The arraignment courtroom at the Garrahy Judicial Complex in downtown Providence was filled with Brown University undergraduate students wearing keffiyehs on Feb. 12.
The students were there to face charges of willful trespassing stemming from a Dec. 11 protest after hours in an administrative building on campus. Twenty of the students pleaded not guilty on Monday, and the remaining 21 are expected to do so when they appear before the judge on Feb. 14. The students were accompanied by dozens of their peers and a handful of their professors, also involved in pro-Palestinian activism on campus.
The students have been protesting against their school’s investment in companies they say profit from human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories. The university called Providence Police to the scene of the Dec. 11 protest, and by doing so, forced the charges, which they have declined to ask the city to drop.
The university’s president, Christina Paxson, has repeatedly refused to bring a divestment proposal to school’s governing body, the Brown Corporation Board, including at a triannual meeting of the board last week. The school’s $6.6 billion endowment is indirectly invested in at least several companies that may meet the students’ criteria for investment, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Brown University has been inconsistent in pursuing trespassing charges related to the activism this academic year. The Dec. 11 protest occurred about a month after 20 Jewish students were arrested while protesting the same cause in the same building after hours. However, the school asked for those trespassing charges to be dropped after a Palestinian classmate of theirs, Hisham Awartani, was shot in the spine and paralyzed while speaking Arabic and wearing a keffiyeh in Burlington, Vermont, during Thanksgiving break.
“Given the unexpected circumstances of recent days, Brown University reached out to the city solicitor’s office today and asked that the trespass charges against the students be dismissed, and the city has agreed,” Amanda McGregor, a spokesperson for the university, wrote in a memo sent to news media the day before the 20 Jewish students were set to face charges.
Sophomore Alicia Joo said by pleading not guilty and possibly bringing this case to trial, students are hoping to show the way the university pushes back against student activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Just point more attention towards the outlandishness of Brown University in pursuing this,” said Joo. “We will not just roll over and take it.”
During a similar action at Harvard University in late November, where students occupied an administrative building, the school did not call outside officers to the scene. After a 24-hour-long sit-in, students left that building without the school taking legal action.
Monday’s arraignments come days after 17 Brown University students ended an eight-day-long hunger strike meant to elevate the issue of divestment during the most recent round of board meetings. Hundreds of protestors supported the students on hunger strike daily during that period, with rallies and activities in the campus center, and the main green. Students faced down board members on Friday who did not respond to them.
In an emailed comment released to The Public’s Radio on Sunday, Paxson said the board did not consider any proposals for divestment at its February meetings. She also doubled down on her position that Brown’s endowment should not be used “as a tool for political advocacy on contested issues.”
Paxson’s critics say the school is effectively taking a political stance by not pursuing divestment.
“I think the way that they’ve just refused to even entertain the idea of divestment is clearly taking a stance,” said Kate Kuli, a junior at Brown studying human rights.
