Breaking: UO refuses to divest, threatens student free speech

Read our press release and then come to our rally at 10:30am tomorrow in front of Lillis Hall

Eugene Ore. — After meeting with the encampment negotiations team, the UO administration has threatened to revoke academic amnesty for all protesters starting tomorrow at noon.

The administers’ document given to negotiators says, UO administration has “offered to forego pursuit of student conduct code charges against those in the encampment (for violating space reservation and overnight camping rules, which are in pace for campus to maintain respectful operations and physical safety) if there is no further overnight camping and if recognized student groups reserve space for further gathering during daytime hours through appropriate channels… this offer expires at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.”

Within this exchange of overnight camping for academic amnesty, the administration has offered the following nominal responses on the encampment’s demands:

3. Administration has agreed to follow the encampment’s demand for administration to distribute education and resources to faculty during hiring and onboarding regarding the Israeli and military-industrial investments implicated in faculty retirement plans.

5. The encampment demands the cessation of all academic exchanges, bi-national research grants, and other academic relationships with all Israeli universities, administration offered to expand academic relationships with Israeli universities as well as those of other Middle Eastern countries, most of which have been normalizing political and economic relations with Israel.

6.The encampment demanded further investment and enhancement of educational resources on Palestine, the administration proposed “expanding education on the Middle East and on the Israel-Palestine conflict… increase resources for educational events… work with relevant united … to explore hosting visiting scholars [and] to develop a concept paper for a Middle East Center at UO.

The Palestine Coalition Encampment’s Negotiating Team had this to said:

“In our negotiations meeting with the administration today, there was a failure to meet the very bare minimum of our demands: a statement condemning the US-Israeli genocidal campaign being waged against Palestinians and a declaration from the university supporting a cessation of war. Admin were absolutely clear: ‘no’ to any form of divestment.

This humanitarian catastrophe has reached unprecedented levels of human suffering, with millions of Palestinians in Gaza facing famine and with the withholding of food and basic human resources being used as a weapon of war against innocent civilians. It is worth repeating that we are a movement primarily led by Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students who are calling for the university to defend the inherent value of human life and dignity for all, and a statement condemning this violence must be implemented.

It is unconscionable for President Scholz and the University of Oregon to claim that they cannot call for an end to well-documented war crimes under international law, which would contribute to the voices of other universities, such as UC Riverside, Northwestern University, Brown University, and Rutgers University, who have made listened to students and reached successful negotiations on their demands.

The administration also provided absolutely no reasoning to students as to why they cannot make this declaration. Despite claiming a responsibility toward “neutrality”, the university made a statement condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022. Why are they unwilling to make a statement this time?

The university has made no movement on any of our demands related to divestment. This is unacceptable because without divestment, the university will continue its complicity in the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

The legacy of divestment is long-standing in the tradition of the University of Oregon, most recently being used to divest from fossil fuels, and to end complicity in the university’s support of apartheid in South Africa in the 70s and 80s. Without even a mere step towards the disclosure of divestments that are complicit in unending violence and illegal occupation waged against Palestinians, they are failing the values of a public university, which should be rooted in transparency for all students, faculty, and staff.

Finally, the university has threatened our right to freedom of speech and assembly by carrying out an ultimatum to discipline nonviolent student protestors in our encampment tomorrow at noon.

For President Scholz and the university administration, violating campus policies around “space reservation” and “amplified sound” triumphs their concern for the humanitarian catastrophe taking place in Gaza. We firmly reject this and maintain our demand that students must be protected with amnesty while expressing their freedom of speech and assembly against state-sanctioned violence.

How can they expect us to shift our protest modality—our capacity to disturb the status quo is our political project, and if they want to enact a disciplining exercise by suspending/expelling students and calling law enforcement to push us to move, they are welcome to pit themselves as an institution along so many in the country that insist on silencing the youth.

We call on faculty, graduate students, staff, and our wider community to come to our defense at a rally tomorrow at 10:30am outside of Lillis to condemn the university’s threat of repression against students and to make movement on our demands!