Universities brace for new round of pro-Palestinian protests after quiet summer

After a quiet summer, universities in the Netherlands are bracing themselves for Gaza support protests to start up again with the new academic year, Parool reports.

Protest movements almost always die down in the summer, Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, a professor of social change and conflict at the VU University in Amsterdam, told the newspaper. “Activists also go on vacation. The same goes for students who go on summer recess.”

The point of protests and demonstrations is also to disrupt daily life and draw attention to the cause, which makes little sense when daily life is slowed down to a crawl because everyone is on summer vacation.

Other solidarity actions for Palestine over the summer - like various vandalisms in Amsterdam covering several places, from the Royal Palace on Dam Square to the statues of Anne Frank and Mahatma Gandhi, in graffiti - show that the sentiment still lives.

The fact that a small group of activists performs more radical actions during quieter protest periods is a recognizable dynamic, Van Stekelenburg told Parool. “When the number of activists decreases, a small group tries to maintain momentum.”

Van Stekelenburg expects that students will start demonstrating again after the summer recess. “But we don’t know what that will look like. Will the students immediately take to the barricades again, or will they wait for the elaborated ethical frameworks of the universities?”

After multiple large barricades, with students demanding their universities cut ties with Israeli institutions, universities promised to set up “ethical frameworks” to examine their ties with third parties and international collaborations.

The University of Amsterdam (UvA), for example, set up a working group and held round-table discussions to determine whether it needs to adjust its current framework for assessing international collaborations. The working group ultimately advised the university to not only scrutinize new research projects, as it currently does, but to also take an extra critical look at ongoing collaborations in situations of “war, large-scale conflict, and gross and systematic human rights violations.” The UvA will start working on the recommendations after the summer recess.

The VU told Parool that it has already assessed and expanded its ethical framework for international collaborations and will work with the new framework for a trial period fo six months. The university did not provide details.

However, students are dissatisfied with how slow their universities are moving. “It seems as if they are deliberately stalling for time: basically everything to ensure that the ties do not have to be broken. While there is a genocide going on in Palestine and every second counts,” UvA student Anouk told Parool, asking the paper not to publish her last name.

“We understand that it takes time to dismantle binding agreements,” said Jay, a VU student active for VU for Palestine. “But we find it absurd that the ties cannot be temporarily frozen until then. Even the International Court of Justice has said that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory is illegal.”

According to Parool, the students it spoke to showed various degrees of satisfaction with their universities’ efforts. But most agree that they need to keep up the pressure in the coming year with renewed protests against academic collaborations with Israeli institutions.

“More than 40,000 Palestinians have now been murdered in Gaza, including 10,000 students,” Jay said. “They will not face a new academic year.”

Since October 7, Israeli attacks have killed at least 40,405 people in Galza, including nearly 16,500 children. More than 93,468 people are injured, and over 10,000 are missing, Al Jazeera reported based on figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. In the occupied West Bank, Israel has killed at least 642 people, including at least 147 children, and injured over 5,400.

In Israel, the terrorist movement Hamas killed 1,139 people in its October 7 attacks that started this atrocity.