At Brown University, a pro-Palestinian encampment is growing, as the campus community puts pressure on the university’s president to take action on divestment, and to ask for charges to be dropped against students who were previously arrested while protesting on campus.
Beyond the Brown Campus, activists in downtown Providence gathered to put pressure on Senator Jack Reed. At 8 on Thursday morning, more than 30 activists from Jewish Voice For Peace-Rhode Island gathered outside of Reed’s downtown Providence office, where they shouted chants of “Jack Reed, Jack Reed, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Zack Kligler, a spokesperson for the group, said, as chair of the Senate Armed Services, Reed holds a unique position of influence. Kligler said the group was there to protest Reed’s vote to send $15 billion in military aid to Israel on Tuesday.
“We are here to tell him that the people of Rhode Island need our tax dollars to go to desperately needed improvements to housing infrastructure, health care, education, not to more bombs and destruction in Gaza,” said Kligler.
In an interview the day prior with The Public’s Radio, Reed defended the aid to Israel, adding that the U.S. is also sending humanitarian aid to Gaza under the same bill. The bill includes $10 billion in funding for civilians split among more than four conflict zones and $1 billion in humanitarian aid specifically in Gaza. Reed also said he believes the Israeli Defense Force has softened their assault on civilians.
“I think we’ve seen certainly since the first days, we’ve seen a more sensitive response by the IDF to their obligations under the humanitarian laws,” he said.
The news about the aid bill came about the same time as revelations that the Gaza Civil Defense force had uncovered mass graves with hundreds of bodies near a hospital Israel had attacked and occupied. The United Nations civil rights arm said it had seen evidence that the people who had died were tortured.
The aid was also approved as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning for a ground assault on the city of Rafah, which, according to reporting by Reuters, is sheltering 2.3 million civilians. Many legislators, including Reed, have called for Netanyahu to step down, despite sending more funding to the military he controls.
At Brown University on the second day of an encampment that began Wednesday morning, there was an air of celebration following a vote by a campus advisory body. The Brown University Community Council voted on Thursday night to recommend two action items that protestors have been asking for throughout the semester.
The first was a recommendation that the school’s president allow students to make a presentation on divestment to the Brown Corporation Board, the body that governs the university and its endowment. For years, students have been asking their school to divest from companies they say facilitate human rights abuses in the Palestinian Territories. The school’s $6.6 billion endowment is invested in seven funds. It holds 19,167,905 shares in an American Century fund, whose portfolio is .2% comprised of investments in a defense contractor, according the fund’s most recent full quarterly holdings report in 2022. Brown University also owns 122,263,167 shares in a company with portfolio holdings in at least 6 defense and aerospace companies.
The second recommendation the advisory body approved was that the school ask for charges against student protestors to be dropped. In the fall, 20 Jewish students were arrested at Brown while protesting in an administrative building after hours. The university pushed for those charges to be dropped after a student was shot while visiting family in Vermont. However, when another group of 41 students was arrested during a similar protest, the university did not push for the charges to be dropped. Brown University President Christina Paxson said she sought to have the charges dropped after the shooting “to honor and recognize … the really hard time we were going through.”
PhD candidate Ash Uruchurtu said activists were “over the moon” at the recommendations made by advisory board on Thursday but were uncertain that Paxson would follow them. Paxson is not obligated by the advisory body’s by-laws to do so and her spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. The spokesperson said the school would not be able to send any other comments on the vote by deadline.
“I can definitely appreciate that President Paxson is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I would say, though, that this effectively puts the ball in her court,” said Uruchurtu. “I hope that if nothing else, the outcome of this meeting shows that Brown cares and we’re watching to see what happens next.”
The university has said the encampment is against its school policy. The school has promised internal disciplinary action against students but has said being at the encampment is not an arrestable offense in and of itself. Brown has said arrests could be made if the situation escalates.
Despite threats of disciplinary action, the encampment continues to grow. At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, student organizers from the group Brown Divest Coalition said they had 75 pledged campers. By Thursday evening, the number of campers had grown to 112.
The students are also being supported by hundreds of peers and community members who are joining in on the protests during the day, as well as faculty and staff members volunteering as legal observers during the daytime and evening, and on call in case of any escalating action overnight.