Pro-Palestine students walk out in solidarity with Columbia and Yale protestors
Students staged a “Solidarity Walkout” at Memorial Church on Monday afternoon that drew around 300 people to show support for Palestine in the ongoing Israel-Gaza War and pro-Palestinian peers at universities across the U.S. Protestors also demanded that Stanford divest from companies connected to the war or Israel.
On Monday, police arrested dozens of protesters at NYU and Yale as pro-Palestinian protests swept across college campuses, following the arrest of more than 100 protestors at Columbia on Thursday. Columbia canceled in-person classes for the day.
Students held posters reading, “Not in our name” and “Revolution Now,” while chanting phrases like “From Stanford to Gaza, globalize the Intifada.”
The walkout was organized by demonstrators with the Sit-In To Stop Genocide, now known as Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP). The Sit-In, which lasted for 120 days, demanded that the University divest from and boycott companies “complicit in Israeli war crimes, apartheid and genocide” and called for a ceasefire in a University statement.
University administration removed the Sit-In To Stop Genocide’s physical tent on Feb. 17.
During a welcome session at Family Weekend where President Richard Saller was speaking on Feb. 24, 18 Stanford students, some associated with the sit-in, were issued citations for interrupting the event.
The Daily has reached out to the University for comment.
“When we were all admitted to Stanford, we were repeatedly assured by the phrase, ‘There is a place for you here.’ And they weren’t wrong,” said one speaker, who did not share a name. “If you’re willing to remain silent and abandon your principle, there’s a place for you here… And if you’re willing to be complicit in genocide, there is a place for you here.”
Students expressed solidarity with other oppressed groups and colonized nations, including the Philippines, South Africa and Hawai’i.
Mahina Kaomea ’25, who spoke on behalf of the Natives for Palestine, read a love poem for the Sit-In and said that growing up in Hawai’i taught her about the “realities of occupation… that keeps us silent.”
“The Stanford Red is stained with blood and we are people of conscience who refuse to stand for its violence overseas,” said a speaker who identified themselves as Shannon, and spoke on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as well as the Law School chapter of SJP. “Call for the right side of history.”
Jacqueline Munis contributed reporting.
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