporate business owners. Their greater access to money allows them to send their children to college or university, where their greater educational access allows them a “leg-up” on the diploma-less workers. It is true that, in nations with free university like in Europe, the high-class character of college is not as strong as it is in the United States because of free tuition, but this does not change the fact that there is an amount of time and labor that must be performed without any direct compensation in order to graduate, and time and labor is in short supply for proletarian people who must often work from a very young age in support of themselves and their family, meaning that proletarians are a minority in places of higher-learning, which has always been the case.
Because of students’ high-class character, and so long as they remain more or less unconscious within the spontaneous movement, there are few appropriate outlets for their “revolutionary” activity, leaving space for liquidationist tactics like, sit-ins, the proselytizing of “raising awareness,” and the putting forward of asinine demands. Acting within this trend, this was as far as the 2024 encampments could go without adopting something they will never spontaneously come to find in the halls of bourgeois higher education, a materialist class-conscious analysis. Lacking this, they expended pointless energy performing shouts and demonstrations that were never going to gain anyone freedom, and ultimately fell to police forces. In their idealism, the students believed, erroneously, that a mass movement of believers in Palestinian liberation would necessarily inspire a practical end to exploitation. In this idealist absurdity, they abandoned everything practical in order to fully devote themselves to growing believers, becoming opportunists who are more concerned with the growth of their influence than the successful alleviation of oppression.
If they had not been so isolated in their class privilege, they could have educated themselves, based their ideas on the material conditions of class oppression and the real-world situation of the Palestinian people. Doing so, they could have recognized that the Palestinians, like so many, are a people alienated from their land in the most direct way due to foreign capitalist development. There can never be actual liberation for them, targeted as they are for labor value extraction and genocide by the imperial-bourgeoisie, without a class analysis, particularly one held by a successful organization of revolutionaries for the proletarian class that centers the global class war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – the true conflict that the Palestinians are, due to a lack of proletarian revolutionary organization, on the losing side of.
To anyone who looks back fondly at the sittings, thinking they were a valid and effective form of resistance that simply failed to garner enough traction, we ask you to stop your love affair with failure. This is too common a trait among the so-called “left,” and is nothing more than a sign of their actual divorce from the oppressed and their cozying up to bourgeois status-quo. Anyone who wants liberation for Palestine, or any oppressed people, must want actual, material tactics in service to that liberation. This is to be oriented towards the organization of the oppressed and their gaining of power. The “disinvestment” of individual university endowments from stock in Israeli companies, and impromptu college campgrounds do nothing to alleviate Palestinian oppression in any meaningful way; rather, they represent the actions of the social activism industrial complex, and the naivete of high-class society, despite any good intentions of the campers. The actual oppressed classes are already fully “aware” of their own lives. They know that oppression exists; it happens to them and, though they may explain it away using the ideological tools of the capitalist enemies, they are not empowered by any further “rise” of awareness, by the moving around of stock portfolios, or by student sitters, but by actual organizational power over their exploiters.
What the students of last year and the students of today can do that can be of actual help to oppressed people is to seriously devote themselves to Marxist study, and to divest themselves of the university system and the supposed “higher-paying” jobs that come out of it. In previous periods the fees and objective bourgeois character of the university was tolerated by socialists due to it being the only place where one could access intellectual material. Now, with the internet, universities no longer have a monopoly on learning. While diplomas are still required to access the highest-paying jobs, an actual education can and should be attained outside of the university. This is easier now than ever before in history due to the vast information that is, at least currently, available to many through on-line resources.
All that awaits traditional students after graduation is debt and an over-saturated job market where, perhaps if they expend their bodies and minds in service to capitalists, they will be able to attain a position in the labor aristocracy where they manage the oppression of working people in the offices of large corporations. Even this petty goal is unrealizable for most enrolled today.
Students of specific disciplines should upgrade their academics into a holistic Marxist understanding, ceasing altogether the seeking of individual career goals and disavowing themselves from all respect for the university structure. They should find solidarity in the struggle of the oppressed classes and for the victory of the global proletariat, leaving the careerism of “higher education” to perform Marxist work towards the construction of an empowered Communist Party.
This should be their primary intellectual and career pursuit. In this way, they will prepare themselves for the task of the revolution, becoming capable of adequately performing the real material work that can only be performed under an organized and disciplined Party. This is the only effort that is capable of bringing about real victory; for the Palestinians and all who are oppressed by the capitalist-imperialists.
Endnotes
[1] Duffy, Claire, and Ramishah Maruf. “Columbia student protesters are demanding divestment: Here’s what the university has divested from in the past.” CNN. April 29, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/27/business/columbia-history-divestment-student-protests/index.html.
[2] National SJP (@nationalsjp). “2024 National SJP Year in Review. 1 United Student Movement. 407 Active Chapters. 127 Popular Universities established…” December 31, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/DEQaj_5SSnO/?img_index=4.
[3] Columbia University Apartheid Divest. “Columbia University Apartheid Divest: Who we are.” Columbia Daily Spectator. November 14, 2023. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2023/11/14/columbia-university-apartheid-divest-who-we-are/.
[4] Roy, Yash. “Protesters Leave Street; No Further Arrests.” 2024. New Haven Independent. April 22, 2024. https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/yale_encampment.
[5] Sneha Dhandapani, and Matthew Shanbom. 2024. “‘We Will Not Stop until We Get Full Divestment’: UMich Student Protesters Camp out on Diag for Divestment.” The Michigan Daily. April 22, 2024. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/administration/we-will-not-stop-until-we-get-full-divestment-umich-student-protesters-camp-out-on-diag-for-divestment/.
[6] Robbins, Gary. 2024. “UCSD Students Set up Gaza Encampment as Protests Spread across U.S. Campuses.” San Diego Union-Tribune. May 2024. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/05/01/ucsd-students-set-up-gaza-encampment-as-protests-spread-across-us-campuses/.
[7] Wong, Aloysius, et al. 2024. “Some Blame Outsiders for Spread of Pro-Palestinian Encampments. The Idea Isn’t New, Say Students and Experts.” CBC. May 16, 2024. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/campus-protests-outside-influence-theories-1.7200820.
[8] The GW Hatchet Staff. 2024. “Live Coverage: Encampment Commences Second Week after Congress Visit, Late Night Rally.” The GW Hatchet. May 2, 2024. https://gwhatchet.com/2024/05/02/live-coverage-encampment-commences-second-week-after-congress-visit-late-night-rally/.
[9] Hageman, Allison. 2024. “12 Arrested at University of Mary Washington during Pro-Palestinian Protest.” NBC4 Washington. April 28, 2024. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/12-arrested-at-university-of-mary-washington-during-pro-palestinian-protest/3603324/.
[10] Reynolds, Evan. 2024. “UO Students Begin Pro-Palestine Encampment on Campus.” Daily Emerald. April 29, 2024. https://dailyemerald.com/46127/news/uo-students-begin-pro-palestine-encampment-on-campus/.
[11] The Badger Herald. 2024. “Day One: Encampment Demonstration Passes 12-Hour Mark as UW Administration Urges Protesters to Remove Tents.” The Badger Herald. 2024. https://badgerherald.com/news/campus/2024/04/29/live-updates-students-community-members-call-for-uw-divestment-from-israel-at-demonstration/.
[12] “CML.” 2024. Cmlithaca.org. 2024. https://cmlithaca.org/about-us.
[13] Fight Back News. 2024. “UW-Milwaukee Popular University for Palestine Comes to an End after Negotiations with Administration.” Fight Back! News. May 17, 2024. https://fightbacknews.org/articles/uw-milwaukee-popular-university-for-palestine-comes-to-an-end-after.
[14] KTAR.com. 2024. “ASU to Review Removal of Encampment after Pro-Palestine Protest.” KTAR.com. April 27, 2024. https://ktar.com/arizona-news/pro-palestine-protestors-set-up-tents-clash-with-police-at-asu-rally-in-tempe/5571600/.
[15] Worthington, Aliza. 2024. “JHU Administration Set to Meet with Students Protesting over Israel and Gaza.” Baltimore Fishbowl. May 7, 2024. https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/jhu-meet-students-protesting-israel-gaza/.
[16] San Francisco Foghorn. 2024. “USF Student Activists Establish a ‘People’s University’.” San Francisco Foghorn. May 9, 2024. https://sffoghorn.com/usf-student-activists-establish-a-peoples-university/.
[17] Camargo, Alberto. 2024. “Pro-Palestine Demonstration on Florida State Campus Demands University Divestment from Israel.” WTXL ABC 27 Tallahassee News. April 25, 2024. https://www.wtxl.com/college-town/pro-palestine-demonstration-on-florida-state-campus-demands-university-divestment-from-israel.
[18] Witt, Kloe. 2024. “30 Hours of Encampment - the Maroon.” The Maroon. May 3, 2024. https://loyolamaroon.com/10042929/multimedia/photography/30-hours-of-encampment/.
[19] Richardson, Kasey and Alan Gionet. 2024. “Colorado Students Reject Offer from Denver’s Auraria Campus in Pro-Palestinian Demonstration - CBS Colorado.” Www.cbsnews.com. May 3, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-students-reject-offer-denvers-auraria-campus-pro-palestinian-demonstration/.
[20] National SDS (@NewSDS). “TACOMA: University of Puget Sound SDS establishes a Gaza solidarity encampment! ATTENTION!!! UPS Students for a Democratic Society has now set up a solidarity encampment…” Post includes logos for Students for a Democratic Society, Democratic Socialists of America Tacoma, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. April 29, 2024. https://x.com/NewSDS/status/1785048557755482327.
[21] Koh, Michael. 2024. “UNC Students for Justice in Palestine Organize Protest in Support of Columbia Students - Chapelboro.com.” Chapelboro.com. April 19, 2024. https://chapelboro.com/news/unc/unc-students-for-justice-in-palestine-organize-protest-in-support-of-columbia-students.
[22] Fight Back News. 2024. “Tallahassee Students Establish Palestine Solidarity Encampment.” Fight Back! News. April 26, 2024. https://fightbacknews.org/articles/tallahassee-students-establish-palestine-solidarity-encampment.
[23] Poche, Kaylee. 2024. “Police and Protesters Clash.” NOLA.com. April 30, 2024. https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/pro-palestinian-students-establish-protest-encampment-on-tulanes-campus/article_168af8d2-0688-11ef-87fb-8b088ce0542c.html.
[24] FRSO Wisconsin (@frso_wi, @sds_uwm, @wiscoforpali, @freedomroadorg). “UWM POPULAR UNIVERSITY FOR PALESTINE! Our comrades are out with @uwm4pali as the brave students at UWM are speaking out for UWM to cut all ties with Israel…” Image depicts people with FRSO and SDS shirts with fists up in front of many tents. April 29, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/C6XA9oruPlv/.
[25] De Luna, Ruby. 2024. “University of Washington Students Join Pro-Palestinian Campus Protest Movement.” Kuow.org. KUOW Public Radio. April 29, 2024. https://www.kuow.org/stories/university-of-washington-students-join-pro-palestinian-campus-protest-movement.
[26] 2024. “Pro-Palestine Protests in the U.S. Since Oct. 7, 2023.” Shinyapps.io. 2024. https://nonviolentactionlab.shinyapps.io/palestine-protest-dashboard/.
[27] “Crowd Counting Consortium – Ash Center.” 2025. Ash Center. January 8, 2025. https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium.
[28] The Associated Press. 2024. “Thousands Were Arrested at College Protests. For Students, the Fallout Was Only Beginning.” NBC News. NBC News. August 2, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/thousands-arrested-college-protests-students-fallout-was-only-beginnin-rcna164807.
[29] Ulfelder, Jay. 2024. “Crowd Counting Consortium: An Empirical Overview of Recent Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Schools.” Ash Center. May 30, 2024. https://ash.harvard.edu/articles/crowd-counting-blog-an-empirical-overview-of-recent-pro-palestine-protests-at-u-s-schools/.
[30] Freedom Road Socialist Organization. 2024. “Columbia Lit a Fire! Spread the Palestine Solidarity Encampments! - Freedom Road Socialist Organization | FRSO.” April 27, 2024. https://frso.org/statements/columbia-lit-a-fire-spread-the-palestine-solidarity-encampments/.
[31] Rahman, Zahid. “Silencing Solidarity: How Universities Repress Activism for Palestine.” 2024. Counterfire. November 26, 2024. https://www.counterfire.org/article/silencing-solidarity-how-universities-repress-activism-for-palestine/.
[32] Banerjee, Isha. 2024. “Timeline: The ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment.’” Columbia Daily Spectator. May 2, 2024. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/05/02/timeline-the-gaza-solidarity-encampment/.
[33] Winton, Richard, et al. “A Staggering Two Weeks at UCLA: Protest, Violence, Division Marks ‘Dark Chapter.’” 2024. Los Angeles Times. May 7, 2024. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-07/a-ucla-timeline-from-peaceful-encampment-to-violent-attacks-aftermath.
[34] Liddle, Hannah. 2024. “Timeline: Protest Encampments.” University Affairs. May 31, 2024. https://universityaffairs.ca/features/timeline-encampments/.
[35] Kent, Adèle. 2024. “The Encampment Report: Prepared for the Board of Governors, University of Alberta.” October 30, 2024. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/governance/media-library/documents/final-encampment-report.pdf
[36] Lenin, V. I.. 1902. “What is to Be Done?”. Lenin’s Selected Works. Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1961. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/
[37] Tse-Tung, Mao. 1927. “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Volume 1. Foreign Languages Press. 1965. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm.