Our ongoing coverage of the NYU takeover continues here and on our twitter feed.
Most of the Take Back NYU protest’s demands relate to campus governance and accountability — student representation on the NYU board of trustees, disclosure of financial data, fair labor practices within the university. In that list, two demands stand out:
- That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.
- That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.
A lot of people are asking where these demands came from, and an overnight statement from TBNYU provides a partial answer. Here’s an excerpt:
By demanding investigation into war and genocide profiteers, providing aid to Gaza, and offering scholarshipts to Palestinian students, we are demanding that the University heed our own voices immediately. Through these demands we are also stating our solidarity with the students who have occupied their universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere demanding aid for war-torn Gaza.
That last sentence is crucial. Since early January, students at more than twenty universities across Britain have staged sit-ins demanding administration action on Palestinian issues. Two weeks ago, students at the University of Rochester in upstate New York held a similar protest. Today’s NYU occupation follows those actions in form, and by making Palestinian issues part of their list of demands, TBNYU is linking its protest to the others in content as well.
By calling for support for Palestinian students and the University of Gaza, TBNYU is sending a message to student activists on both sides of the Atlantic. It is declaring itself to be part of a new international student movement.
Will that movement materialize? Will student sit-ins start to spread in the US as they continue to do in the UK? Too soon to tell, obviously. But the inclusion of the Palestinian demands wasn’t random, it was calculated.
Observers, like commenters here, who claim that it shows a lack of strategic sophistication on TBNYU’s part have it exactly backwards.
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February 19, 2009 at 1:20 pm
More on the NYU Occupation « studentactivism.net
[…] Update: New Post — Why Gaza? Inside the NYU Protesters’ Demands. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Building Takeover Underway at NYUHow NYU can […]
February 19, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Take Back NYU Update: Thursday Evening. « studentactivism.net
[…] February 19, 2009 in Administration, Campus Protests, Current Events, Student Power, Students Coverage continues from here and here. […]
February 20, 2009 at 11:40 am
Take Back NYU Occupation: Day Three « studentactivism.net
[…] February 20, 2009 in Campus Protests, Current Events, Police, Student Power Coverage continues from here. Additional updates can be found on our twitter feed. For a discussion of the protesters’ demands, see this post. […]
February 24, 2009 at 10:11 pm
wilsonrofishing
I love Take Back NYU! A team of the world’s best comedic screenwriters could not have scripted their pathetic last stand to play out any funnier. Corporate Water???? Come on, you have to admit that is the most pathetically bourgeois thing you’ve heard in a long time, no? Water is bad, Apple is good? Take Back NYU is going to ruin the Apple brand altogether!
February 25, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Five Things Take Back NYU’s Critics Got Wrong. « studentactivism.net
[…] Gaza, Bobst, and Coca Cola. I’ve written about their embrace of the Palestinian cause here, and I’d want to know more about the background to the Bobst demand before saying much about […]