It’s been more than 220 days of collective punishment levied against the Palestinian people. Over 35,000 people have been murdered by the illegal, Zionist occupation of Palestine. The University of Washington (UW) still refuses to acknowledge the genocide in Palestine, and instead joins the ranks of academic institutions repressing students for calling out their complicity.
The Popular University for Gaza in the Liberated Zone on the UW campus has packed up, but it didn’t fully deliver on its demands. Students, employees, and community members are continuing to act in solidarity with Palestine, and they are calling on the University to do the same. The following three demands are still relevant: 1) Materially and academically divest from ‘israel,’ 2) Cut ties with Boeing, and 3) End the repression of pro-Palestinian students, faculty, and community members.
For the two weeks of its existence, the Liberated Zone quickly built momentum across campus. The Associated Students of the University of Washington passed a resolution carrying the demands of the zone with 89% affirmative votes. A petition created and shared after the launch of the Popular University for Gaza garnered over 3,800 signatures. Faculty wrote a letter of support for the occupation of the quad.
Despite this overwhelming support, UW President Ana Mari Cauce still won’t entertain the idea of cutting ties with Boeing, a transnational corporation that manufactures weapons. When publicly commenting on the topic of disentangling from Boeing, Cauce emphasizes her pride in the partnership. In an email on February 15, 2024, she said, “Other endowment sources cannot replace Boeing’s support for the UW in time, talent and funding, nor would we choose to sever our relationship if they could be.”
In negotiating sessions with representatives from the Liberated Zone last week, Cauce cited the sentimental nature of UW and Boeing’s “100 years of partnership” as preventing her from taking action. Boeing’s B-29 Bomber, the aircraft used to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was tested in the Kirsten Wind Tunnel in the 1940s. Referring to the relationship between UW and Boeing, Cauce stated, “Someone that you barely know does something pretty awful, you make one set of decisions. Someone that has been a close friend of yours ever since you were two does something pretty awful, you look at it a little bit differently.”
While Cauce waxes poetic about her institution’s “friendship” with Boeing, it’s worth analyzing the material impacts of this ongoing partnership with UW. UW helps launder Boeing’s reputation as a weapons company. Boeing’s revenue is about equally sourced from weapons production as it is from commercial manufacturing; the Department of Defense is its largest customer. Boeing locks students into multi-year contracts under UW’s supervision, but they are a company known for violating labor laws and intimidating whistleblowers. UW refusing to cut ties–even while Boeing is facing fraud charges from the Department of Justice, locking out its union safety workers amidst an international safety scandal (a door blew off mid flight, in case you hadn’t heard)–is evidence that the money Boeing provides is more important to UW than its students’ well-being. The benefits for the institutions go both ways: Boeing needs UW because it needs workers; creating a pipeline at the university is the best way to secure a steady stream of talent.
Why does UW so desperately cling onto this relationship with a war profiteer? This issue speaks to a broader problem with our education system. Across the country, Universities–even public ones–are becoming increasingly privatized, reliant on exorbitant tuition fees, corporate donors, corporate-invested endowments, and–at UW in particular–revenues from expensive medical care to sustain regular operations and new projects.
University administrations are not eager to meet the demands of students protesting for justice in Palestine because these demands threaten the very character of the institutions themselves. Cutting ties with Boeing at UW is about transforming the school to serve the interests of students and our society, rather than feeding the demands of the war machine.
We will need continued community pressure, in addition to the ongoing powerful student movement, to succeed in striking this blow against the US war machine. There are several quick ways to add your voice to the movement demanding UW divest and end its complicity in the ongoing genocide. Use this tool to send emails to university leadership. Sign both the UF petition, and the Resist US-Led War petition demanding UW cut ties with Boeing. By standing united and strong with the community, we can make sure Cauce and UW think a bit harder about whose company they keep.
Zho Ragen is a recent PhD graduate from the University of Washington and organizes with Resist US Led War Seattle.
Cera Hassinan is a graduate student at the University of Washington and organizes with SUPER.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how UW is ‘repressing’ pro-Palestinian students, faculty, and community members.
I don’t understand why these lefty students are so opposed to the rights of indigenous people to their land.
Also, I wonder if Zho, whose blog states that they travel back to China to visit family regularly, cares half as much about the actual, literal genocide of Uighurs by the Chinese government as they do about war crimes against Palestinians living in Gaza.
This is so awful on so many fronts but labeling the encampment as popular is generous at best and touting 3800 signatures out of 50,097 students (7.5%) as some sort of signal there is overwhelming support for this nonsense is delusional. Let me be clear. The fact that this was allowed to exist on campus to push forward antisemitic propaganda, harass other students, vandalize and destroy campus property is an embarrassment to the university. Your continued support for a terrorist organization is equally embarrassing for you. If you want the war to end release the hostages, admit that Jews have a right to exist and stop lobbing rockets into your neighbors backyard. I notice you are both graduate students so If you are so concerned about being affiliated with a university that associates itself with companies like Boeing than maybe you should enroll somewhere else that shares your values.
“… it didn’t fully deliver on its demands.”
Much in the same way that you stamping your feet really, really hard didn’t fully deliver you to the Moon.
Given the protest claimed success after shaking down the university for 20 Gazan scholarships, I’m guessing the demands of these writers are not even representative of the protest on the quad (but keep using your grandiose language for a bunch of uniformed puppets).
And as @3 points out, when do we start adding some other countries to this new idealistic bar (I suspect Mr Zho will, out of necessity, remain silent when it comes to countries like China).
No need for the scare-quotes or lower-casing of Israel; it’s a for-real country. Why? For the same reason that Taiwan, Ukraine, and frankly Palestine are real countries: because the people living there believe they are countries and act accordingly. All legitimate government springs from the consent of the governed.
If you are conditioning the recognition of Palestine on the de-recognition of Israel, then you are consigning the people actually living there to further misery, because no nation is going to negotiate itself out of existence as you expect Israel to do.
Why did the authors choose to support and attend a university with a history of supporting war profiteers and ne’er do wells such as UW. Their presence is a measure of support of this murderous regime.
Will you submit to our demands to only fly Airbus as well on your commercial flights? The solidarity is inspiring.
@10 got some bad news for you on the Airbus front: https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/defence/military-aircraft
Better just plan on not flying at all, its better for the environment. Of course there is the issue that most of King County Metro’s current fleet is manufactured by AM General and have I got some more bad news for on you there: https://www.amgeneral.com/who-we-are (if you don’t want to look they make military grade Humvee’s). I guess you’ll have to wait for the new fleet of GILLIG electric buses to get deployed in 2028.
@7: SUPER UW doesn’t want to “negotiate” Israel out of existence; they want Israel wiped off the map. Their response to the 10/7 attacks was to praise them as acts of “liberation”: https://x.com/uw_super/status/1711896350777041127
The image at that link includes a silhouette of a Hamas paraglider attacking civilians in Israel. The template for that image comes from Students of Justice in Palestine, which used the same artwork in their praise of the 10/7 attacks, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/10/DAY-OF-RESISTANCE-TOOLKIT.pdf
Who carries more weight at UW: a bunch of petulant children throwing a weeks long hissy fit or a company that has put millions of not billions into the university over the course of the last century?
I wonder.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t get singling out of Boeing. If one wants to have the UW divest from the Military Industrial Complex, where’s the concern for General Dynamics, Ratheon, Northrup Grunman, etc? All of those companies have ties to UW, and I don’t think most of them even offer civilian products.
And it’s not just the college of Engineering. What do you think a lot of the Physics department studies focus on? working on?
@11 its obvious that we can only fly on planes made in Russia then. Aeroflot forever!
@15 I hate to be the bearer of bad news but from Wikipedia.
“The Aeroflot fleet, excluding subsidiaries, includes 178 airplanes: 119 Airbus planes and 59 Boeing planes”
Russian produced planes are made by the United Aircraft Corporation of Russia however, I’ll give you one guess who makes their military aircraft.
I’m beginning to believe that the activist organizers are more concerned with receiving attention than making any real progress on any issue. 40,000 people died from gun violence in this country last year, see link below. The activists pivoted from this issue as well as reforming police when the attention died down or it became clear that it would be harder and more nuanced to get more support. I believe many of the protestors are sincere in their beliefs but are misguided and misled by those choosing the battles. Don’t get me wrong, I believe Israel went far beyond what they should have in regards to retaliation and I do think Bibi should be held accountable. That being said, I think a wiser and more effective strategy for activism and getting results would be to put constant pressure on our own leaders to fix domestic issues rather than begging sovereign nations to listen to us. I’m not sure how much credibility we have after we invaded Iraq under false pretenses.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759
@17 Perhaps you caught this when it first occurred, but I found DSA co-founder Maurice Issermans very public resignation from DSA and his explanation at the Nation to be a good starting place in locating why the protest movement had such an unhinged and impractical aspect to it.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/
Even if his allegations are half true, the DSA, now tainted by entryists, wound up being an important political/ideological vector. But it doesn’t explain it all. The more bizarre element is blue chip dem foundations doling out grants to organizers who 1) have end goal scenarios for the conflict zone that do not include an Israel and 2) promote confrontational direct action tactics to promote those goals.
Progressive leaning college kids would eat it all up like candy having no idea how far off the ranch they were being led. Add a dash of social catagion and crowd psychology, and the rest is history.
But it’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before.
@16 the next thing you’re going to say is that Hamas leaders like Ismail fly to/fro Turkey on a Boeing! Boeing seems to be an equal opportunity air partner with all friends of Hamas. I’m so confused. Ugh. When I hear Hamas boycott flying Boeing, I will stand for the divestment!
After you have successfully destabilized Israel through divestment campaigns, will you then take up the cause to unseat the repressive, oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic radically theocratic patriarchy that Iran/Hamas will fill the power vacuum with?