The perspectives of protesters at the University of Texas at Austin

As campus protests against Israel’s war spread to colleges across the U.S., NPR’s Leila Fadel speaks with University of Texas at Austin students, on both sides, about their concerns and demands.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The daily realities of the war in Gaza are what’s driving protests that have spread to college campuses across the U.S. Many compare this moment…

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Disclose. Divest. We will not stop. We will not rest. Disclose. Divest.

FADEL: …To the 1960s, when students mobilized against the Vietnam War and were met with force.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Leave this area immediately.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Strike. Strike. Strike.

FADEL: Student demonstrators against the war in Gaza say they are following in that tradition of peaceful protest as more and more college administrators call in police to disperse their demonstrations.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: I go to this school.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Let them go. Let them go.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: I have a right to be here.

FADEL: Today, we’re going to share perspectives from student protesters and those who disagree with them at one campus, the University of Texas at Austin, where police and state troopers in riot gear have been called in repeatedly.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) There’s no riot here. Why are you in riot gear?

AMMER QADDUMI: We feel that we can’t advocate for Palestine the way we want to without facing these brutal crackdowns.

FADEL: That’s Ammer Qaddumi, a Palestinian American student with the Palestine Solidarity Committee which organized many of the protests at UT Austin, demanding their university divest from manufacturers supplying Israel weapons. He spoke to us days after his own arrest.

QADDUMI: I was there trying to disperse the crowd.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

QADDUMI: We want – we need everyone to disperse now to avoid arrest, please.

I turned to the officer who I’d been speaking with, and I reiterated once again, you know, our frustration that, you know, we’re not being allowed to comply. And at that point, they came and arrested me.

(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD SHOUTING)

QADDUMI: This was their first resort – was to use this brutal force to silence their students instead of trying to understand why their students were protesting, why we’re calling for an end to UT’s investments in the genocide happening in Gaza right now.

FADEL: These protesters call the war in Gaza a genocide. It’s something Israel denies, saying its goal is to eliminate Hamas after it attacked on October 7 and continues to hold hostages and lob rockets. There is a case at the U.N.’s top court accusing Israel of genocide. The judges found the charge plausible but have not made a final ruling. Student protester Elijah Kahlenberg was injured when officers dispersed the crowds.

ELIJAH KAHLENBERG: I was pushed to the ground, and I actually ended up spraining my ankle. The police were using, at one point, flash-bangs to disperse the crowd. They were using bear mace. The means of dispersal were very violent.

FADEL: The use of force, he says, is just pushing more people to join.

KAHLENBERG: The protests expanded from beyond just the divestment campaign to one where people were coming into the protest. They saw the civil liberties of their fellow students repressed. And they said, this is wrong. I should be coming into the protest to defend the First Amendment civil liberties of my fellow students.

FADEL: Now, some students welcomed at least some police presence on campus. Jacob Sanders is co-president of the Jewish student group Texas Hillel. And he spoke with me with another member, Seth Greenwald, a UT Austin law student.

How have you felt about the protests? Jacob, why don’t we start with you?

JACOB SANDERS: Overall, I’ve always been a huge proponent of, you have the right to protest. You have the right to free speech. It’s just that with some of the speech being said, that’s when it starts to become a little more alarming.

FADEL: Could you say more about what’s alarming you? You said some speech being said.

SANDERS: There’s been some speech on campus that a lot of Jewish students can interpret as antisemitic – chants of intifada, from the river to the sea. I feel like if students who are chanting that knew how it made us feel, I would feel a little better on campus right now.

FADEL: Seth, why don’t you come in here and tell me how it’s been?

SETH GREENWALD: As far as I’m concerned, when somebody’s calling for from the river to the sea, I understand that for them, they mean a free Palestinian state that is free of occupation. The only chant that personally upsets me are those calls for an intifada because for me, as a Jewish student, calls for an intifada in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remind me of the violence, the stabbings, the bus bombings.

FADEL: The Arabic word, intifada, that Greenwald refers to means uprising or shaking off. And he is describing a specific period of time in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict known as the Second Intifada. Unlike the first one in the 1980s and 1990s of largely civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation, the second one in the early 2000s was a period of violence. I take this back to the protesters. Now, they say the word intifada is being politicized. They condemn antisemitism and any hate speech. And their movement includes many Jewish students like Kahlenberg. Again, Qaddumi.

QADDUMI: You know, our movement is one that calls for the liberation of Palestinian people. It does not call for violence or hate against anyone else. That’s not what’s going to liberate Palestine. For anyone who hears the word intifada, and they associate it with, you know, violence against a group of people – this is not a complete picture. For anyone who doesn’t understand what intifada is, I think they only need to look at what’s been happening across the country on college campuses, right? This is the uprising. This is people waking up – right? – realizing that the systems of oppression exist all around us, and we need to advocate against it.

And it’s not violent. These are all peaceful demonstrations. These are all just college students here in the United States advocating, like we’ve seen college students advocate in the past against apartheid South Africa, against the war in Vietnam.

FADEL: Three of the four students I spoke to say they’ve dealt with specific bigotry or personal attacks for who they are and the stances they’re taking. The UT law student, Seth Greenwald.

GREENWALD: I’ve been actively putting myself in the middle of the crowd. I was spit at twice and told to go back to Poland. Also, a friend of mine was told that all Zionists should die. And she was told to go back to Germany.

FADEL: Ammer Qaddumi, the student protest leader.

QADDUMI: We held an educational event on the history of the Palestinian struggle. We were met with three grown men who identified themselves as former IDF soldiers, who proceeded to shout, you know, derogatory remarks, curse at us. The fact that these men could just come to campus, you know, unimpeded was something that was a great cause for concern for the Palestinian student community. And UT came back with their investigation and claimed that there was no wrongdoing. So from the very beginning of this entire situation, we’ve been facing lack of acknowledgment of our concerns.

FADEL: And Elijah Kahlenberg, a Jewish American anti-Gaza war demonstrator.

KAHLENBERG: I’ve been called a self-hating Jew. I’ve been called a kapo, which is a Jew who sells out fellow Jews to the Nazis.

FADEL: I asked the students from the Jewish student group, Hillel, how they feel about the administration’s response to the protests. Again, Jacob Sanders.

SANDERS: I agree with, you know, you have the right to protest. But when it’s encroaching on other students’ rights on campus, that’s when it becomes an issue. And with some of the speech that was being said on campus, I do feel a bit safer with a bit of a police presence.

FADEL: And I asked the student protesters what drives each of them to keep demonstrating under the threat of academic suspension and police force.

QADDUMI: It’s not demonstration for the sake of demonstration. It’s protests for the children of Gaza. I think that’s something that people cannot lose sight of.

KAHLENBERG: I fundamentally view the Palestinian people as part of my family. The Palestinian people have more in common with the Jewish people than any other people. And so to me, when your family is harmed, you have a duty and obligation to stand up for them.

FADEL: Those were UT Austin students Ammer Qaddumi, Elijah Kahlenberg, Jacob Sanders and Seth Greenwald. UT Austin says arrests were made because an encampment is a violation of its rules. The Texas Department of Public Safety has not responded to our request for comment.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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