#goldsmithsuni

BREAKING!!!

Students at Goldsmiths University of London have restarted their protests in the face of footage that surfaced from Rafah and in response to Frances Corner showing little sign of taking student demands seriously and even less intent to hold up to her divestment agreements, which were made at the beginning of May 2024.

Protests at the uni have been covered by Al Jazeera and The Socialist Worker. Updates can be found on their Instagram @goldsmithsforpalestine. A vote of no confidence has been kick-started by the Student Union and will commence on June 7th 2024.

sourced from the UCSC SJP Instagram

Today the world bore witness to what took place at the UC Santa Cruz campus, the crossing of the barricade from police and the beating and arrest of occupying students. A brutal and deeply cruel decision made by those who see violence as an inevitable necessity in this world. As we would view community and family and peace they envision their weapons and riot gear. In the face of a genocide where people need protection the most it is the police and adjacent institutions who have upheld and exacerbated the systems and cultures of brutalising civilians. As they had done years before during the vietnam war they repeat themselves, unchanged by the cries for mercy in a language they do understand but choose not to hear. Every decision made by officers in these protests is an explicitly deliberate choice. Their choice to hide their badge numbers and IDs, their choice to not wear body cams and to not allow the press to enter and bear witness. 

These choices then, are indicative of the wider problem at hand and is a microcosm of what those students in California and us in London are fighting. A militarised police state who will readily resort to violence and respond only with force. This is a battle against those who will raise arms and batons  at those who they deem as lesser or unworthy. Unworthy of taking up space, unworthy of holding an opinion worth listening to and of existing in a better future. For them, freedom is a pipe dream and what we are all doing gives them an easy excuse to paint themselves as the ‘so-called-heroes’ of their community when in reality they are no better than heavy-handed thugs. The henchmen and bullies of our governments. The police have never and will never be allies to the people and their response to student protests will forever embellish this status quo. They are an institution built to serve and protect the interest of the highest bidder. An institution that has historically upheld and enforced barbaric laws without question. One that simply follows orders.

The arresting of 80 students because Larive found a protest was disruptive as a protest ought to be is unforgivable. Larive comments on how the students ‘undermined academic freedom’ and would ‘prevent free inquiry’ are all stupendously ironic from the woman who so readily siced the dogs on her students for exercising this academic freedom, this notion of free speech that is meant to be at the very least constitutionally upheld in America. Their freedom to inquire and question. No, this was an act of cowardice and complicit malice. This is a university chancellor comfortable in her power unwilling to change or learn from her very own students. This is a university whose higher ups have already made up their minds and are in no way interested in ‘free inquiry’ or any form of ‘integrity’.

The students of Goldsmiths University of London and “Goldsmiths4Palestine” stand with the University of California, Santa Cruz and “Students for Justice in Palestine”. You have our full support and solidarity from 5000 miles away. In a different continent and time zone we share hope and an indomitable human spirit for those who remain under fire and warfare.

image taken of the liberated zone CCA stairwell [Wed 19th May 2024]

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the student occupation of the CCA building and their demands for an end to university complicity in genocide. We support that call and their protest.

The student group Goldsmiths for Palestine has led a campaign on campus demanding an end to university complicity and silence on Israeli apartheid and genocide. Through two student occupations of campus buildings (Professor Stuart Hall building [20 February-27 March 2024] & the Library [1-3 May 2024]), the group managed in early May to win concessions from the senior management team around a set of demands.

In the month since those commitments were published, communications and negotiations with senior management have deteriorated. Warden Frances Corner and Chief Financial Officer/Acting Chief Operating Officer Imran Chughtai have also been absent from the last two meetings. While they remain committed to some demands (eg. implementation of new scholarships for Palestinians in the coming academic year), we have little faith that they will follow through with addressing financial institutional complicity (click here to read about Goldsmiths’ financial complicity).

Further, they were unable to meet the most simple of demands: to release a collaborative statement condemning Israel’s actions and calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Senior management's most recent proposed draft used such offensive language that both Goldsmiths for Palestine and the Students Union found it unworkable.

In light of this, and horrific intensifications of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing, including the Rafah tent massacre this week, the students are re-escalating and entering an occupation/encampment in the CCA. The CCA is significant due to its connection with the Gertler family who are directly complicit in enabling genocide (click here to read more about the Gertlers’ complicity). We escalate once more to ensure that the demands are fully met, but also to re-centre the urgency of ending the killings, destruction and horrors which Israel continues to inflict. We also rejoin the global wave of student encampments calling for an end to university complicity and standing in full solidarity with Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Goldsmiths students, staff, friends, and alumni: join us. This must be a call from us all. We reject an institution that co-opts the student movement for Palestine whilst continuing to fund genocide. We reject a duplicitous and cowardly Warden and senior management that hides from accountability- the same management currently pushing through an unprecedented 130+ full-time equivalent redundancies.

We demand Warden Frances Corner and the senior management team attend an open meeting with students and staff in the occupied CCA building to address their inaction.

SIGN THE OPEN LETTER TODAY AND STAND AGAINST UNIVERSITY COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE