Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine protest during ‘week of rage’ events
Penn State students protested at Old Main Tuesday afternoon as part of the Students for Justice in Palestine’s “week of rage” events against the Israel-Hamas war and other related issues.
The hour-long protest was co-hosted by the SJP, the Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus, and had about 40 people in attendance.
Sarah Dweik, of Students for Justice in Palestine, said they held the protest — part of a slate of other events this week — because they’re upset with Penn State administration for not protecting the students.
“We are angry that our university refuses to do anything to protect us in the face of intensifying fascism, and we are through with asking our admin nicely to defend their students in the face of genocide, of fascism and of imperialism. We are here to make it clear that we must stand up for our rights, because we know that no one else will do that work for us,” she said.
“We protect and advocate for us. Across the nation, our peers, our fellow students, are under attack for being immigrants, international students, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and people of color … And even though this is happening, Penn State admin remains silent, not giving us any confirmation, commitment or assurance that they will have our backs.”
Penn State is “permitting a culture of hate,” Dweik said, something the SJP wrote about in a letter to the editor in The Daily Collegian, alongside the Organization for Queer and Transgender People of Color and The Penn State Student Black Caucus.
She said Penn State students have a history of making change with protests, such as the encampments in 1986 against the apartheid in South Africa.
“They were successful, and we can be as well,” she said. “…We have to stand up for our rights, especially when we stand up against genocide, against war, against death. We want the ARL off of our campus. We want more manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and RTX off of our campus. We want our university to divest from death and invest in DEI and racial justice.”
Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, or ARL, is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense.
Bryana McClinton of the Black Caucus said Tuesday’s protest shows they can stand united and take steps forward. She touched on the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
“DEI has been taken away from certain universities and it may be taken away from ours, even though our president has shown that one of her goals for this university is to enforce DEI, or DEIB,” McClinton said. “We want to be able to show that it has to stay — it has to stay — as we are in need of that to be able to show that we are here for each other.”
Other speakers highlighted the need to keep coming together, speaking up on these issues and taking small steps forward, as well as the importance of Penn State allowing for the graduate student workers to hold a vote on unionizing.
Tuesday’s protest marks the first time a protest of this nature has been held on campus since President Donald Trump said federal funding will stop for any college that allows “illegal protests.”
In a March 4 Truth Social post, he wrote, “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”
The First Amendment allows for protests.
Penn State did not respond to an inquiry about if they have received guidance on the matter or if they would take any action against the protest. There were a handful of police that could be seen off to the sides of the protest, as is usually the case for on-campus protests, but they did not intervene during the event.
While Trump did not explain what constitutes an “illegal” protest, the post came a day after his administration announced it would review government contracts from Columbia University over the school’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.” His administration then announced plans to cancel about $400 million in federal grants to the New York university.
