On Tuesday July 23, Students for the Liberation of Palestine - Kjipuktuk (SLPK) members held a joint press conference beginning at 4pm with faculty supporters and student union presidents inside an administrative building behind the student encampment at Dalhousie University (Dal). Speakers and supporters stayed inside after the conference wrapped.
At 5pm, SLPK members began asking for help from rally goers in holding the doors open to the Henry Hicks building as they stayed inside. The doors were held open by supporters as some rally-goers moved towards a teach-in at the encampment, while others stayed in the main lobby of the building.
Dal Security guards appeared in the hallways flanking the coalition members but didn’t attempt to interfere.
Just after 7pm, several Halifax Regional Police (HRP) officers arrived at the building and asked students to vacate the building, which they did without incident. There was no attempt by officers to interfere with the encampment and no charges were laid. A few hours later, the encampment remained, students were out of the building and the police had left. A Dal Security liaison walked around the group wearing a bodycam saying he was there to make sure campers were fine.
The conference was held in response to a recent statement from Dal.
Though the SLPK encampment is at Dal, it’s not exclusively made up of Dal students. Rather, it’s a coalition of students from five Halifax schools, including students from King’s, Dal, NSCAD, MSVU and SMU. However, because of its location, Dal administration has been the one to respond throughout with public statements acknowledging the coalition and encampment exist.
On Friday, July 19 Dal released their latest statement online addressed to the university community writ large. Signed by Dal’s president, Kim Brooks, and vice-provost student affairs, and Rick Ezekiel, it read that, “while many conversations remain ongoing…we have finalized our commitments and are taking steps to return the Studley Quad to be an open space available for the use of our whole community.” It added that “ongoing encampment activity will not have an impact on whether these engagements and commitments proceed.”
They list their commitments under the following three categories:
- Student supports, which includes academic amnesty for encampment participants until the end of the summer term and a commitment to work with the Dal Student Union (DSU) on future fundraising efforts to support Palestinian academics.
- Academic partnerships, which points to a future review of their international partnerships.
- Investment disclosure and divestment, which mentions steps that will be taken in the fall to review their investment review policy as well as a future meeting to be held with “representatives from the Investment Committee, the Board’s Finance, Audit, Investment and Risk Committee, University Treasury Office, and the DSU executive” to review information from their investment managers.
In response, one member called Dal’s statement “hollow commitments,” and reiterated that waiting for the fall is not acceptable.
“We're asking for action immediately because students should not be sleeping on this lawn waiting for administrators and capitalists in the [university’s] board of governors to do the right thing.”
SLPK members had already seen Dal’s statement, in a draft sent to them on Monday, July 15, and had replied to the university with concerns the following day.
SLPK posted their concerns on Instagram following Dal’s final statement released Friday, saying they had asked Dal for a “contractually binding agreement” and said they “explicitly did not consent to [Dal’s summary of engagement and commitments] being sent out to the broader community” on July 19, because they had concerns that needed to be addressed.
The university wrote back on Wednesday, July 17, according to the same SLPK post on Instagram, telling the SLPK that “we will not be approaching our next steps through an agreement that would bring us into a negotiated space.”
Thus, the SLPK wrote on Instagram that Dal’s statement was a disappointment because “it failed to:
- Mention Israel once
- Commit to full disclosure
- Fully acknowledge our complete list of demands
- Make any concrete commitments
- Use the word genocide”
As of Thursday, July 25, Reuters has reported via Palestinian health authorities that Israel’s military actions in Gaza have killed more than 39,000 people and displaced the majority of 2.3 million Gazans from their homes.
On Tuesday, July 23 the SLPK students were joined by faculty and student union supporters to host a joint press conference in the Henry Hicks administrative building in front of the encampment, reiterating their disappointment with Dal’s July 19 statement.
Over a hundred people showed up for the conference, despite the late afternoon rain. They stood together outside the building, some under umbrellas, listening to speaker-projected speeches from SLPK members, Dal Palestinian Society members, student union presidents from Dal, NSCAD and King’s and faculty members sitting at a long table inside.
Dal Palestinian Society president, Joud, said at the conference that Dal “has made the active choice to continue its 200 years of colonial legacy by directly funding the Israeli apartheid and ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Joud pointed to the fact that, on the same day Dal issued its July 19 statement, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued their advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, which included the line “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the régime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”
Vice-president of the Dal Palestinian Society and SLPK member, Yousef, said Tuesday “we are not satisfied with the non-binding commitments that Dalhousie has made and have no intention of withdrawing until Dalhousie meets the demands of the students and fully divests.
“No hurricanes, floods, administrative intimidation or threats of violence, no carefully worded email—nothing will remove us until divestment.”
He said the SLPK members were “insulted by Dalhousie misleading us to the community and misrepresenting our work,” in the university’s July 19 statement.
He said Al-Zeitoun University has been open to all since it opened May 12, providing free housing, free meals and regular teach-ins for everyone to attend.
“While it has grown, it has remained peaceful and respectful,” said Yousef. “We are honoured that we have developed a respectful and resilient community which supports our learning more than Dalhousie ever has and for the university to have escalated in this way is contradictory to their initial remarks during the start of Al-Zeitoun University.”
Dal’s president Brooks had joined SLPK members inside a tent early on at the encampment for a meeting with students to discuss ongoing conversations.
“We the students, bolstered by faculty and community support, will remain,” Yousef said Tuesday. “We will not be swayed by hollow commitments or half-measures. We have been clear from the beginning: we are here until divestment and that is final.”
Students at the SLPK encampment say the university’s statement is an escalation tactic that runs against their original commitment to “open dialogue,” said Mariam Knakriah, DSU president at the press conference Tuesday.
Knakriah and the DSU have been amplifying the demands of the Dal Palestinian Society and the SLPK since March.
Dal’s July 19 statement acknowledges the involvement of the DSU in pushing for upcoming changes to their investment vetting process going forward, and acknowledges Dal’s collaboration with the DSU on fundraising efforts to support Palestinian students and researchers.
“For almost three months, the DSU alongside the SLPK has been tirelessly working to promote an environment of ethical responsibility and human rights advocacy on campus,” said Knakriah Tuesday. “We have had to constantly educate our university on genocide and apartheid…wondering how many more lives must be lost in Palestine for Dalhousie to finally act?” Knakriah said it’s been “disappointing to see an institution that prides itself on research-based information demonstrating such a level of unawareness” when it comes to Palestine.
“Now more than ever, Dalhousie must step up and leverage resources to make a difference.”
A university faculty member named Shira who identified as a part of Independent Jewish Voices Halifax and the Jewish Faculty Network also spoke at Tuesday’s conference, saying the SLPK coalition students “ have not hidden behind words like complexity or neutrality that our administrators like to deploy in defence of non-action.”
Shira said that “unlike so many more powerful and privileged people, these students have not let false accusations of antisemitism…claim that opposing mass murder is somehow anti-Jewish.”
Shira said that these students do not need their endorsement because they are Jewish, because “they have created a community and movement welcoming of all people. Their legitimacy is not derived from a Jewish person's approval, but from the righteousness of their cause and the justness of their actions…in calling on their institutions to disclose, divest and reinvest.”
Shira called the SLPK students “a credit to all of the educators that have ever been fortunate enough to have crossed paths with them,” and that “any attempt to remove the encampment without meeting with demands will be a stain on the institution's reputation forever.”
It’s been 75 days since students first set up tents in solidarity with Palestine on the Studley Quad at Dalhousie University.
Today, the Students for the Liberation of Palestine Kjipuktuk (SLPK) are responsible for one of the last remaining pro-Palestinian university encampments, following police raids at others across the country this summer. Renamed Al-Zeitoun University, the encampment at Dal is the last remaining on a U15 major research university campus.
As to the feeling of escalation SLPK members say this week has brought, the university’s statement posted Tuesday also coincided with them cutting their power and restricting access to washrooms for campers that SLPK members say happened Monday, July 22. SLPK members said at Tuesday’s conference they think the administration wants their tents gone before fall orientation, or “O-Week,” begins on Aug. 29.
Campers say that Dal Security liaisons who have been interacting with the campers since May have begun wearing body cameras full-time while speaking with them. This is a change since May, when cameras were worn sporadically, campers say.
The Coast has reached out to Dal for comment on whether they plan on removing the SLPK encampment but they did not respond to the request, instead reiterating the commitments articulated in their statement from Friday.
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