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At approximately 10:40 a.m. Monday, Syracuse University community members gathered on the Shaw Quadrangle to set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The encampment has created a list of six demands from the university, which includes that it divest from Israel and support a ceasefire in Gaza.

“We, members of the Syracuse University community, are mobilizing today in solidarity with tens of thousands of Palestinians massacred by Israel’s ongoing ethnonationalist genocidal war in Gaza, Palestine,” the SU Palestine Solidarity Encampment statement reads. “We urge Syracuse University to take immediate and concrete actions that reflect our ethical commitments and responsibilities.”

Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestine Solidarity Collective posted these “official demands” in an Instagram post at 2:07 p.m., with a few minor changes from the initial list of demands from Monday. Changes include the name of a recipient of an honorary doctorate from SU’s College of Law, who was originally listed as Malcolm Shaw and is now listed as Alan M. Dershowitz, and “honorings” to “honoring” in the third demand.

As the encampment enters its third day, The Daily Orange has broken down the six demands from the protesters.

Demand 1: Support for a ceasefire

“We call on Syracuse University to publicly support a permanent ceasefire in Palestine and the protection of civilian lives amidst the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza,” the group’s statement reads.

As of Wednesday morning, the university has not released any statements supporting or regarding a ceasefire in Gaza.

The last official university communication addressing the Oct. 7 attacks and the Israel-Hamas war was a campus-wide email sent on Dec. 11, 2023, in which Chancellor Kent Syverud stated that advocating for the genocide of Jewish people would violate SU’s code of conduct. It also calls for the university to “articulate a shared statement on free speech and academic freedom” – now known as the Syracuse Statement.

SU’s Student Association and SUNY-ESF’s Mighty Oak Student Assembly have passed ceasefire resolutions. SA’s “Undergraduate Call for Peace,” passed on Dec. 4, acknowledges the Israel-Hamas war’s “direct effect” on the region and calls for a “permanent peace process” in the region. MOSA passed its “Call for Peace” resolution on April 18, incoming MOSA President Eden Gardner confirmed to The D.O.

On Monday, SA also passed a resolution in solidarity with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at SU and condemned any hate speech, which SA Student Advocate Lucio Maffei said was “reaffirming something the assembly has already voted on.”

Demand 2: Ethical investments

“We demand full disclosure of Syracuse University and related entities’ relationships and collaborations with companies and institutions supporting the occupation in Palestine: those with Israeli ownership, and those implicated in supporting the supply of weapons and materials used in the occupation of Palestine and the ongoing genocidal war,” the encampment wrote.

SU had an approximately $1.85 billion endowment in Fiscal Year 2023, according to the website of SU’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer. SU does not publicize contributors to its endowment fund in its annual financial report.

The statement calls for the university to divest from the Lockheed Martin Corporation and Boeing, which the statement claims have “supplied air fighters and bombs used to destroy Gaza and indiscriminately kill tens of thousands of Palestinians.”

The university has maintained a public partnership with Lockheed Martin, a United States defense contractor and arms manufacturer, through its D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

Lockheed Martin’s collaboration with Israeli industries is expected to exceed $4 billion, according to its website, and is predicted to deliver a total of 50 aircrafts to the Israeli Defense Force by 2024. The company began its “undertaking” for industrial collaboration with Israeli companies and for offset acquisitions in Israel in November 2004, the website states. Lockheed Martin provides the IDF with F-35 and F-16 aircrafts, which Israel has used in its air campaign, according to Business Insider.

In 2013, IVMF announced Lockheed Martin as an IVMF One-Star Corporate Partner with a $500,000 “commitment” until 2016. In July 2016, Lockheed Martin made a $1 million donation to IVMF. In 2020, Lockheed Martin was listed as a “strategic partner” with SU’s IVMF after the arms manufacturer donated $3 million in“renewed support.” In March 2023, students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science attended a 2023 Lockheed Martin “Ethics in Engineering” Competition.

Boeing’s relationship with Israel has gone back more than 75 years and has maintained offices in the country since 1969. Since then, Boeing has “worked closely with Israeli commercial and military customers and suppliers” and has developed “many lasting partnerships,” according to its Israel Backgrounder. Boeing also provided bombs to the Israeli government after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Bloomberg reported.

In 2020, SU’s IVMF received $4.5 million from Boeing to create a new “workforce training, recruitment and placement program component within the IVMF’s Onward to Opportunity program.

IVMF is one of the first recipients of Google.org’s $75 million AI Opportunity Fund. IVMF will now offer Google’s new AI Essentials course and the Google Cybersecurity Certificate to their Onward To Opportunity participants nationwide, according to a Friday SU News release.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are both listed as IVMF “supporting partners” on its website.

Demand 3: Ethical collaboration and honoring

“The university should immediately terminate all programs and affiliations with Israeli academic and security institutions, including study abroad programs, and permanently shut down the Middle East Policy and Security Studies summer program developed to buttress Israeli racist and Islamophobic securitarian propaganda,” the statement reads.

SU lists 11 military-connected programs on its Office of Veteran and Military Affairs website, including Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s Defense Comptroller program, the National Security Studies Program through the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Institute for Security Policy and Law.

SU offers two summer 2024 programs in Israel: Internships in Tel Aviv and Middle East Policy and Security Studies.

The seven-week internship through Tel Aviv University’s Lowy International School provides students with academic credit and participation in a “professional workshop specializing in career development, organizational behavior, and cultural differences in the workplace.”

The Middle East Policy and Security Studies is a two-week program that “features some of the top security and terrorism experts from inside and outside Israel.” The program description also states that students will learn “first-hand” how “Israelis approach conflict and grapple with terrorism and other security issues.”

The encampment members also call for the termination of programs involving members of the Israeli military and intelligence, specifically referencing the Gerald B Cramer Family Foundation Inc.

Gerald B. Cramer, a graduate of SU’s School of Management who served on SU’s Board of Trustees and served terms as both vice chairman and chairman of the Board’s Investment and Endowment Committee, died in 2018. His wife, Daphna Cramer, was born and raised in Tel Aviv and served the IDF in the Israeli Air Force.

The Cramers became involved in Reichman University, a private university in Herzliya, Israel, and “envisioned and forged a connection between the schools of government” between SU and Reichman, according to its website.

Cramer first assisted the SU’s SPL Program on Security in the Middle East by sponsoring an exchange program that allowed students to study at the Interdisciplinary Centre’s International Institute for Counter-terrorism in Herzliya.

Now, the program allows law and graduate students to “engage with the issues via interdisciplinary coursework, simulations and practicums, and study abroad at SPL partner institutions in Israel and Palestine.” Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, also offers a short summer program titled “Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process in Regional and Domestic Context” for graduate students.

“This program is made possible through the generous support of SU alumna Carol Becker (’76) and SU trustee and alumnus Gerald B. Cramer (’52),” the website states.

The encampment also calls for the boycott of “any Israeli universities with ties to the genocidal apparatus” who “collaborate with the Israeli government to suppress critiques of Israeli settler colonialism.”

SU Palestine Solidarity Enc… by The Daily Orange

Demand 4: Protection of student rights

“We seek strong assurances that the internationally recognized rights of members of Syracuse University’s community to advocate for just causes will be protected, including amnesty for protesters and robust support for freedom of speech and assembly,” the encampment wrote.

In December, students in the Schine Student Center atrium were wearing signs throughout the day as part of a “study-in” for final exams. SU Vice President for the Student Engagement Rob Hradsky confronted students over a sign that had the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

“​​You have been asked by a University official to remove flyer with the word Intifada as the University deems these flyers as advocating for genocide which is harassment and a violation of University policy. You must remove this flyer immediately or will face charges under the Student Conduct Code,” a paper given to the students read.

Instagram account blackatcuse wrote in a post that SU administration harassed and surveilled students based on their political positioning, and denied students’ right to free speech and self-expression. They also claimed the administration took pictures and video of students without their consent, and physically intimidated and targeted students.

“The university should actively prevent administrators from continuing to misuse their power to promote, normalize and overlook anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism, and anti-Black racism as well as Islamophobia in ways we have seen over the last months,” the encampment’s demands read.

The most recent public bias incident listed on SU’s Department of Public Safety was in December 2023, in which a university employee reported a student’s discovery of antisemitic language written in a book from Bird Library.

“We call on the university to refrain from presenting the ongoing war in essentialist religious terms that simultaneously promote Islamophobia and antisemitism. Chaplains should not be used to govern and suppress students’ political activism,” the demands state.

Demand 5: Protection of academic freedom

“We insist that Syracuse University vigorously uphold the principle of academic freedom, allowing our community to discuss and engage with issues surrounding Palestine and Israel without fear of censorship or retribution, including the use of police or other state agencies such as the FBI,” the statement reads.

After hundreds marched through campus in a November 2023 protest, Provost Gretchen Ritter and Senior Vice President and Chief Student Experience Officer Allen Groves sent a campus-wide email addressing a speaker who “specifically called out a number of Jewish student organizations by name, accusing them of being ‘complicit’ in genocide,” the email states. Ritter and Groves wrote that the university would increase DPS presence and patrol and was in touch with law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to monitor for any threats.

Throughout the spring semester, members of a working group have worked on the Syracuse Statement, which Ritter called a “collective campus expression” on academic freedom and freedom of expression for students, staff and faculty. A university spokesperson previously confirmed last month that there is no official release date for the statement.

“The university should defend faculty and community members doxxed for their critical work on Israel. This includes attacks on minoritized faculty and graduate students who study Middle Eastern affairs and colonialism,” the encampment wrote.

Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis, professors and teaching assistants have had to navigate tensions in the classroom. In an Oct. 25 University Senate meeting, Ritter said that faculty have the right to share their opinions on the Israel-Hamas war, but addressing the conflict when it is not the topic of a class can create “an unfair power dynamic that can make some students feel unwelcome, unsafe or unsupported.”

The statement references the de-affiliation of four faculty members from the Middle Eastern Studies Program as “one of the many indicators of the university’s failure to meet ethical standards in the field.”

Several faculty de-affiiated after concerns regarding the program’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, listing concerns such as the program not properly educating the SU community about Palestinian and Israeli history, imposing conditions on Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s “Palestine in Focus” event and dismissing recent teach-ins as “political activism.”

Demand 6: Addressing “DPS racism”

“We require immediate reform within the Department of Public Safety to address issues of Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Palestinian bias among the officers trained during the post-9/11 era,” the encampment’s last demand states.

Asst. News Editor Julia Boehning contributed reporting to this article.

Published on May 1, 2024 at 6:30 pm

Contact Kendall: kaluther@syr.edu