‘This Is What Leadership Looks Like’: Student Protesters, UCR Administration Reach Agreement To End Encampment

Less than a week after student protesters set up an encampment near UC Riverside’s Bell Tower in support of Gaza, organizers announced that it would be coming down today after an agreement was reached with campus administration.

“We have decided that we have gotten to an agreement that robustly meets our demands, which led to the dissolution of this encampment today,” Samia Alkam, lead negotiator for the encampment, said during a press conference streamed live on the group’s Instagram account.

As part of the agreement, the university has agreed to post all publicly available information of the University of California (UC) system’s investments to the university’s website. It also agreed to:

form a task force by the end of the Spring 2024 quarter to explore the removal of UCR’s endowment from the management of the UC Investment’s Office and the investment of the endowment in a manner that is “financially and ethically” sound with consideration to companies involved in arms manufacturing and delivery;

commit to bimonthly meetings with the associate vice chancellor of Auxiliary Services and an ongoing review of Sabra Hummus, which is produced in a joint venture of PepsiCo and Israeli food manufacturer the Strauss Group;

and modify its approval process for all study abroad programs to “ensure compliance with UC’s Anti-Discriminatory Policies.”

“As Samia said, we should be proud of the fact that we got through this together in a peaceful way and that’s a credit to everyone here,” Chancellor Kim Wilcox said at the press conference held in the shadow of the Bell Tower.

The agreement also said that the School of Business “has discontinued its global programs in Oxford, the U.S., Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.” According to a follow-up statement from the university, the programs were discontinued because they were not consistent with university policies.

“Students at UC Riverside will no longer be able to walk the lands that I am prohibited from,” Alkam said. “They will no longer be able to see my holy land that I am barred from. As long as there is an apartheid state in occupied Palestine, students at the University of California, Riverside will not walk the land that I am banned from.”

In an additional statement posted to the university’s website, Wilcox said that the meetings had been ongoing since Wednesday and that it had always been his goal to find a way forward “peacefully.”

“This agreement does not change the realities of the war in Gaza, or the need to address antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bias and discrimination; however, I am grateful that we can have constructive and peaceful conversations on how to address these complex issues,” the statement said.

For Alkam, the agreement shows that progress can be possible without bringing in law enforcement agencies to forcibly remove student protesters and clear encampments.

“To anyone here who is seeing this message, any chancellor at any other university, this is what leadership looks like,” Alkam said. “We are a model, we set the example and we will continue to set the example, and I stand in solidarity with every single encampment across the country because I know that with their steadfastness they will reach the same … material wins that we have today.”

But for both Alkam and Hibah Nassar, SJP UCR president, the encampment, while serving as a symbol of solidarity with the people of Gaza and a way to put pressure on the university, was also much more personal.

Nassar shared with the crowd the story of her cousin who was supposed to graduate this year, but was killed by an Israeli bombstrike on her apartment building, and the story of another cousin who wanted to grow up to become a doctor, but was killed in an Israeli airstrike a few months ago at the age of 8.

“The children and the students of Gaza are no different than everyone here today,” Nassar said. “They have lives, futures, potential careers and education to pursue.”

Alkam called the encampment a “love letter” to the people of Gaza and Palestine.

“This is for every single tree, every olive that has been uprooted, every child who has been murdered, every hospital that has been bombed, every journalist targeted and every single person who has been attacked by the violent settler colonial regime that is Israel,” Alkam said. “My work is in their honor, fully and wholeheartedly.”