Pro-Palestine protesters rally at CSU headquarters to demand university system divests from Israel

Scores of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in front of the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office in Long Beach on Tuesday, May 21, urging the system to, among other demands, divest from Israel — and celebrating the announcement this week that the CSU’s Sacramento campus would do just that.

Tuesday’s protesters also demanded that the 23-campus CSU to boycott Israel, disclose its investments and call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and a free Palestine. Though relatively small, the peaceful rally in Long Beach was the latest in a series of demonstrations — ranging from traditional protests to encampents set up on campuses — that have roiled both public and private universities across the state and nation in recent weeks. Those demonstrations, some peaceful and some not, have mostly comprised students and faculty seeking to pressure academic administrators to condemn Israel for what they say has been a disproportionate military response to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Israeli officials, in the face of mounting global pressure, have remained steadfast in saying the country has a right to defend itself and that their only goal is to eradicate Hamas, whose militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages during an Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel. That attack started the conflict.

Israel, like the United States, considers Hamas a terrorist group.

But pro-Palestinian activists, including those on college campuses, have sharply criticized Israel for the destruction in Gaza. More than 34,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed since the conflict began, according to the Health Ministry there; that ministry is part of the Hamas-run government.

The protests on college campuses have focused, in large part, on university investments that activists say help fund Israeli military actions.

“Military and defense industry funding and collaboration have become foundational to the public university’s normal fiscal and research operations,” said Cal State Long Beach professor Steven Osuna, who is a member of the California Faculty Association and CSULB’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine. “These lucrative partnerships raise serious questions about the ways in which university priorities are bent and shaped to the will of corporate interests, imperial militarism and war profiting.”

But some university administrators, like those at CSULB after a recent protest there, have said they work hard to ensure their investments are ethical. Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson for the CSU system, said much the same on Tuesday.

“The CSU makes every attempt to ensure that its investment policies align with the values of the institution,” she said, “while balancing its fiduciary responsibility to protect the university’s assets for the long-term success of the CSU and the students we serve.”

But on Monday, May 20, Cal State Sacramento became the first CSU to strike a deal with activists to divest from investments that fund Israel — after students spent 10 days camping at and occupying that university’s library quad.

The new “Policy on Socially Responsible Investments” prohibits investing in “corporations and funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights,” as defined by the United Nations, according to the agreement. The deal covers the campus’s auxiliaries, including its endowment fund, among other requirements.

Pro-Palestinian student, faculty and staffers celebrated the Sacramento State deal during Tuesday’s Long Beach protest — but also said they hope the rest of the CSU follows suit.

“The biggest hope is for Palestine to be free,” said a Cal State Sacramento student and media liaison for Tuesday’s rally, who declined to give his name because he feared for his safety. “However, the goal that is set in our minds right now is to get the entire CSU system to divest.”

Students feel it is their obligation to demand divestment, the media liaison said, “because it’s not only our tax money but also our tuition money that is going toward CSU investments.

“It is our responsibility to lead that divestment; thankfully, our president was doing the bare minimum, which is listening to us and understanding us, so he was also cooperative with the negotiations,” he said, “unlike many other universities across the nation, that not only did not listen to their students but also responded to them violently as well.”

Tuesday’s protest, which ran from morning to early afternoon, included about 100 students, faculty and staffers from across the CSU system, including Sacramento State, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Los Angeles and Cal State Long Beach.

The California State University said in a statement that it supports the rights of students and others to assemble peacefully, to protest and to have their voices heard, and values free speech as fundamental to higher education and a cornerstoneof a strong democracy. But the CSU cannot engage in political speech, and must remain entirely independent of all political and sectarian influence per the California Education Code, Bentley-Smith added.

But that hasn’t stemmed the uproar from students.

“We are here,” said Nadia Mehanna, a student with Palestine Youth Movement and Students for Collective Liberation at CSUDH, “to hold the board of trustees accountable for their participation in perpetuating war and oppression.”