At this very moment, a student-led grassroots movement is spreading throughout the country, with over 100 encampments going up at different college and university campuses around the country and around the world in protest of Israel’s US-funded genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In what is being called the “student intifada,” students, faculty, grad students, and other campus community members are exercising civil disobedience, occupying space on campuses, defying brutal repression from administrators and police, combatting skewed and wildly lopsided narratives in corporate media, and pressuring their universities to “disclose and divest” their investments in companies and financial institutions connected to Israel.
In this urgent podcast, we take you to the frontlines of struggle and speak directly with student and grad student organizers of the Gaza encampment at the University of Michigan’s flagship campus in Ann Arbor. As the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper, reports, “The encampment was organized by the TAHRIR Coalition, a student-led coalition of more than 80 organizations including the U-M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality. The encampment follows six months of student protests for the University’s divestment, which began with a sit-in at the President’s house in October. Since then, students have continuously organized protests across campus demanding the University divest from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.” TRNN’s Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez (who is an alumnus of the University of Michigan), speaks with Salma Hamamy, an undergraduate at UM and president of Students Allied For Freedom and Equality (SAFE), and Ember McCoy, a graduate student worker and department organizer in the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO).
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to the Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. Before we get going today, I want to remind y’all that The Real News is an independent viewer- and listener-supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. We have a small, but incredible team of folks who are fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices from the front lines of struggle around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support, and we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today. I promise you, it really makes a difference.
At this very moment, a grassroots protest movement is spreading to different college and university campuses around the country, and it is being called the Student Intifada. As the Guardian reported this weekend, “At least 40 pro-Palestine protest camps have arisen across US campuses following Columbia University’s example, earlier this month, as the New York school’s senate called for an investigation into its leadership, the New York Times reported. While many remain provocative though peaceful, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment by their institutions from companies with ties to Israel, hundreds of students and outside protesters have been arrested, and there have been some fierce clashes with police.
At Columbia University, a proposal to censor, university president, Minouche Shafik, fell short, but a resolution calling for an investigation passed by a vote of 62 to 14 on Friday, according to the New York Times. Shafik has been scrutinized since the decision last week to summon New York police to the campus and authorize them to dismantle an encampment resulting in the arrest of more than 100 student protesters. Ohio State and Emerson University were just some of the college campuses with arrests on Thursday amid a wave of protests in solidarity with Palestine. Encampments in solidarity with Columbia have since emerged at Northwestern University in Cook County, Illinois, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, George Washington University in Washington, DC, Princeton University in New Jersey, the City College of New York, and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
And that’s just the beginning. More encampments are going up and growing as we speak, including at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, my alma mater. Now, we’re recording this podcast on Monday, April 29th, and exactly one week ago, the student newspaper on campus, the Michigan Daily, wrote this. “As of 6:00 AM Monday, University of Michigan students set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on the Diag planning to remain until the university meets their demand of divestment from companies profiting off Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The encampment was organized by the Tahrir Coalition, a student-led coalition of more than 80 organizations, including the U of M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality. The encampment follows six months of student protests for the university’s divestment, which began with a sit-in at the President’s house in October. Since then, students have continuously organized protests across campus demanding the university divest from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”
In this urgent podcast, I got to speak with Salma Hamamy, an undergraduate at U of M and president of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, or SAFE. I also got to speak with Ember McCoy, a graduate student worker and department organizer in the Graduate Employees Organization, or GEO. Here’s my conversation with Salma and Ember, which we recorded at noon on April 29th.
Salma Hamamy:
Hi, my name is Salma. I am a senior at the University of Michigan, double majoring in Biology, Health and Society and Middle Eastern and North African studies with a double minor in law, justice and social change and Arabic studies. I was born and raised in Ann Arbor. I’ve been a [inaudible 00:04:40] for the vast majority of my life, but ethnically, I am Palestinian. Currently, I am the president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter here at the University of Michigan, also known as Students Allied for Freedom and Equality. And I’m also the advocacy chair for the University Students Association.
Ember McCoy:
Hi, my name is Ember. I’m a fourth year PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability here at University of Michigan. I’m a member of our Graduate Employees Organization, which is our graduate student labor union. And yeah, I’ve lived in Ann Arbor for about 10 years, whether in school or working for the university.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh yeah. Well, Salma, Ember, thank you both so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it, especially with everything you’ve got going on, not just the encampment that we are here to talk about, the struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, but you’re also studying for finals. You’re also students and grad students trying to make a living in a very expensive college town. So thank you so much for taking a few minutes to chat with us because everyone wants to know what’s going on over there. They want to hear from you guys, and I’m so grateful to you both for making time for this.
And a quick disclaimer for everyone listening, as I’ve mentioned on previous interviews that I’ve done with members of the Graduate Employees Organization there at Ann Arbor that I myself am a former GEO member. I received my dual PhDs in History and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. So you can take or leave whatever I have to say on this podcast. But as always, we are doing our best to lift up the voices from the front lines of struggle. And more than anything, you should listen to them. We’re going to just turn things back over to our guests right now.
I wanted to just start with you, Salma, and ask if you could just take our listeners there over the past week, like what’s been going on over there on the Ann Arbor campus. How did this encampment get started? Yeah, if you could just give our listeners a sort of breakdown about how things have been going the past week.
Salma Hamamy:
Yeah, of course. So as of Monday, April 22nd, students at the University of Michigan have set up an encampment that has continuously grown and expanded and has been the recipient of an immense amount of community support and solidarity. Initially, on our first night when we set up at about four in the morning on Monday, we had approximately 60 students dedicated to camping and participating in the encampment. As of last night, we have now reached over 185 campers, and we have tripled in space and in size and we continue to receive an immense amount of funding and donations and people constantly supporting in whatever way they can, donating food, supplies and really helping us out with programming because as we are participating in this encampment, we are there 24/7. So we have created a huge community center space within the encampment as well as various stations for people to participate, such as a screening area.
We have something called the Liberation Library with various literature for people to read up onto why student movements and organizing is so crucial and why the university is such a pivotal point of change within the Palestinian movement. So in addition to the literature, the community space, and the gatherings that we have accumulated just within this past week, we have also spread an immense amount of awareness regarding our mission and why we are there and why we are refusing to leave. The students here have been organizing for months. Our organizing did not begin with this encampment, nor did it begin within the last six months. We have been active on this campus for decades. However, within this year it has grown exponentially and you are now able to see the results of the amount of work that students have been putting into this.
So while encampments went up throughout the United States shortly after Columbia University’s encampment was brutalized and targeted and students were arrested, we are not only doing this in solidarity with the students who have been brutalized, but also primarily because the people of Gaza deserve to have their calls and voices answered. So that is our primary objective, and it’s been amazing to see even students in Gaza release statements of solidarity and support and gratitude to these students in a movement that they’re now calling the Student Intifada, and Intifada translating to uprising. So they have been expressing words of hope like never before because students have put forth this new level of bravery that has, unfortunately, been brushed under the rug for so long. And what we’re seeing is now this accumulation of anger, grief, frustration, but primarily solidarity, hope, and perseverance. And that is what is at the forefront of every single encampment that we have seen come throughout every single university in the United States. And it’s especially prevalent right now within the encampment at the University of Michigan.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And Ember, I’m really curious, y’all were on strike last year. You were prepared to strike at the beginning of this school year. Tell me about, from the grad student, GEO perspective, what does this all look like to you all over the past week, over the past six months, and how the grad students have participated in this?
Ember McCoy:
Yeah, it’s so true. So I think one thing that’s been cool to see is I feel that a lot of the relationships that we’re seeing between grad students and undergrads, orgs in the strike now, started to form during the strike. I met Salma and Zainab and a lot of these people originally in meetings for undergrads to help figure out how to organize to support our grad student labor strike, which has been really cool to see how the coalition has been formed over time. And I think for at least the graduate student perspective has really built from that and from our strike and that relationship’s forming on our end. So GEO and grad students have been a part of the coalition that’s formed of over 90 student organizations around Palestine, and we’ve been working together with undergrads for the past six months and beyond and have been a part of this encampment and the work going on the ground as well.
We have folks continuing the organizing work, whether it’s managing HQ, helping manage volunteers, and I think there’s this real coalition between undergrads and graduate workers where we’re seeing those organizing skills transfer and we’re being able to learn from each other and really build from a lot of the things we learned throughout the strike are actually very transferable to actually having operations flow on the ground now at the encampment, which has been really fun to see.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, this takes me way back. It feels like years ago, like decades ago, but it really wasn’t that long ago in 2017, 2018, when I, as the co-founder with other folks of the campus anti-fascist network, were working with this big Stop Spencer coalition that included GEO, that included LEO, the Lecturers Union, the college Dems, IWW student groups. That was back in 2017 when Richard Spencer, alt-right leader leading marches at Charlottesville, was doing his college tour and wanted to bring his Nazis and fascists into our community. And one of the things that was so beautiful and significant about that struggle is that we all came together doing what y’all were doing, but y’all are doing it 24/7. We did teach-ins, we had folks talking about the history of fascism, different kinds of protests, and that was for a block of eight hours. I can’t imagine how you’re filling that program continuously 24/7.
But one of the things that was so incredible that came out of that struggle was we were all united around this central position, no fascists on campus and we’re going to protect our communities. But out of that, then when the lecturers were going up for their contract negotiations, the undergrads were there at their events, they were showing up. Those bonds of solidarity are so crucial to build and they can really build into something bigger than the sum of its parts. And that’s what y’all are doing now as we speak and it’s incredible to hear that as an alum and as someone who’s been there doing work like that, but not nearly at this level, not so long ago, but it feels like forever ago.
I wanted to pick up on one thing that you all were saying regarding that. Salma, you mentioned the unique and pivotal role that universities play in this struggle. Anti-genocide, ceasefire demonstrations have been going on for the past seven months. I covered the two biggest ones in DC, but this is an escalation in tactics. This is a change harkening back to the days of ’68 where you saw student protests really move the needle in terms of ending the war at Vietnam. I wanted to ask if you could talk a little more about that. What are the conversations y’all are having, what is the messaging to other members of the campus community about why this needs to happen on campuses, what the university can do in this struggle and why students are doing what they’re doing to apply that pressure?
Salma Hamamy:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So a lot of times people are, unfortunately, unaware of the fact that our universities, especially universities that happen to have billions of dollars invested within their endowment, are directly tied to weapons manufacturers, war companies that are responsible for the creation and delivery of these weapons that we are seeing being dropped on the Gaza Strip and all throughout Palestine, including AI technology that is used to uphold the apartheid system that is used against Palestinians. So for example, the University of Michigan has a $6 billion endowment, and it’s very unfortunate that despite us being a public university and despite the necessity of our funding needing to be made public, it is, for the vast majority, private and hidden and secretive. So it is nearly impossible for us to even dig deep into what particular companies the university is invested in. However, we have been able to generate a couple answers through our extensive research team.
We created an endowment guide that is a little over 50-pages long that details why the University of Michigan is complicit and how it is complicit. And as we see, universities across the United States are not just invested in the form of financial investments, but also academic partnerships. For example, with NYU Tel Aviv exchange programs and other academic exchanges that, if we were to be able to implement these boycotts, it could severely isolate Israel’s academics if major institutions around the world were to cease their partnerships. And unfortunately, a lot of these partnerships are completely discriminatory. So the university is partnering with these companies whom would inevitably exclude a huge demographic of their student body because it’s made only for a particular group.
So while we have these encampments going up and all of these demands for divestment, it is because by forcing our universities to divest, it applies immense amount of pressure on the Zionist state because, unfortunately, the only thing that talks to them or the only thing that they listen to is money. So that is why we are demanding for divestment and demanding for the cut of any and all companies that presently or in the future hold and maintain the war crimes that we have seen put against so many civilians, and that has cost so many lives to be taken away.
Ember McCoy:
Too, I’ll just add for a numbers perspective, the University of Michigan has a $17 billion endowment. That was a critical number that we talked about during the grad labor strike as well. It’s one of the largest public endowments in the country, and as Salma said, $6 billion of that is invested indirectly or directly in the Israeli occupation, whether it’s arms companies, directly in other companies that are supporting that in currency and [inaudible 00:19:07], which has been a huge research component for grad students and undergrads throughout the last couple months to try to figure out and do the digging on what exactly those numbers are, that it’s all been done on student labor, which has been really cool to see, I think. And now, that’s the pivotal demand of our encampment. And I think there are questions sometimes about why divestment, why is that the main demand? But for us, as students at this university, it’s really profoundly material.
This is the most immediate mechanism that we have access to as students, that feels relevant to us as students. And obviously, we don’t plan on just stopping there. There’s so much more than divestment that needs to be done. But these campaigns, especially when you couple them with [inaudible 00:20:00] and all these other universities with students all calling for divestment, it has the potential to divert hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, away from the genocide. So I think, for us, it’s a very pivotal point that feels very tangible as students who are contributing financially to the university.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just to make sure listeners are following along, what we’re saying is that the University of Michigan has a nearly $18 billion endowment, 17.9 billion as of 2024. And what student researchers have uncovered is that nearly $6 billion of that endowment is invested in private equity venture capital firms that own stakes in US military contractors and Israeli companies that are complicit in the ongoing genocide of Gaza. And we will include links in the show notes for folks who want to look more into that. But yeah, this is a key point that we’ve seen organizing on campuses focused on, is like, what are our universities doing with these endowments? What are our tuition dollars being invested in? Do we have a say over that?
We see this crop up when there are demands over safety measures on campus. Do we want police or do we want more trained health professionals responding when the university says we don’t have money for that, we say, what about your $18 billion endowment? These are the things that folks listening have heard come up on our different reporting over the years on campus struggles. But yeah, these universities, over the past four decades, have amassed massive endowments that coincides with the public disinvestment in higher education, turning so many of our institutions of higher ed into essentially hedge funds with classrooms attached to them. But that’s a subject for another day.
I wanted to ask, with the few minutes that I’ve got you left, I know I got to let y’all go. First, what has been the response from the administration and the campus community writ large? Of course, we’re seeing videos of Zionist protesters trying to infiltrate these encampments, instigate violence. The media right now is trying to portray these encampments as blood-thirsty, Hamas-led insurgencies, so on and so forth. So I just wanted to ask if y’all can comment on that, give us on the ground perspective of the response from the university, the campus community, and also if you have any final words about where this is going or where you feel it needs to go or where you’re seeing it go with these other encampments across the country and now spreading across the world.
Salma Hamamy:
So the Palestinian movement and anyone who partakes within this movement is automatically vilified, dehumanized, and demonized. And whenever we see any action that is led by the Palestinian movement, the media automatically tries to flip the narrative. However, what we’ve seen is that there have been cracks that are now breaking their entire outward persona that they’re trying to create regarding our movement and just visibly by looking within the encampment and within all of these encampments, a significant portion of our participants are Jewish students. And so when the media and when our universities say that it is making Jewish students feel unsafe, we have to ask that question, well, which Jewish students are you referring to, because there has been immense programming and immense amount of leadership coming from these encampments by anti-Zionist Jews who say, we are not going to allow this genocide to happen in our name.
So it has been a clear, hypocritical standing point that it is truly not about protecting a particular group or protecting freedom of speech, it is entirely protecting finance and profit over people and also protecting white supremacy and whatever ideologies that they’re using to uphold these oppressive systems that continue to infringe on our rights as students and also infringe on our rights as American citizens and on our families back home. So what we’re seeing within these encampments is that we are completely shattering whatever framework that they have tried to use against us. And that is why there has been so much force pushed onto these students because our simple statement and demand and our ability to rupture whatever stereotype that they have implemented is the very beginning to disrupting the entirety of the system. And that is why we’re seeing such brutalization against these students and that is why we’re seeing the encampments face so much repression because it takes something as simple as unity amongst several different communities to free the world at some point.
So while these encampments might seem to some as just a bunch of tents set up that is causing ruckus on campus, it is helping us envision a better world. And it is helping us defeat whatever narrative that has been prolonging for so many decades. And it’s just been an incredible experience seeing that and being able to watch us grow and defy the odds. And one of the things that has been so enjoyable to see is that the university fears us because of how little we fear them. And the university is so breakable because of how unbreakable the students have been, and that has entirely manifested within these encampments and throughout the world.
Ember McCoy:
And I’ll just echo what Salma had said, that I feel that the encampment has been the time where I feel the university has felt like truly a public university for the first time. As Salma talked about, there’s been educational programming and skill-building going on every single day, literally through programming, but also through the organizing and the mutual aid networks and the community that’s been formed. And I hope that people who are thinking about these encampments, coming by them or stopping by, can see and put a face to the organizing and the activism that’s happening and seeing this incredible community of students that are putting on this work. And I think for me, especially, it’s been interesting to think about over the last year through the strike and through all the repression on campus, it’s been really hard sometimes to be someone who wants to stay in academia as a grad worker.
But I think this past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how actually this encampment has given me so much hope of the undergrads and all the learning and the work that people are willing to put in to show that we’re not willing to placate the university and try to really push this space in the leverage that we can to be the university that we want it to be and that we know it can be. And I think that comes in different forms. We want the encampment to be a space where people can see who the people are that are actually working on this campaign that can be a reminder of the genocide, to be a visual reminder of what’s happening, very present and disrupting our lives, because it often isn’t otherwise. But then can also be this protest space where people can see that we’re continuing to call for divestment. And we’ve been trying to do that for the last six months, plus 20 years, and we’re ready for the university to actually act on it.
Salma Hamamy:
And for anyone who is interested in getting more involved in supporting the encampment, please visit our Instagram at SAFEUMICH. That is S-A-F-E-U-M-I-C-H. We have several links for folks to get involved, to donate. We have fundraisers that we are currently trying to put forth, especially to help evacuate some families in Gaza because they are our topmost priority. And we also have a bunch of email zaps that people can send to the administration, ensuring that the university protects its students and heeds our demands, and finally divests from genocide.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Salma, Ember, thank you both so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it. This will not be the last time that we report on the encampment at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus, nor the Student Intifada that we are seeing spread across the country and increasingly across the globe. In fact, we will be hosting a Real News live stream later this week on Thursday where we will be getting updates and check-ins from other encampments, including, hopefully, U of M, my alma mater there in Ann Arbor. So please, tune into The Real News YouTube channel at noon on Thursday.
Please share this interview as far and wide as you can. Please reach out to us if you, yourself, have connections or stories that you’d like us to investigate. And we are going to be here, we’re going to keep focusing on lifting up the voices from the grassroots, from the front lines of struggle in the US and around the world. For The Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off. Before you go, please head on over to therealnews.com/donate. Become a supporter of our work so we can keep bringing you important coverage and conversations just like this.
Thank you so much for listening. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
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