‘Our movement is not going to die down’: Pro-Palestinian student protesters gear up for future disruptions

Protesters from several campuses said in interviews they are committed to raising awareness about the mass casualties and horrors in Gaza through the summer while they plan campus actions for the fall semester. Student activists, who have been criticized for not also calling for the return of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, are staying in touch through social media, remote meetings, and in-person reading sessions and potlucks to keep up the momentum they feel they built during the encampments this spring, many of which ended in arrests.

“Our movement is not going to die down,” said Quinn Perian, 20, a computer science major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pro-Palestinian organizer. “People are more geared up now than ever, and we still have the energy.”

Students said the encampments were in many respects a great success in drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians, but it’s not clear yet if the tents will reappear in the fall. Perian wouldn’t say if MIT students plan to set up another encampment. But organizers at other campuses have said the encampments were just one tactic among many they could deploy.

“You don’t have to be in a tent in order to say the university should not be taking money from militaries,” said Jonathan King, MIT emeritus professor of biology. Protesters at MIT are calling for the end of research projects funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, including a project on drone swarms.

Student protesters see the summer months as an opportunity to bring the cause out of the quadrangles of elite campuses and into public parks and streets. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, students are working to expand the coalition to build something “the university can’t ignore,” said Ava Hawkes, a recent graduate and organizer of the encampment at the state flagship campus.

Each Saturday over the summer, student and community organizers are hosting a “summer camp” program called the “Western Massachusetts Popular University for Palestine” at a park in Northampton. There, students and members of the public discuss readings about communism, liberation movements, and the role of activists.

“That was launched with a particular focus on keeping the community engaged in the absence of a lot of these students who have gone home,” Hawkes said.

The intensity of the encampment experience, which included living in close quarters, taking turns keeping watch, preparing group meals, and long philosophical conversations late into the night, built powerful social connections among students. Organizers say the shared experiences will help them build something enduring. The encampment groups on different campuses also got to know one another, and often traveled to one another’s aid, which helped student leaders think bigger and gain confidence.

Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist at Harvard, said the “deepened interpersonal connections” across groups and campuses helped strengthen the pro-Palestinian student movement.

“That’s going to be a really important residual effect of encampments,” Ulfelder said. “The results of that are going to reverberate through the summer, into the fall, and beyond.”

MIT’s encampment, for example, was launched in conjunction with students at Tufts University and Emerson College.

“That type of coordination planted a lot of seeds,” said Dan Zeno, 35, an Air Force veteran enrolled in MIT’s Sloan School of Management MBA program. Zeno, who expects more collaboration and joint organizing in the months ahead, was arrested at Emerson’s encampment in April.

“The beautiful thing about the encampment is we were there in a single space all day having face-to-face conversations,” Zeno said. “Very genuine, tough conversations with people. And through these genuine conversations, we’ve made real friendship and real community. That’s really changed the game and it made us better organized.”

Zeno helped launch a student-funded, pro-Palestinian zine earlier this year, and said he is spending much of his time lately reading and writing. He and other students said they are continuing to learn from one another this summer, and strategizing what comes next in the fall.

Isabella Garo, a recent graduate of Brown University, one of the few schools to negotiate with leaders of the pro-Palestinian encampment on its campus this spring, has fielded calls from students at other campuses who are curious about how she hammered out a deal with administrators, which includes a looming board vote on divestment from Israeli assets. She said breaks in the academic calendar are a good time to plan for the upcoming semester. Brown students, for example, planned a weeklong hunger strike in February during the university’s winter break.

At Brown, students are trying to seize the remarkable opportunity they have to make their case to the board by preparing their arguments. Garo is hopeful Brown students will successfully convince members of the university’s top governing board to vote in favor of divestment from Israeli assets in the fall, in part by pointing to how passionate students feel about the issue. About 60 Brown students were arrested at demonstrations last fall, including Garo. Efforts at Brown ramped up last November after the shooting of Palestinian-American student activist Hisham Awartani in an unprovoked attack in Vermont.

They’re also preparing for pushback. Already at least one major Brown donor has paused his financial contributions to the Ivy League university because of the decision to hold a board vote on divestment, The New York Times reported.

“You usually don’t get what you want from people in power the first time you ask,” Garo said. “I would tell [other student organizers] to stay positive and recognize this encampment is just one step in a broader campaign for divestment.”

Students are also turning to older supporters, including professors and community organizers, for advice based on past social movements. Student protesters across New England should be prepared for “a marathon,” said MIT linguistics professor Michel DeGraff.

“I keep reminding them that the Vietnam protests lasted years,” DeGraff said.

In Cambridge, the protesters shut down four blocks of traffic near Massachusetts Avenue for about two hours before moving the rally inside of Cambridge City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. The protest began at the intersection of Prospect Street and Bishop Allen Drive, near the Cambridge facilities of Elbit Systems, a defense contractor founded in Israel.

Several students and 2024 graduates from MIT, Harvard University, UMass Amherst, Dean College, and the University of Vermont donned keffiyehs and carried pro-Palestinian banners and signs as they marched. Some, including Hawkes, the UMass Amherst recent graduate, led the group in chants of “Free, free Palestine,” while others held banners reading “Shut Elbit Down,” and “Stop Killing Kids.”

“The mood going forward is some kind of escalation — tactics that are more disruptive,” Hawkes said. “Tactics that might be similar to the encampment, but might try to bring in wider segments of the campus community.”

Globe correspondent Alexa Coultoff contributed to this report.

Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.