Peter Calloway is a visiting associate professor of clinical law, helen DeVinney is an adjunct professor of clinical psychology, Amr Madkour is an assistant professor at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Sara Matthiesen is an associate professor of history and women’s gender and sexuality studies and Dara Orenstein is an associate professor of American studies.
Last spring, the world watched as thousands of college students across the country set up encampments on their campuses. Each of them sought to bring attention to and protest the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the complicity of universities through their investments. Students at GW, along with students from other local universities, set up one such encampment on our campus. Participants were peaceful, welcoming and disciplined, even in the face of antagonism from counterprotests, according to media accounts of the encampment — which each of us can attest to, having been present at the encampment on multiple days.
At the encampment, we saw students sitting in small groups, reading and chatting, eating and often listening to speakers and performers. We saw them conducting teach-ins. We saw medical and food tents offering sustenance and care. We saw students praying, holding Muslim daily prayers and Jewish Shabbat services alongside Christian, Hindu and other religious activities. We saw them hugging each other and offering cheer, support and information — keeping each other safe. And we saw them shrugging their shoulders at the lines of GW Police Department officers, and at the counterprotesters and interlopers who occasionally passed by seeking to stir up tension. We never saw any sense of danger, intimidation or discrimination at the encampment by any encampment participants against any person or group.
In response to this peaceful expression of grief and hope, the University’s administration pressured the Metropolitan Police Department to raid the encampment, unleashing hundreds of armed police officers against its own students. The encampment was destroyed, along with students’ belongings including Qurans, Siddurim, prayer mats, Shabbat candles and laptops. In the months that have followed, the repression of students alleged to have participated has been unrelenting.
As we pass one year of a genocide funded by the United States and U.S. universities that has expanded to bombing campaigns in Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen, we and other conscientious members of GW’s faculty and staff have recently established a chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
We support and stand in solidarity with the students and grieve the continued atrocities against the people of Palestine. And we care deeply about human rights and about higher education as a place for students to find their voices through critical analyses of their social realities. Though our chapter includes many more faculty in solidarity with the students who are unable to be named publicly for fear of retaliation, we want students, community members and the administration to know that there are faculty at GW who are aligned with the movement for a free Palestine.
The University’s response to pro-Palestine activism on campus has escaped scrutiny among those in power both locally and nationally, but if the public knew more about how the administration has treated its students, they would be horrified. Each of us is intimately familiar with the details of the University’s response to student protesters — not just from speaking with students but from our personal involvement assisting them through disciplinary and criminal proceedings that occurred after the encampment clearing.
Quietly, and removed from national attention, criminal and disciplinary charges were brought against dozens of students and student groups. More than 20 students have been charged with violations of the Student Code of Conduct. Nearly all of those cases resulted in some sort of disciplinary action, ranging from suspension to academic probation with onerous conditions. Dozens more students, including eight from GW, face criminal charges, almost all for “unlawful entry” on campus property. Inexplicably, the University has barred some of the targeted students from campus housing and prohibited others from accessing dining halls and GW’s health services.
The University’s conduct in disciplinary proceedings has belied the democratic benevolence and process it claims to uphold. Some of us have seen this personally in our work supporting students facing disciplinary action. For most of the students, the University did not provide details of the accusations against them when they were first notified of disciplinary charges. Letters from the administration, which we have seen firsthand, merely state the charges and a date, accusing students of things like “entering or remaining on . . . university premises without valid permission,” or an unspecified “community disturbance.”
Students were then presented with a case folder containing hundreds of files, including many hours of video, most of which was unrelated to their specific charges. Prohibiting them from employing legal representation during disciplinary proceedings, the University allowed students only one “support person” to accompany them to hearings, a role one of us filled on more than one occasion. The support person was not allowed to speak during hearings, and the University refused to communicate with them outside of the hearings. In many cases, the GW hearing officer allowed students just one minute at a time to confer privately with support persons during disciplinary hearings. The University’s response to student involvement in the encampment also made faculty testimony, support that is critical to a just outcome, extremely difficult as many faculty members fear retribution.
The means by which students were identified for criminal and disciplinary charges is no less concerning. Through our involvement in assisting students in the aftermath of the University’s crackdown and our review of the case files, we have learned of the administration’s willingness to resort to extreme forms of surveillance against its students. The University used information sent over its WiFi network, GWorld student ID card swipes and CCTV to make flimsy assumptions about who organized the encampment. And in an attempt to restrict First Amendment activities following the encampment, the administration has erected a fence around University Yard and weaponized the police against students, increasing GWPD, MPD and private security presence on campus. The message this sends our current and future students is devastating. The tremendous harm the administration has caused in these students’ lives, and to the reputation of GW, will take years to recover from — if recovery is even possible. And for what? Does the administration actually believe these repressive tactics will silence students? Does it think that they will forget the nearly 200,000 Palestinians killed? That every university in Gaza has been destroyed? Or that famine is imminent? Of course they won’t.
While some GW students have family and friends directly among those suffering because of the Israeli occupation and war, many more have been less directly impacted but nonetheless devastated by what we have witnessed in Gaza since Oct. 7. Signaling its hypocrisy, in its letters notifying students of disciplinary charges, the administration directs students to community support and mental health services — services they create a need for by threatening students with discipline. Meanwhile, the administration continues to prohibit organizing by student organizations that would normally act as a source of community and belonging, particularly for international students, students in the diaspora and students who are first- or second-generation immigrants.
Indeed, as GW faculty and staff, we bear witness alongside brave and visionary students — who are committed to disclosure and divestment and who call for our administration to treat students with dignity and respect using their voices, bodies and organizing skills to fight for a better world for all. We urge the administration to drop the criminal and disciplinary charges against students; restore in good standing University approval of banned student groups and students on academic probation or suspended; and agree to students’ demands for disclosure of GW’s investments and divestment from entities enabling Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and beyond. We invite colleagues across the University, faculty and staff, to join us in support of our students, academic freedom, shared governance and forms of locally situated civic action with global reach to bring about a just and equitable world.
