A group of students at Wake Forest University has begun a pro-Palestinian protest and is calling on the school to divest from any investments in companies that support the war in Gaza.
The demonstration began Tuesday afternoon during an annual university event to commemorate the Black enslaved individuals who either worked for or were sold by the university.
The group initially set up tents in front of Wait Chapel in the middle of the university’s main plaza, mirroring a nationwide standoff between protesters and school officials at other colleges and universities across the country. At the protests, demonstrators call on school officials to disclose their investments into companies that support Israel in its war against Palestine and to divest from those investments.
Although school officials at universities such as Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles and Emory have used police to remove pro-Palestinian protesters, no arrests have been made at Wake Forest at this point and only the university’s campus police officers have appeared at Hearn Plaza.
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Student protesters could be seen talking with school officials late Tuesday night and requested faculty observers, according to an email obtained by the Journal.
Barry Trachtenberg, the university’s chair of Jewish History, told the Journal that he had observed the protests overnight with other members of faculty.
Early Wednesday, the group reached a tentative deal to move their tents to Manchester Plaza, which is near many academic buildings on the lower part of the school’s campus.
The protesters told the Journal that they would stay in the new location for “as long as it takes.” The group will meet with President Susan Wente and ask if the university’s endowment has any ties to support of Israel.
Wente released a statement on behalf of university leadership Wednesday morning that described administrators’ efforts to negotiate with protesters.
“Administrators informed students that erecting tents and remaining overnight was inconsistent with the intended and approved use of the space and violated health and safety policies,” Wente wrote.
Wente said that administrators “remained in dialogue” with organizers of the demonstration throughout the evening, night, and early morning until they reached an agreement with students to take down the tents in the encampment.
“Students will be permitted to continue to demonstrate, in accordance with our policies and in an area designated by the University for free expression with appropriate displays, which may include signage and unoccupied tents without an encampment,” the statement concluded.
The university’s office of communication gave a statement to Wake Forest’s student newspaper, the Old Gold & Black, which said that the university does not have a direct connection to Israel through endowments.
“We own parts of numerous indices (e.g., S&P 500, MSCI ACWI), which are stock market indices that track the stock performance of the largest companies listed on global stock exchanges,” the statement read. “Some of those companies have exposure to Israeli companies listed on the exchanges. In the partial index Verger owns, there is inappreciable exposure to Israel and defense companies; this means that the exposure is too small to influence returns on the pool.”
‘They can no longer ignore us’
The demonstration began at the same time as an annual university event to commemorate the memory of enslaved individuals “who worked for or were sold to benefit the university,” according to the school’s official website.
That event was supposed to be held on the steps of Wait Chapel. However once student protesters arrived, the memorial was moved inside Wait Chapel and university officials left the building through side exits after the event concluded.
Beginning around 4:30 p.m., more than a dozen students wearing masks gathered in a line in front of Wait Chapel, holding signs with statements such as “Stop funding genocide” and “Free Palestine,” while a group of faculty, university officials, and other students watched the protesters deliver speeches.
“The enslaved people would stand with the movement of Palestine, remember that they wanted to be free, not just remembered,” a student protester said on a loudspeaker. “We demand that Wake Forest University disclose and divest their investment in ties to Israel. This genocide is ongoing. Gazans are still dying, Palestinians are still dying. Wake Forest is still actively gentrifying the Winston-Salem community. Wake Forest is still not allowing Black students to speak out about Palestinian resistance.”
When asked questions about the demonstration, student protesters requested anonymity, citing fears of reprisal from university officials and others.
Demonstrators said Wednesday morning that Wake Forest administrators had “threatened” students with suspensions and revocation of scholarships, and that they had also warned that they could request police officers to arrest protesters for trespassing if they did not move their encampment.
When asked about whether school officials had said these things to students, representatives from the university’s communications office could not immediately be reached for comment by the Journal.
“We’ve seen what happened to students across the country who have received sanctions from the university,” one student told the Journal Tuesday afternoon. “What’s most beneficial is that our voices are heard. The focus and the center should always be Palestine and not the student themselves.”
The same student, who described themselves as one of the lead organizers, said they were inspired by other student protests in support of Palestinians at universities across the country such as Columbia University and Emory University.
“Once we got here, (university officials) moved the event inside so they could protect themselves from hearing what we have to say,” the student said. “We hope to come back every day louder and stronger until the university gives into our demands. We want to make it so that they can no longer ignore us.”
When asked how long they planned to stay positioned on the school’s quad area, organizers of the demonstration said that it is their hope to maintain an encampment.
By the time the demonstrators tents moved to Manchester Plaza, Jewish students set up a table near the protesters that was covered with pictures of Israeli hostages taken captive by Hamas.
A Jewish student who wished to be identified as an anonymous member of the executive board of Hillel, an organization for Jewish students on campus, told the Journal that they went to high school with one of the hostages, Edan Alexander, and remembers the night he was taken.
“On the night of the seventh he stopped responding in our group chat,” the student said. “It took two weeks before the Israeli government was able to confirm whether he was taken. We didn’t know if he was kidnapped, dead, or in a triage hospital.”
The same student said that they disagreed with the idea of the demonstration and that past interfaith discussions between Hillel and the Muslim Student Association at the school were a better format for discussion.
“If you encamp yourself and put up barriers, that’s not an inviting environment,” they said.
Another Jewish student, a freshman named Jackson Winthrop, told the Journal that he knew Jewish students who have been feeling threatened on campus because of antisemitism at other universities across the country. Winthrop mentioned that a message had been written in chalk at Wake Forest on a sidewalk that read “F—- Israel.”
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker of Temple Emmanuel in Winston-Salem said in a phone interview that he had spoken with Jewish students on Wake Forest’s campus and that he is currently looking to “support the university and the Jewish institutions on campus to ensure that all Jewish students are able to feel safe and secure.”
Final week of classes
The university is in the final week of undergraduate classes, with the last day of classes set to take place on Wednesday.
Some of the student protesters said they had written phone numbers on their arms in case they are arrested by police, and that they had designated certain students who would be willing to be arrested before others.
Mir Yarfitz, a professor of history at Wake Forest, said that he appreciated that the students had joined in a “national moment of student protest” and added that he was glad that students didn’t disrupt the commemoration event.
“I appreciate that the student protesters are drawing this connection between the longstanding exploitation of Black and brown people in this country and what I see is the conflict in Israel and Palestine as also being about race and a system of apartheid,” Yarfitz said. “To me, drawing those connections are very important.”
Yarfitz said that he was a former director of the school’s Jewish Studies program and that he speaks about the war between Israelis and Palestinians in his classes with students.
“One of the big things that I’ve found among students is a lot of fear about saying anything, because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing and that there would be outsized consequences for what they say,” Yarfitz said.
A student who gave his first name, Adam, to the Journal but declined to give his last name, said that his experiences living in Tel Aviv and his connections to family living in Israel gave him a different perspective than the student protesters.
“I had genuine conversations with a few of them, asking what Wake Forest should divest from and they don’t have concrete action,” he said. “It’s extremely disrespectful to see members of the Wake Forest community crash an event to commemorate enslaved people.”
Trachtenberg said that he was “incredibly proud” of the student protesters and added that they are “committed to ending oppression, bigotry, and violence, including antisemitism.”
Some students could be seen playing spikeball and throwing a football on the quad, behind the protesters. Others who watched the protests expressed their disagreement and even shouted at the group, with one student calling a protester a “coward” and urging them to take off their masks.
An organizer told the Journal on Wednesday morning that counter-protesters had harassed demonstrators in the encampment and shouted racist remarks at them. Trachtenberg confirmed that he had seen groups of white male students yell at the protesters.
Brett Eaton, the university’s vice president and chief communications officer, observed the demonstration with other university officials from the steps of Wait Chapel Tuesday afternoon and spoke to students who were watching the protesters.
Eaton told the Journal that the group of student protesters had publicized their intent to protest ahead of time and that the school was “supportive of their right to demonstrate and be heard” and added that the demonstration during the commemoration event had been peaceful.
Late Tuesday night, members of the university’s campus life staff were present at the encampment and were negotiating with student protesters, who had presented a list of demands.
When asked if the university had communicated to students what they would allow in a demonstration, Eaton said that students should be aware of the policies the university has set in place.
On the school’s official website, the university cites a statement of expression in its undergraduate code of conduct.
“The rights afforded to students in this statement have limitations and involve a concurrent obligation on the part of students to maintain on the campus an atmosphere conducive to scholarly pursuits and to respect the rights of all individuals,” the statement reads. “Including the right to be free of harassment or other behavior that diminishes a person’s or group’s dignity and which is prohibited under the Code of Conduct. Moreover, the exercise of these rights may not disrupt or obstruct the functions of the University or imminently threaten such disruption or obstruction.”