This speech was originally delivered for the Dec. 3 demonstration outside of the Cox Administration Building. Students gathered to protest for divestment in preparation for the Board of Trustees’ arrival and to confront admin.
This speech was edited for length and clarity.
One year! That is how long it has been since we, Oberlin students, gathered outside Cox to tell our administration that we oppose genocide. One year ago, we gathered to demand that our administration divest from Israel. One year ago, we gathered to demand that the Oberlin administration condemn the horrific U.S.-backed and -funded violence being enacted upon Palestinians. One year ago, we gathered to show our administration that there is no business as usual while a genocide is going on.
One year later, and our administration has not listened! They have not acted!
They pretend to care about community sentiment while ignoring the student referendum conducted last spring, which overwhelmingly favored divestment. They have refused to call what Israel is doing in Palestine what it is: genocide. They have refused to even use the word Palestine in communication, denying Palestine’s existence and dehumanizing and devaluing their Palestinian students. Their refusal to even acknowledge the genocide forbids important discussion on the devastation occurring in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and all of Occupied Palestine. But by trying to remain “impartial,” they clearly take a stand on one side of the issue. The side in support of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism. The administration and the Board of Trustees has shown us again and again that they do not care about Oberlin as a community or as a college, but only as a corporation. They see it only as a financial investment, and not as a place where students are encouraged to tackle difficult questions or to take a stand against injustice. They have made this clear through their refusal to divest on the grounds of it not being financially convenient.
We are here today speaking directly to the administration. We are here to demand you remember your responsibility to your students, to demand financial transparency, and to demand divestment. The fight for a free Palestine does not move on, it does not tire out, it does not graduate! There will be no business as usual!
One year, one month, and 26 days. That is how long it has been since Israel began its genocidal attacks on Gaza, funded and supported by the United States, using U.S. weaponry. Since then, the violence has expanded into Lebanon, escalated in the West Bank, defied every humanitarian standard, and killed over 45,000 Palestinian people, including over 17,000 children. The United States’ support has been unwavering. Oberlin College administration’s complicity has been unwavering.
Seventy-six years. That is how long it has been since the Nakba. The Nakba, which translates to “catastrophe” in Arabic, was the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 by Zionist settlers in the founding of the state of Israel. Approximately 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee between 1947 and 1949, with no right to return. Fifteen thousand Palestinians were murdered and 530 Palestinian towns were destroyed. Israel, just like the U. S., Apartheid South Africa, and all settler-colonial states, is an occupying power whose existence relies on the displacement and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants. We are seeing this continue today, right before our very eyes, with our own tax dollars and tuition.
Divestment is possible. Divestment is critical. It worked in 1987, when Oberlin divested from Apartheid South Africa. It worked in 2022, when Oberlin divested from fossil fuels. And yet, the administration has tried to distance themselves from our calls and their own moral obligations, saying they have no real power in this institution. We call bullsh**t. They have the ear of the Board of Trustees, they have influence over the image of Oberlin, they have the individual ability to make a choice about where they stand and what they will do. Since we were here last year, the administration and the Board of Trustees have led students along in the pursuit of divestment before denying it in the name of economic feasibility. They have made it seem like divestment is out of their hands and would pose too much of a financial threat to the College. Again, we call bullsh**t. We have done our homework. We know that the College, as a stakeholder, has a right to know where its money is going and tell fund managers where it does and doesn’t want the money invested. Instead, President Ambar and the board scapegoat students on financial aid and ask what impact Oberlin divesting will actually have. Oberlin divesting will not be the catalyst to make the Zionist regime fall. But the power of divestment, the political commitment it represents and the precedent it sets, are impactful and necessary.
As our administrators walk to their cars and drive home where they think that they can forget their students, forget our demands, we are reminding them that their choice to continue investments are causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people. As they step over and around our bodies, we hope that the image follows them home, that it keeps them up at night in the way it has their student body. Let us be reminded that we are here in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the liberation of all people choked by imperialism and occupation. We demand financial transparency. The transparency that we were told we could be given if it wasn’t too “impolite” for the Board of Trustees to ask their financial advisors. This is not a question of politeness. While Ambar and the Board of Trustees meet this week, hundreds of Palestinians will be dying from starvation, from a lack of medical assistance, and from bombs. They have the chance to do something. To both symbolically and financially take a stand against the ethnic cleansing of millions of people, and as a student body with our money going towards this every semester, we also have a responsibility to say that we are not okay with this.
We demand to know where our investments are going. We demand the administration listen to the voices of their students, their alumni, their faculty and staff, their community members. We demand divestment. Until then, our fight for Palestinian freedom will never cease.
