Recorded: No

Curated Track: 

Yousuf Al-Bulushi, University of California - Irvine

Description:

Amidst the latest iteration of Israel's long standing genocidal war against Palestinians, college students across the world launched Palestine solidarity encampments on hundreds of campuses. These encampments, not unlike those of the Arab uprisings and the Occupy movements that came before them, offered temporary autonomous zones on university campuses where uttering the words Palestine had been directly or indirectly banished from many classrooms. They brought together students, faculty, staff, and community members to share strategies around divestment, blockades, and occupations, all intended to throw a wrench in the transnational complicity of higher education in Israel's genocidal campaign. They also soon became flashpoints for direct clashes with the police and with paramilitary forces organized by neo-fascist Zionist mobs. This session will explore the on-the-ground, and place-based reality of the individual encampments. It will ask, what worked well in these encampments? What strategies and tactics failed? How might we situate the encampments in the broader geography of the Palestine solidarity movement?

This session was planned by the Geographers for Justice in Palestine and is part of a series of events including panels and a field trip.

Non-Presenting Participants