The People’s University for Palestine at Case Western Reserve University
Reflections from a parent of one student participant in the Palestine solidarity encampment at CWRU
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are trapped in […] “a zone of non-existence.” In this zone, […] one finds “new spaces of obscenity in the politics of day-to-day lives,” spaces where engaging in normal, everyday acts of living and working—going to school, visiting neighbors, traveling abroad, planting a tree, growing vegetables and selling them in a nearby market—are treated as criminal activities, resulting in some instances in death. In these “obscene spaces,” innocent human beings, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink and likely by the soil in which they plant, all with the knowledge and acquiescence of the world community.1
It was a little bit surreal to be sitting in the audience for the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences diploma ceremony, watching Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) officials clad in ceremonial regalia, led by a marshal wielding a hand-wrought mace with a walnut shaft and sterling silver crown embossed with the university’s seal (“a symbol of authority originating in the military tradition” we were told on a PowerPoint slide), having just received a group text with a photo of the piece of paper inside the envelope handed to my child on stage, informing us of what we already knew from days earlier: “conferral of your degree will continue to be on hold pending completion of the student conduct process.” The letter was even neatly mounted to the otherwise empty diploma display with clear polypropylene mounting corners. Some students did not even receive this insulting display because they were banned from participating in graduation activities on campus altogether. All of this stemming from their involvement in the first Palestine solidarity encampment in Cleveland, led by students at CWRU.2
CWRU Students Launch a Palestine Solidarity Encampment Alongside Students Around the World
CWRU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced on April 29, 2024 via Instagram that they had set up a solidarity encampment at the university in Kelvin Smith Library (KSL) Oval. As Columbia students had done when they occupied “Hind’s Hall,” KSL Oval was renamed Hind’s Oval in remembrance of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces after initially being the only survivor from Israeli tank fire on the vehicle in which she had fled with relatives. By then, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza had continued for more than 200 days. This movement was occurring at dozens of universities across the U.S. and more across the world, particularly after the violent April 18 crackdown on the encampment at Columbia when over 100 students were arrested by police in riot gear and suspended from the university.3
When I received a late night text from my child (who I will refer to as “S” to protect them from further harassment), informing me of the the first night of the encampment at Case, I was thrilled. I am so proud of them. But it is because of the university’s response to the students’ demands that I have so much contempt for the CWRU administration right now.
Echoing calls from the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law, CWRU students at the encampment made six concrete demands to the university: (1) Amnesty for all students and faculty disciplined for advocating for Palestinian liberation; (2) Divest all of CWRU’s finances from the companies that profit from Israel, including implementing Resolution 31-15 passed by CWRU student government; (3) Disclose CWRU’s investments; (4) Retract remarks made against Resolution 31-15, and accusations of antisemitism towards the student body; (5) Call for a permanent ceasefire and an end of the occupation of Palestine; and (6) Cut ties with all Israeli academic institutions which includes the cancelation of all contractual agreements and projects involving Israeli academic institutions, including but not limited to study-abroad partnerships with Israeli universities.
Demand #1: Amnesty
In March 2024, CWRU’s Office of Student Conduct (OSC) imposed an “interim loss of recognition” on SJP as a student organization. Ostensibly based on allegations that “four students believed to be associated with SJP” glued flyers around campus. The flyers contained the names of Palestinian university professors and administrators killed by Israeli airstrikes, though the postings were not organized by SJP. The timing of the suspension came after months of stalled talks between SJP and President Eric Kaler and his administration, and “seemed to come out of nowhere.” The OSC suspension letter conditioned reinstatement of SJP recognition on snitching on the students that OSC accused of glueing the fliers and on providing the names of anyone involved with the student group. The administration also levied over $2,600 in fines on SJP for alleged vandalism and threatened individuals with year-long disciplinary probation from the university.4
Eight members of the CWRU Law School faculty wrote an open letter to the president and provost stating the suspension “lacks the requisite due process and reasonable proportionality essential to the fair administration of student misconduct adjudications.” The CWRU student newspaper the Observer’s investigation concluded: “it is clear that SJP is being held to a higher standard than any other student organization.” CWRU philosophy professor Jeremy Bendik-Keymer later wrote that the administration had “not been adequately transparent and responsive in their discussions and announcements about the suspension” and argued for a “level of accountability: to publicly, in print, clarify the competing narratives and to rectify any inaccuracies.”5
When S and I were discussing this in March, we noted the similarity to another university administration’s antagonism to SJP, in my home city of Nashville, where Vanderbilt’s SJP chapter also received a student accountability office citation for posting flyers on campus:6
“Your postings failed to include the name(s) of the individual(s) posting, date posted, and were not posted in designated spaces in accordance with the ‘Notices, Posters, Banners, and Printed Announcements’ policy,” [Dean Neil Jamerson] wrote to five student leaders heading the coalition. “Note that future policy violations can be referred to Student Accountability to address on an individual basis, which may include the identified leaders of an unrecognized organization in accordance with the ‘Suspended, Expelled, or Otherwise Unrecognized Organizations’ policy.”
The Vanderbilt flyer encouraged students to sign a petition supporting the student government’s BDS resolution. After receiving enough signatures to make the resolution part of the Vanderbilt student government constitution, the citation issued the following day.
Just as the CWRU solidarity encampment at KSL Oval was being setup the morning of April 29, President Kaler had 20 students arrested. CWRU politics professor Pete Moore said “the university’s response wasn’t surprising” given the President’s condemnation of the Resolution 31-15 (discussed below) but went on to say it was still “horrible”:7
“I’ve been here 19 years, and I have never seen Case Western Reserve officers attack our students, and they feel horrible about it, too. These are professionals that are supposed to protect the campus,” Moore said. “And yet this president tells them (students) that they have to be arrested for merely putting up tents.”
Kaler’s inconsistent approach to free speech on campus (or, perhaps consistent approach: free speech for some and not for others) has been criticized in the past, too. For example, at the University of Minnesota, each year student groups promote their agenda with panel paintings on a busy bridge connecting the east and west banks of the campus. When the university’s Republican student group included a panel that read in part “Build the Wall,” many students criticized it as dehumanizing and noted: “Your free speech hurts and marginalizes people. There should be a line.” When the panel was vandalized with the words “Stop White Supremacy,” then-President Kaler issued a statement defending the sign: “The University of Minnesota supports a campus climate that welcomes all members of our community and our values of equity and diversity but that also ensures the free flow of ideas, even those that are offensive to some.” But when 30 students protested a Board of Regents meeting over proposed tuition hikes, six students were arrested and Kaler said he “was disappointed with the protests.”8
On Day 9 of the encampment at CWRU, May 7, Kaler issued a statement condemning students for messages on the student spirit and advocacy walls containing “language the university administration and many members of our community view as threatening, intimidating and antisemitic.” The messages read: on one wall, “I dream of breaking the siege,” “Come together in peace,” and the number of Palestinian children killed in Gaza, and on the other wall, “DISCLOSE. DIVEST. STUDENT LED INTIFADA” with a Palestinian flag and “YOU CAN’T HIDE” on the other wall. Unlike with the build-the-wall sign at Minnesota, Kayler was unwilling to defend this political speech.9
Moreover, that he somehow construed the messages as antisemitic demonstrates he missed the point entirely, particularly “you can’t hide,” which was not a threat; rather, it based on a specific refrain chanted by SJP members and students protesting the fact that he refused to meet with them: “Kaler, Kaler, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide!” The same chant was also directed at Vice President of Student Affairs, Peter Whiting, who received the students’ demand letter outside the locked Adelbert Hall administrative building. Earlier in March, Whiting spoke on behalf of the administration at a student government meeting regarding SJP’s loss of recognition as a student group.10
The administration then hired contractors to paint over the walls. As several students stood in front of the spirit wall to stop it from happening, the workers directly sprayed white paint over them, as shown in a widely circulated video:11
Ameer Alkayali, 18, is seen in the video being spray-painted on early Tuesday morning. Alkayali, a Palestinian-American, just finished his freshman year at the University of Cincinnati. He has been protesting with Case students since the first day of their encampment last week when he was also detained and released.
“I stood against the wall, and the painters asked ‘Should we continue?’ The cops showed general confusion and didn’t tell them to stop,” he said. “So, as seen in the video, they continue to just paint right over us.
“They told us to not put our hands in front of the machine because it’s dangerous. And we put our hands up, and they still continued to paint on our hands and sprayed us with it?” […]
“We were coughing, and it didn’t come out of my skin for hours,” he said. “Like it’s still in my hair. I can see it under my nails, and there was no sort of medical or any assistance with the situation after from Case or local police.”
Later that same night, the now all-white spirit wall was spray-painted with: “THEY CALL FOR INTIFADA—SO WE CALL THEM TERRORISTS.” No statement addressing this was issued by the administration. Nor did the administration issue a statement when a leaked chat log of students affiliated with Chabad at CWRU—whom Kaler was in regular contact with—said they should “BBQ Gaza” and that it was a “good opportunity to empty [the] houses” of the students at the encampment: “the wood furniture can be used to start the BBQ.”12
Demands #2 & 3: Divest and Disclose
The CWRU student government passed Resolution 31-15 in early November 2022, calling on CWRU to investigate whether any part of its $2 billion endowment is invested in a narrow set of companies, specifically identified in the resolution, that have been documented to support violence against Palestinians and to divest from them if they are found to do so. It passed by an overwhelming majority (35 votes in support, 17 votes against, and 7 abstentions). The bill cited CWRU’s boycott of Sudan in 2007 on humanitarian grounds and the university’s commitment to divesting from fossil fuel companies as precedents. The targeted companies were divided into three categories in the resolution:13
Companies that directly provide weaponry, security systems, prisons, or military support (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Blackrock, Elbit);
Companies that facilitate the building, maintenance, or economic development of illegal Israeli settlements, outposts, and settler-only roads and transportation systems (CAT, Sodastream, HP, Puma, Ahava, Sabra Hummus, Israeli Fruit and Vegetables, AXA Insurance, Combined systems inc.); and,
Companies that operate private prisons within the United States and, within Occupied Palestine, and internationally, profiting from exploitative prison labor (GEO, CXW, Corrections Corporation of America, G4S).
The origin of the BDS movement for Palestine comes from an overwhelming call in 2005 by Palestinian civil society, after the failure of diplomacy and legal mechanisms, “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” The call included 173 entities such as unions, professional associations, refugee and human rights organizations, charities and religious, cultural and community groups.14
Demand #4: Retract
The intimidation experienced by supporters of justice for Palestinians results in part from the way the political issue has been deeply misunderstood by a significant portion of the US and international public. Popular misconceptions over the nature of this conflict are, in large part, a deliberate outcome of the narrative that has been propagated for seven decades by the Zionist movement—a narrative that has enjoyed the explicit approval of and recitation by the US government alongside its steadfast political, military, and economic support for Israel.15
Following the resolution’s passage on November 8, 2022, President Kaler immediately issued a statement condemning it as “profoundly anti-Israel and profoundly anti-Semitic,” “naïve,” and “clearly a vote against Israel and an aggression towards the Jewish members of our community.” This type of denunciation is a frequently employed tactic to chill and censor Palestine advocacy in the U.S., as documented in the joint report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal: The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.16
A Jewish CWRU graduate student, Sam Seidman, called the statement “erroneous and slanderous” in a scathing letter to the editor of the student newspaper, and noted that it even inadvertently echoed the historic antisemitic trope that Jews have “dual loyalties,” by intentionally conflating American Jews and the State of Israel. The Middle Eastern Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom responded that Kaler’s allegations “are clearly based on an egregious and unacceptable conflation of criticism of the State of Israel with anti-Semitism.” Similarly, the Cleveland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations publicly exhorted:17
Students at Case Western Reserve University have every right to state widely-known facts that have been attested to by numerous human rights organizations and the United Nations. President Kaler must immediately apologize, retract his false statement, and meet with students he targeted to begin repairing the damage he caused.
The editorial board of the Observer, also slammed Kaler’s statement in a lengthy op-ed, writing in part:18
President Kaler did not diffuse the situation with his statement. If anything, he has further fueled division on this campus.[…] [He] did not even pretend to acknowledge both sides of what, in the end, is a very nuanced situation. He has a clear political and financial agenda, and impressing that onto the student body while labeling many students, including our student leaders, as hateful and antisemitic is reckless and ill-considered.[…] Continuously suggesting that students must live with the consequences of being labeled as antisemitic due to their stance on Israel illustrates his close-mindedness on the subject. Additionally, the fact that President Kaler felt it necessary to meet with members of Cleveland Hillel and heed the concerns of our Jewish students, while not deeming it necessary to meet with and hear the concerns of our Middle Eastern Cultural Association nor our Muslim Student Association about their very real fears of discrimination on CWRU campus, shows where his priorities are.
Demand #5: Permanent Ceasefire and End to the Occupation
“Approximately 250,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes during the 1948 war fled to Gaza and overwhelmed the indigenous population of some 80,000. Today, more than 70 percent of Gaza’s inhabitants consist of expellees from the 1948 war and their descendants, and more than half of this overwhelmingly refugee population is under 18 years of age; Gaza has the ‘second-highest share of people aged 0 to 14 worldwide.’ Its current 1.8 million inhabitants are squeezed into a sliver of land 25 miles long and 5 miles wide; it is among the most densely populated areas in the world, more crowded than even Tokyo.”19
Even prior to the current assault on Gaza, Israel’s occupation rendered it unlivable. Since 2007, Israel has imposed a total blockade, controlling Gaza’s borders and air space, prohibiting entry by air or sea, and limiting it to three border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt. When the blockade began, of the 120 trucks on average that Israel permitted to enter—out of a minimum of 500 the U.N. estimated would be necessary on a daily basis to meet humanitarian and commercial needs—were required to be “unloaded, inspected, repackaged and reloaded, with a ‘handling fee’ of US$1,000 per truck.” Chickpeas, macaroni, wheat flour, notebooks for students, freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, and cooking gas are all examples of items that have all been arbitrarily prohibited at different times. This siege constitutes collective punishment, in “flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law.” Outside the U.S., Gaza has been described even in the mainstream as both “a prison camp” and an “open-air prison,” including by former conservative British PM David Cameron. In 2003, the late Baruch Kimmerling (an Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) went further, concluding that the Gaza Strip “has become the largest concentration camp ever to exist.”20
As a result of the blockade, Gaza has had 45 percent unemployment, the highest in the world. Two thirds of its population were already experiencing food insecurity before the current crisis, often having to choose between food, medicine, or water. Half of pregnant women and half of children ages 6–23 months were anemic. “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” an advisor to then-Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said in 2006. Gaza constantly suffers water shortages and 96 percent of household water is not safe to drink. A major U.N. study in 2012 asked whether, under then-current conditions, Gaza would even be livable by 2020. Four years later, the Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, observed:21
When a place becomes unlivable, people move. This is the case for environmental disasters such as droughts, or for conflicts, such as in Syria.
Yet this last resort is denied to the people in Gaza. They cannot move beyond their 365 square kilometres territory. They cannot escape, not the devastating poverty or the fear of another conflict. Its highly educated youth—almost 50 per cent of the population are below 17 years of age—do not have the option to travel, to seek education outside Gaza, or to find work, anywhere else beyond the perimeter fence and the two tightly-controlled border-checkpoints in the north and south of the Gaza Strip. With the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza almost entirely closed except for a few days per year, and with Israel often denying exit even for severe humanitarian cases or staff of international organizations, the vast majority of the people have no chance of getting one of the highly sought-after “permits”. They can also not leave across the sea without the risk of being arrested or shot at by the Israeli or Egyptian navies, and they cannot climb over the heavily guarded perimeter fence between Israel and Gaza without the same risks.
All of this was known to the students involved in passing Resolution 31-15 in November 2022, which contained similar findings documented in its footnotes. According to one CWRU student, the resolution painted “a compelling, factual picture” of “the crimes of occupation and apartheid: forced migration, re-settling its population in occupied lands, political disenfranchisement and so on.”
The following year, with Israel’s invasion fully underway, several CWRU student groups organized a walk-out on November 6, 2023 in protest of President Kaler, “arguing he has divided the campus by failing to acknowledge Palestinian lives lost and Israeli war crimes during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.” Prior to this, CWRU SJP wrote a letter criticizing the president’s statements on the war (which failed to even mention the Palestinians by name) as “insensitive, complicit and regressive.” The letter was co-signed by 98 supporters including other CWRU clubs, faculty, other SJP university chapters, and local businesses and organizations. CWRU history professor Ted Steinberg publicly rebuked Kaler for pledging public support for the Israeli government on behalf of the entire university. “By signing the university’s name to a letter, written by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, which appeared in the Plain Dealer, Kaler effectively committed everyone at CWRU, as the title to the letter puts it, to ‘stand with Israel.’” By that point, more than 3,700 Palestinian children had already been killed in just 25 days—more than six times the 560 children that the U.N. reported were killed in 19 months of war in Ukraine.22
At the time Kaler was pledging CWRU’s support, the U.S. had enabled an immediate “surge” in weapons shipments to Israel including roughly 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. Since then, the Biden administration has sent tens of thousands more bombs, tank and artillery ammunition, precision weapons and air-defense equipment, “using procedures that have largely masked the scale” to avoid congressional review. The Wall Street Journal later reported that these munitions included 100 previously undisclosed BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs, even though the Geneva Conventions prohibit their use in areas of high civilian populations and only in “extreme circumstances of self-defense.” Patrick Bury, a specialist in warfare and counterterrorism at Bath University, commented: “Israel has them and will use them. I don’t think they really care that much about collateral damage at the moment.”23
By the time the CWRU encampment began in late April 2024, then seven months into Israel’s siege:
At least 34,183 people had been killed and 77,143 people wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. A U.N. human rights chief said a child in Gaza is killed or wounded “every 10 minutes.” U.S. officials admitted Israel used an American-provided bomb with a large payload in one of its deadliest strikes, which leveled an apartment block in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people. 19,000 children had been orphaned or ended up alone with no adult to look after them. Israeli forces had dropped at least 75,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, destroying or damaging 62 percent of all homes.24
1.1 million people—half of Gaza’s pre-war population—were living through “catastrophic food insecurity.” On May 3, a senior official with the U.N. World Food Programme said that northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine.” Human Right Watch reported that Israeli forces were carrying out a policy, articulated publicly by senior Israeli officials, of “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”25
Israel had targeted and obliterated hospitals—a “war on the right to health” according to a U.N. health rapporteur—leaving only 10 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals “minimally functional,” according to the Director-General of the WHO. With no hospitals in the north and only Al-Helal Emirati Hospital in the south with maternity and obstetrics capabilities, women had been forced to give birth in the streets, in makeshift shelters, and in cars. After Israeli forces retreated from Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals, two of Gaza’s largest, mass graves containing more than 300 bodies were uncovered—some “with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes” according to the U.N. human rights office.26
Gaza’s education system had already been destroyed, with U.N. experts asking whether Israel was engaging in “scholasticide,” the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff and the destruction of educational infrastructure. In addition to 80% of Gaza’s schools being damaged or destroyed, including all 12 of its universities, a further 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, which catalogued 150 years of history.27
Nearly 100 journalists had been killed, the vast majority of them Palestinian.28 In just the first 10 weeks following October 7, Israeli forces had already killed more journalists than any other army or entity has in any single year. In addition to journalists killed and injured, the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) found multiple other incidents of journalists targeted simply for carrying out their work in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank including arrests, assaults, threats, cyberattacks, and censorship.29
Before I flew to Cleveland for S’s graduation, the Biden administration notified Congress that it was moving forward with more than $1 billion in new longterm weapons deals for Israel, including $700 million in tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles and $60 million in mortar rounds.30
Demand #6: Cut Ties
Israeli universities do not just supply the technical expertise on which the oppression of Palestinians depends, the training for the army that implements it and the ideological firepower needed to justify it in the battle of world opinion: their own campuses are sites on which Palestinian oppression is enacted […]. Most significantly, this oppression is structural: Palestinian students, already subjected to significant discrimination in their schooling, are significantly under-represented in Israeli higher education and are marginalized in many ways, including linguistically and in access to dormitories […]. Political activity by Arab students on Israeli campuses has often been banned or obstructed, including by Zionist students, as have conferences on topics deemed excessively pro-Palestinian.31
In its 2022 editorial criticizing President Kaler’s response to Resolution 31-15, the Observer noted that “Kaler has continuously made statements like this throughout his career,” including when he was president of the University of Minnesota following their campus-wide vote to divest from the Israeli government. Kaler had also condemned the American Studies Association for boycotting Israeli institutions as being against the values of “academic freedom.” When challenged by community members who pointed out that Palestinians face a lack of academic freedom due to Israeli institutional constraints on their movement, Kaler “instead doubled down by saying in response that boycotts, no matter what, ‘undermine academic freedom.’”32
“This is an extreme position,” according to Nick Riemer, author of Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation, because it also rules out:
for example, the call for a boycott of Serbian academics and intellectuals for their support for Serbian war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1990s, the academic boycott of South Africa, Carlos Fuentes’ call for an academic boycott of the US during the Vietnam War, US physicists’ call for a boycott of weapons research at the same time, the subsequent widely followed call to boycott Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) research, the boycott of Russian institutions complicit with the invasion of Ukraine as well as any number of other discretionary academic decisions to withdraw collaboration for political reasons […].33
In his book, Riemer gives the most attention to the academic boycott component of BDS, because in academia “boycotting scholarly activity, of all things, can seem particularly counterintuitive and unjustifiable.” A point of distinction from the academic boycott of South Africa, the Palestinian BDS movement specifically targets official Israeli institutional leaders, such as university presidents and deans, and Israeli university-sponsored conferences and exchanges “in carefully defined circumstances.” In other words, “mere affiliation to an Israeli university does not qualify any academic for boycott.”34
The boycott, therefore, targets only those individuals who have freely chosen to make themselves accountable, through their leadership positions or their use of official university-level structures, for their institution’s commitment to maintaining anti-Palestinian apartheid in Israel.
The pressure of an academic boycott can contribute to achieving justice for Palestinians in two ways, as Riemer explains: “First, in directly targeting universities, academic BDS targets institutions that play a central role in the maintenance, planning, and justification of Israeli state anti-Palestinianism.” He devotes a chapter to the ways in which “universities are an integral component of Israel’s permanent war effort.” The second form of pressure is “ideological” and seeks to undermine the “liberal image” that persists despite Israel’s political culture being dominated by the far right. “It sets out to do this within a community—university teachers and researchers—that is a powerful vector of Israel’s international image. By isolating its complicit higher education institutions and challenging the soft global power that Israel exerts on the world scene through them, the academic boycott aims to foster a realization in Israeli civil society and among Zionists worldwide of the untenability of their present policies.”35
Kayler has never condemned the restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement which prevents students and professors from studying or teaching abroad—or sometimes even in other parts of Palestine—or the Israeli checkpoints at Palestinian universities, raids on their campuses and arrest and imprisonment of students. Palestinian citizens in Israel also suffer structural disparities such as underfunding of schools in predominantly Palestinian areas, Israel’s refusal to offer courses or textbooks in Arabic, and explicit racial discrimination.36
The People’s Graduation
With CWRU commencement just days away, approximately 75 students received notices of interim suspensions (with the email subject line: “Notice of University Persona Non-Grata”) for their involvement in the encampment. These students were barred from attending any graduation events or moving around campus beyond staying in their dormitory or going to the nearest dining hall. Two graduating law students’ degrees were also being withheld pending the university’s investigation, which students described as an “opaque” process.37
Michael Grimm, one of the students whose law degree was put on hold explained the ramifications of this: “Now a temporary hold isn’t the end of the world, except that the Ohio bar is on a tight schedule if we want to take the bar in July […] To be in limbo like this is stressful to say the least.” Olivia Cobb, also a law graduate, said the ban from graduation was “devastating” but “I’m still here. I’m not starving, and I’ve never been hit with a bomb. And until I have to decide between that and standing up, then there’s not a moment of hesitation.”38
To date, setbacks within the Free Palestine movement haven’t halted momentum at universities. When one encampment is shut down, another materializes. When one strike is broken, another forms.39
After the disappointment of attending S’s diploma ceremony in the morning, we broke for coffee before heading to Wade Lagoon for a “People’s Graduation” ceremony. As I milled about the outdoor event space set up between the Cleveland Museum of Arts’ southern terrace and the lagoon, favorite camera in hand—my Leica M10, the one that was smashed by the NYPD in 2020 when I was kettled and arrested at a demonstration in the Bronx after George Floyd’s murder, but subsequently repaired with the help of friends and family—I was not entirely sure what to expect beyond what I had read about a similar ceremony for student activists at Columbia University.40
Hearing from students who have risked their degrees and their future was beautiful. As CRWU student and SJP member Raissa Rih’Reh said, “better than anything we [could] imagine, mostly everyone here today made the decision to come out to support and I cannot express how grateful I am and how grateful we are as a community to have the support.”41
The ceremony was MC’d by Kamal Alkayali, the manager of nearby Algebra Teahouse, owned by his Palestinian-American father Ayman. Ayman’s parents were born in Palestine (his mother in Yaffa and his grandfather in Al-Lid) but were forced to flee during the Nakba. He opened Algebra nearly 25 years ago in August 2001, and despite being a pillar in Cleveland’s Little Italy since then, the family is once again experiencing the Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian hatred and harassment that they were targeted for after 9/11, just weeks after opening the teahouse. Ayman was present at the People’s graduation with Kamal, but walked with a wooden cane as a result of being assaulted by a Zionist extremist who hit him with his car six times in Algebra’s parking lot before being arrested.42 Kamal’s brother Ameer—who was spray-painted in front of CWRU’s spirit wall, as discussed earlier—was also present.
I first visited Algebra in October 2019 when I was at CWRU for parents’ weekend with S’s mom. I have a favorite portrait I took of the of the two of them there, candid and tender, laughing over tea.
Stepping inside is to take a stroll through Ayman’s imagination. The front door, tables and shelves were hand-crafted by Ayman, and his paintings cover the walls. The smell of Middle Eastern spices blends with citrus from the orange peel resting atop a wood burning stove. Plants line the front window, soaking up sunlight. There are shelves of books on everything from poetry to Islamic architecture or Palestinian cuisine.43
Kamal introduced the first speaker, former Ohio Sen. Nina Turner, who energetically rallied the crowd to form a circle around the ceremony, insulating it from the handful of counter-protestors’ feebly attempting to disrupt the graduation. Addressing the crowd through a megaphone: “To the graduates of 2024: this is only the beginning. You have a long life ahead of you. You are off to a magnificent start. And you are learning one of the most important lessons. That when you go against the grain there will be power that will bump up against you.” She closed her remarks with an impassioned reading of Maya Angelou’s well-known 1978 poem “Still I Rise.”
You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Next was Olivia Cobb. While a law student, Olivia served as a legal observer then president of CWRU’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and as a member of the Ohio NLG Board. Olivia spoke about the love and community she developed in the encampment despite fear of reprisal from CWRU. Quoting bell hooks All About Love: “The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.” She continued, “they think that denial, punishment, threats will slow us down—because that is what would slow them down. They don’t know that fear is the last thing that will stop us”:
Until Palestine is free, I will be afraid.
Until police stop shooting men like Jayland Walker, killing women like Tanisha Anderson, shooting children like Tamir Rice, I will be afraid.
Until Customs and Border Control stops shooting children at our own borders, I will be afraid.
Until we stop starving pregnant prisoners, torturing people simply because we have “convicted” them in courts, until we stop trying black children in Cuyahoga county as adults, until everyone who needs insulin gets it for free, until we fund of hospitals and libraries as well as we fund our police stations and our department of defense, I will be afraid.
Yes, the university has scared me.
But this fear? This fear will not bind me.
This fear is my reminder – there is so much more to build.
This fear, it is here as to tell me every day, to fight like hell for our resistance.
For our incredible love. 
Olivia was followed by Jad Kamhawi Oglesby, who double-majored in Political Science and Economics, and was honored this year during Black History Month in CWRU’s official newsletter as one of five students “who exemplify brilliance and commitments to making lasting impacts.” Now, three months later, as one of the most visible faces at the encampment, he was barred from attending any graduation or commencement activities on campus. Jad reiterated the two most salient demands of the encampment: “We want them to disclose and divest. It’s that simple. We want them to apologize for the treatment of students like me. The suppression. The antagonization. Of the Palestinian identity. Of the African-American identity. Of the minority identity.” He called out President Kayler, the board of trustees and the CWRU administration: “they have chosen not to come to the table. They are afraid of us? Their own students! […] They are afraid to have a conversation.” His parents visited the encampment and later reflected: “It kind of calmed our fears and also reinforced our notions that what our son was doing was the right thing.”44
The last speaker was Dr. Shereen Naser, a psychology professor at nearby Cleveland State University and an informal advisor to CWRU students during the encampment. The co-author of a scientific journal article discussing and recommending evidence-based interventions for reducing racism and prejudice in schools, Dr. Naser is also, like Kamal, the grandchild of a family forced to flee Palestine. Last month, her cousin Layan (who is a graduate student at Birzeit University) was abducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces. In a recent op-ed appearing in The Hill, Dr. Naser shared:45
Layan is one of 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, living in a limbo as a Palestinian on her ancestral land, in a town where she and I can trace back the stories of our ancestors for thousands of years but where life has been made all but impossible by Israel’s military occupation, now in its 56th year. While the world focuses its attention on Israel’s brutal onslaught against Gaza, violent repression by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has surged to levels not seen in decades.
My family does not know why Layan was taken. What we do know is that she is one of over 9,000 Palestinians illegally detained by Israel, and one of over 3,500 being held under so-called “administration detention” without charges or trial—meaning we might never know why she was abducted.
Palestine is surrounded by sea and fences and encroached on by human development—much like its endemic plants, which are restricted to small, shrinking and degraded habitats with specific requirements.[…] In the hills above Marj Ibn Amer, hailed as the most fertile meadow in the Middle East, a beautiful flower Iris haynei grows. Found nowhere else in the world except Faqqua village, Palestine, this rare endemic iris hangs on in patchy and fragmented populations and is considered globally threatened.46
After the four speakers, the graduates lined up and each was called to the dais to be conferred with a People’s University degree. A stole in the colors of the Palestinian flag on one side and the kuffiya’s black and white pattern on the other, was placed around their shoulders. And then each graduate was handed a Faqqua iris (the national flower of Palestine).
The Faqqua iris (or by its binomial name, Iris haynei) is a tall, fragrant flower, typically with 7 or 8 purple leaves. It is a geophyte, and its stout, rhizomatous root structure allows it to grow at the edges of fields in terra rossa and on rocky hillsides. The challenges threatening their existence are “persistent” and the “fragile population cannot withstand further degradation, habitat loss [or] exploitation by people.” But a new generation of botanists from Palestine is being trained at Bethlehem University “in plant identification, distribution analysis, conservation and other skills to help encourage more young people to work in the field of botany.” There, the Palestine Museum of Natural History has created a botanical garden and a plan to conserve threatened and rare species. The university and museum are working together to spread awareness among students and visitors about the cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of the flora—and the symbolic attachment to the land they represent—passed down from generation to generation. Youth from the communities around Faqqua village “are enthusiastically contributing towards the efforts to save the iris […].”
Long Live the Student Intifada
In 2016, CWRU held the first ever Cleveland Humanities Festival which, along with twenty other arts, cultural, and academic organizations, explored as its theme the impacts of war. It seems ironic and a little on the nose now. At the festival, CWRU history professor John Grabowski gave a lecture titled, “Thirty-Four Miles from Kent State: CWRU and the Vietnam War.”47
Prof. Grabowski recounted how CWRU students had occupied Yost Hall on May 3, 1970, demanding that the university move its ROTC program off campus, which the university eventually acceded to. The following day, student protestors blocked Euclid Avenue and in the evening held a memorial to the four students killed and nine injured by the National Guard at Kent State that afternoon. As former dean of Adelbert College at CWRU, Samuel Gorovitz, reflected in 2020:48
When Kent State University closed, thousands of their students flowed here, joining protesters at Case Western Reserve University, closing Euclid Avenue to traffic and creating an incendiary standoff. Armed, mounted police faced the intransigent students in the street beside Severance Hall.
As the dean of Adelbert College at CWRU, I moved, alone, between the police commander and those students, seeking time to defuse the conflict. The commander agreed, and held back his massed forces, many of whom seemed angry and eager. And the students listened, moving to the sidewalks, reopening the road.
CWRU remained troubled, with protesters occupying Adelbert Hall as university leaders strove to navigate a path through exams to commencement. Rather than adopting Gov. James Rhodes’ plan of threats followed by force, CWRU’s leadership engaged protesting students with coffee and doughnuts, attentive listening, honesty, and sympathetic understanding, even where there was firm disagreement.
Subsequently, the administration offered CWRU students the option of ending their semesters early in good standing, effectively facilitating the demand by student protestors to shut the university down as part of the nationwide student strike.
Last week, taking stock of the CWRU Palestine solidarity encampment at a press conference held by Palestine Task Force Cleveland, Jad reflected that “history would see the encamped in a better light rather than being a burden” and said “there was a reason that the encampment began around the 54th anniversary of the May 4th Kent State Shootings.”49
“Our leaders, instead of interacting with us, have chosen to run away for 11 days. Run away from the truth. Run away from the voices of students.” said Jad Oglesby, the Vice President of Students for Justice in Palestine. […]
“Unfortunately, we’ve been in these camps for 10 days, and we failed to even have a conversation. So no, we have not achieved any of our goals, but despite that, we are not done. So we’re going to keep going,” said Jad.
“This encampment is a step in a long term strategy of holding this institution accountable for its actions. I’ve been part of leadership here at SJP since my freshman year, but I think, I’ve set a good precedent for the students under me to keep lifting up that to keep uniting the students in the name of peace, in the name of love in the name of standing up for what’s right,” said Jad.50
Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development lxviii (3rd ed. 2016).
CWRU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) commented in an Instagram story: “Even for the few students CWRU ‘let’ walk after punishing them for sitting on grass, they were forced to have an incredibly dehumanizing experience at their commencement. As they sit and watch all of their peers around them for opening their envelopes to their degrees they worked so hard for, these students opened their envelopes to see a piece of cardboard and this disgusting letter, reminding them how this administration sees them as less. Many of these students are BIPOC/from marginalized communities who’ve experienced racism enough in their time at CWRU, and Kaler put the cherry on top for their dehumanizing experience at CWRU with this stunt.”
CWRU SJP [@CWRU_SJP], “URGENT ACTION ITEM, UNITE FOR GAZA,” Instagram (Apr. 29, 2024); “Gabriella Gregor Splaver, et al., “In Focus: When Hamilton Hall became ‘Hind’s Hall’,” Columbia Spectator (May 12, 2024); Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “Gaza: Initial findings show Israeli army purposefully kills a child, uses an American-made missile to target her rescue crew,” (Feb. 12, 2024). Euro-Med’s field investigation concluded that “Hind Rajab, and her relatives were killed in a planned execution carried out by the Israeli army in Gaza City in broad daylight” and the targeted the PRCS ambulance attempting to rescue Hind “with a US-made shell, as evidenced by pieces of an American-made M830A1 HEAT shell discovered inside.” See also Meg Kelly, Hajar Harb, Louisa Loveluck, Miriam Berger & Cate Brown, “Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed.” Washington Post (Apr. 16, 2024); Maya Stahl, Sarah Huddleston, & Shea Vance, “Shafik authorizes NYPD to sweep ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ officers in riot gear arrest over 100,” Columbia Spectator (Apr. 19, 2024).
Téa Tamburo, “Students for Justice in Palestine receives interim suspension following alleged violation of CWRU’s Code of Conduct,” the Observer (CWRU) (Mar. 14, 2024); CWRU Law Students for Justice in Palestine, “LTTE: An open letter from CWRU Law Students for Justice in Palestine,” the Observer (CWRU) (Mar. 29, 2024); Mark Oprea, “Case Western Reserve University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Chapter,” Cleveland Scene (Mar. 7, 2024); Darcy Chew and Zachary Treseler, “SJP faces fines from university after alleged flyer postings,” the Observer (CWRU) (Apr. 26, 2024).
CWRU Law Professors, “LTTE: An open letter to President Kaler and Provost Ward,” the Observer (CWRU) (Mar. 22, 2024); Editorial Board, “By suspending SJP, CWRU’s administration furthers a culture of distrust,” the Observer (CWRU) (Mar. 13, 2024); Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, “LTTE: What the administration has not done yet,” the Observer (CWRU) (Apr. 5, 2024);
Eli Motycka, “Students Say Vanderbilt Is Keeping Pro-Palestine Activism Quiet,” Nashville Scene (Mar. 20, 2024).
Conor Morris, “Pro-Palestinian protests continue at Case Western Reserve University after students detained,” Ideastream Public Media (Apr. 29, 2024).
Ibrahim Hirsi, “‘Build the Wall’ mural at University of Minnesota sparks protest,” Minnesota Post (Oct. 3, 2016) (internal punctuation omitted); Kevin Beckham, “Six protesters arrested after board meeting,” the Minnesota Daily (June 15, 2016).
Eric Kaler, “Addressing intimidating speech on university property: May 7, 2024” (May 7, 2024); “Mark Oprea, “Pro-Palestine Students Speak Out Against Case Western Reserve University’s Encampment Punishments,” Cleveland Scene (May 18, 2024).
Zachary Treseler, Shivangi Nanda & Darcy Chew, “Student expression from the Gaza solidarity encampment on the Advocacy and Spirit Walls leads to administrative tension,” the Observer (CWRU) (May 8, 2024); Shejuti Wahed, “CWRU students, faculty stage ‘die-in’ in solidarity with Palestine, SJP during prospective students’ campus visit,” the Observer (Apr. 26, 2024).
Molly Walsh, “Contractors spray-painted over pro-Palestinian protesters at Case Western Reserve University,” Cleveland.com (May 8, 2024).
CWRU SJP [@CWRU_SJP], “TONIGHT, one hour ago around 11pm, this incredibly racist and dangerous statement was painted on the spirit wall,” Instagram (May 7, 2024); CWRU SJP [@CWRU_SJP], “WE DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!!,” Instagram (May 9, 2024).
CWRU Undergraduate Student Government, General Assembly Resolution 31-15 (Nov. 8, 2022); CWRU Office of Investments, “Endowment Report: July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021,” (2021); see also Amy Morona, “Case Western Reserve University touts big fundraising haul, research wins in 2023,” Signal Cleveland (Jan. 26, 2024) (noting that, according to a 2023 Crain’s Business report, CWRU’s endowment dwarfs other local universities and colleges, including the University of Akron ($290.4 million), Kent State University ($174.4 million), and Cleveland State University ($104.7 million)). Shreyas Banerjee and Grace Johnson, “USG’s ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ bill garners controversy,” the Observer (Nov. 4, 2022); CWRU Undergraduate Student Government, “Fossil Fuel Divestment” (last accessed May 26, 2024).
“Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS” (July 9, 2005); Nick Riemer, Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation 2-3 (2023).
William I. Robinson & Maryam S. Griffin, “Introduction: Academic Repression on US Campuses,” in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics 5 ( William I. Robinson & Maryam S. Griffin, eds. 2017).
Shreyas Banerjee, “USG overwhelmingly votes to pursue divestment from ‘Israeli apartheid’,” the Observer (CWRU) (Nov. 11, 2022); Eric Kaler, “Supporting Informed Debate, but Rejecting Hate,” (Nov. 9, 2022). See also Conor Morris, “Case president criticized for calling students antisemitic over Israel divestment push,” Ideastream Public Media (Nov. 11, 2023); Center for Constitutional Rights & Palestine Legal, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US” (Sept. 2015).
Sam Seidman, “LTTE: In regards to President Kaler’s message from a Jewish graduate student,” the Observer (CWRU) (Nov. 18, 2022); Eve Troutt Powell & Laurie Brand, “Case Western Reserve University’s recent statement about anti-Semitism,” Middle Eastern Studies Association (Nov. 15, 2022); Press Release, “CAIR, CAIR-Cleveland Call Case Western Reserve University President’s Response to Student Government Resolution on Israeli Apartheid ‘Dishonest, Dangerous and Defamatory’” (Nov. 10, 2022).
Editorial Board, “President Kaler has created far more division than USG ever could,” the Observer (CWRU) (Nov. 11, 2023).
Norman G. Finkelstein, Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom 3 (2018).
Human Rights Watch, “Israel/Gaza: Donors Should Press Israel to End Blockade” (Mar. 1, 2009); Reuters, “U.N. experts say Israel’s blockade of Gaza illegal” (Sept. 13, 2011); “David Cameron describes blockaded Gaza as a ‘prison’,” BBC News (July 27, 2010); Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: the Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon 169 (Verso Books 1st ed. 2006).
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, “Main Findings of Labour Force Survey in 2022” (2022); Food Security Cluster, “Food Insecurity in Palestine - 2022” (2022); World Bank, “Hidden Hunger: Micronutrient Deficiencies in the West Bank and Gaza” (June 20, 2022); Conal Urquhart, “Gaza on brink of implosion as aid cut-off starts to bite,” the Guardian (Apr. 15, 2006); B’Tselem, “Water in Gaza: Scarce, polluted and mostly unfit for use” (Aug. 17, 2020); see also Yaniv Kubovich, “Polluted Water Leading Cause of Child Mortality in Gaza, Study Finds,” Haaretz (Oct. 16, 2018); Bo Schack, “Denied a human standard of living: The Gaza blockade has entered its tenth year,” U.N. Relief and Works Agency (Oct. 21, 2016).
Conor Morris, “Case Western Reserve University students walk out over school president's stance on Israel-Hamas war,” Ideastream Public Media (Nov. 6, 2023); Students for Justice in Palestine, “LTTE: A response from CWRU Students for Justice in Palestine regarding President Kaler’s recent email,” the Observer (CWRU) (Oct. 27, 2024); Ted Steinberg (Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History) “LTTE: President Kaler’s administration’s support of Israel violates its free speech policy,” the Observer (CWRU) (Nov. 17, 2023); Wafaa Shurafa, Jack Jeffery & Lee Keath, “Israeli troops advance toward Gaza City as the Palestinian death toll rises above 9,000,” Associated Press (Nov. 6, 2023).
Jared Malsin & Nancy A. Youssef, “U.S. Plans to Send Weapons to Israel Amid Biden Push for Cease-Fire Deal,” Wall Street Journal (Feb. 17, 2024); Jared Malsin & Nancy A. Youssef, “How the U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel Avoids Public Disclosure,” Wall Street Journal (Mar. 6, 2024); Jared Malsin & Nancy A. Youssef, “U.S. Sends Israel 2,000-Pound Bunker Buster Bombs for Gaza War,” Wall Street Journal (Dec. 1, 2023); Urooba Jamal and Alex Gatopoulos, “‘Israel doesn’t care about collateral damage’: Bunker busters used in Gaza,” Al Jazeera (Oct. 9, 2023).
“34,183 Palestinians killed in Israeli offensive on Gaza since Oct.7, Gaza health ministry says,” Reuters (Apr. 23, 2024); Press Release, “UN Human Rights Chief deplores harrowing killings of children and women in Rafah,” (Apr. 23, 2024); Yolande Knell, “Injured, hungry and alone - the Gazan children orphaned by war,” BBC News (Jan. 31, 2024); UNWRA, “Situation Report #99 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” (Apr. 4, 2024).
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, “Gaza Strip: Famine is imminent as 1.1 million people, half of Gaza, experience catastrophic food insecurity” (Mar. 18, 2024); Ellen Knickmeyer & Russ Bynum, “A senior UN official says northern Gaza is now in ‘full-blown famine’,” Associated Press (May 3, 2024); Euronews No Comment [@nocomment] on X, formerly Twitter, “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals.” (Oct. 10, 2023); Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza” (Dec. 18, 2023)
Press Conference, Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, “Gaza: The Right to Health Has Been Decimated” (Apr. 22, 2024); Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, [@DrTedros.] on X, formerly Twitter, “With only 10 hospitals minimally functional across the whole of #Gaza, thousands of patients continue to be deprived of health care.” (Mar. 30, 2024); Iman Husain, “The Hell of Having a Baby in Gaza,” the Nation (Mar. 21, 2024); David Gritten, “UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by mass grave reports at Gaza hospitals,” BBC News (Apr. 24, 2024); “Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office,” UN News (Apr. 23, 2024).
Press Release, “UN experts deeply concerned over ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza” (Apr. 18, 2024); “How Israel has destroyed Gaza’s schools and universities,” Al Jazeera, (Jan. 24, 2024).
Unsurprisingly, Palestinian journalists also lost family members while reporting on the war, including photojournalist Yasser Qudih, whose work was published by Reuters (Qudih survived but eight members of his family were killed when their house was struck by four missiles), Wael Al Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza (lost his wife, son, daughter, and grandson when an Israel airstrike hit Nuisserat refugee camp, and subsequently lost his son Hamza Al Dahdouh, a journalist and camera operator for Al Jazeera, when his vehicle was struck by Israeli forces after filming the aftermath of an airstrike).
Reuters, “Gaza war ‘most dangerous ever’ for journalists, says rights group” (Dec. 21, 2023); Mohamed Mandour, et al., “Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war,” Committee to Protect Journalists (May 24, 2024).
Nancy A. Youssef & Jared Malsin, “Biden Moves Forward on $1 Billion in New Arms for Israel,” Wall Street Journal (May 14, 2024).
Riemer, ibid., at 27-28.
Riemer, ibid., at 50.
Riemer, ibid., at 4, 30.
Riemer, ibid., at 4.
William I. Robinson & Maryam S. Griffin, “Introduction: Academic Repression on US Campuses,” in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics 13-14 (William I. Robinson & Maryam S. Griffin, eds. 2017).
Matthew Richmond, “Protesters criticize Case Western Reserve University for 'opaque' disciplinary process,” Ideastream Public Media (May 17, 2024); Amy Morona, “‘Persona Non-Grata:’ Case Western Reserve temporarily bans some students involved in pro-Palestinian encampment,” Signal Cleveland (May 13, 2024); Conor Morris, “Case Western Reserve University bars student protesters from commencement,” Ideastream Public Media (May 13, 2024); Press Release, “CAIR-Ohio Condemns Case Western Reserve University’s Decision to Bar Students Involved in Palestine Advocacy from Commencement,” (May 14, 2024).
Anna Meyer & Matt Rascon, “Students demand amnesty for pro-Palestine protesters involved in encampment at Case Western Reserve University,” NBC WKYC Cleveland (May 17, 2024); Mark Oprea, “Case Western Reserve University Bars Some Pro-Palestine Student Protesters From Graduation, Campus,” Cleveland Scene (May 13, 2024).
Ella Fassler, “From Strikes to Encampments, Faculty Join Campus Movement for a Free Palestine,” Truthout (May 20, 2024).
Ramsey Khalifeh, “Student activists set to attend ‘people’s ceremony’ after Columbia cancels graduation,” Gothamist (May 16, 2024).
Maya Lockett, “CWRU student protesters host alternative graduation,” ABC News 5 Cleveland (May 19, 2024).
Press Release, “CAIR-Cleveland Calls on Law Enforcement to Consider Hate Crimes Charges for Alleged Anti-Palestinian Attack” (Jan. 10, 2024).
Angelo Merendino, “Serving tea, Islam and understanding in Cleveland,” Al Jazeera (June 11, 2016).
“Meet five Black Case Western Reserve University community members who are making history,” the daily (CWRU) (Feb. 26, 2024); Catherine Ross, “‘Held in limbo:’ Some CWRU pro-Palestinian protesters say their futures are uncertain,” ABC News 5 Cleveland (May 17, 2024).
Shereen Naser, “When will the US finally act to hold Israel accountable?,” The Hill (Apr. 23, 2024).
Enas Sarahneh, “Growing Hope for Plants in Palestine,” Birdland 37 (Apr-June 2021).
Mahmiyat, “Hayne’s Iris/Iris haynei/سوسن فقوعة” (last accessed May 26, 2024); Sarahneh, “Growing Hope,” at 38-39.
“First-ever Cleveland Humanities Festival explores impacts of war,” the daily (CWRU) (Mar. 17, 2016); “May 4, 1970—and 34 miles from Kent State: Hear about how CWRU students joined the protests,” the daily (CWRU) (Apr. 7, 2016).
Samuel Gorovitz, “Case Western Reserve University handled May 1970 protesters with coffee, doughnuts and dialogue,” Cleveland.com (May 18, 2020).
Mark Oprea, “Pro-Palestine Students Speak Out Against Case Western Reserve University's Encampment Punishments,” Cleveland Scene (May 18, 2024).
Nadeen Abusada, “CWRU to withhold degrees from some students who participated in Israel-Hamas war protest encampment,” ABC News 5 Cleveland (May 14, 2024).