The morning after the night raid, I woke up and checked my phone to see University security service’s automated message sent at 7:02 A.M.: “Quad cleanup.” I cringed. I texted a friend who had been involved from the start with the Encampment and checked the school’s paper The Maroon. Their live updated coverage had been one way of keeping up with goings on at the Quad. Like most students, I went in, and out, of the Encampment: meeting friends; nodding to acquaintances; hearing about campers’ fears and strategy; attending a Palestine-activist professor’s teach-in (“genocide isn’t complicated”); taking in kids’ play and an inter-faith call to prayer. Only snippets, perhaps, compared to those who stayed for the week and kept up chanting all night against the university police raid, but it was enough to give me a sense of the moment, and place.
I felt I had already been enmeshed in the culture of university activism for Palestine due to my involvement in the Mellon Mays Fellowship program. I had known vaguely that my Mellon peers were committed to pro-Palestinian organizing, but things became clear after Hamas’ attack. A few days after October 7th, a Mellon fellow peer of mine suggested that what I needed to do to understand the massacre was read the 2017 Hamas Charter. Now, I get where he was coming from and it does seem like that document was intended to distance Hamas from explicit antisemitism. But, in the moment, I was shocked by my respondent’s quick justifications. In the same exchange, the same peer described my girlfriend as a crazed Zionist, an “asshole,” not having realized my relationship to her. I was puzzled by his disdain because I had discussed Israel and Palestine with my girlfriend and I hadn’t come away thinking she held extremist views. She seemed to be someone pro-Palestine activists could actually target to win over to their side.
I can’t pretend my own response to October 7th was full of true feeling. I guess I had imbibed the self-defense justification argument for Hamas: how long, really, could Israel’s artificial status quo last? (Or, perhaps, Saudi normalization was indeed the end game for Palestinian self-determination?) I didn’t go to the Jewish student vigil for the attack. My conversations with Hamas-curious Mellons and reporting about the day’s horrors began to bring it home to me. A good Jewish friend of mine’s plaint that only other Jews had come out to vigil also hit me. I thought to myself I needn’t have been “pro-Israel” to come out for those who had recently been killed and those who were grieving.
Israel’s own vengeful military campaign undercut my impulse to resist the arguments put forth by pro-Palestinian activists. Not that I could make myself over into an unconflicted ally of my SJP, Mellon peers. I was bored by the rote anti-American spiel of one of the fellows and a chief SJP organizer. Let’s call him E. His presentation at a Mellon research conference had come down to a highlight reel of Bush’s stupidest moments. I was at a loss how E’s “research” garnered oohs and ahhs. During his Q&A, I was tempted to bring up an anecdote he’d shared about his grandparents who live in Iran: they had been puzzled why their grandchild was devoting his time to studying the American security apparatus instead of a period in their own people’s vast history.
I found myself in a historiography class with E. in winter quarter. On the first day, our teacher asked us to list the defining historical moments of our lives. Almost everyone ended up putting down 9/11, Obama election, Trump election, George Floyd. My Mellon colleague kept his hand down as we tallied votes for 9/11. I’d taken his points in the past about Islamophobia and state surveillance in the post-9/11 era, but I couldn’t fathom denying 9/11 was a transformative event for Americans who had lived through it. His hands-down response reminded me of another sequence at a Mellon conference where another colleague presenting on French flics’ new methods of repression skipped over the November 13th attacks. Bataclan, of course, was no excuse for police brutalization of Gilet Jaune or other public protests, but one couldn’t grasp the French state’s recent moves without addressing the actual threats posed by violent Islamists. E., though, proved to be more original than me and the rest of our class (to my ears anyway) when he pinned To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick’s album, as an important marker in his personal history! No one else had had the audacity to raise everyday people’s cultural life to a level of world-historical importance.
When the Encampment started up, I understood my disagreements with Mellon-qua-SJP to be relatively minor (especially in the face of human suffering in Gaza). I was put off a bit by my girlfriend’s claim that SJP was rife with antisemitism. Her projections seemed to be a reflexive echo of the evil Zionist accusation leveled against her months back. The tit for tat, back-and-forths between my girlfriend and pro-Palestinian activists came to my mind when I read Zadie Smith’s New Yorker article “War in Gaza, Shibboleths on Campus.” Smith pointed out that meaningful conversation about Israel and Palestine is rare because too many talkers are content to stick with their initial stories (which come down to identity markers):
In these constructed narratives, there are always a series of shibboleths, that is, phrases that can’t be said, or, conversely, phrases that must be said. Once these words or phrases have been spoken (river to the sea, existential threat, right to defend, one state, two states, Zionist, colonialist, imperialist, terrorist) and one’s positionality established, then and only then will the ethics of the question be attended to (or absolutely ignored).
Smith asks that politics be substantive, not merely therapy for partisans content to live in…
that fantastical, linguistical, conceptual, unreal place—built with words—where rapes are minimized as needs be, and the definition of genocide quibbled over, where the killing of babies is denied, and the precision of drones glorified, where histories are reconsidered or rewritten or analogized or simply ignored, and “Jew” and “colonialist” are synonymous, and “Palestinian” and “terrorist” are synonymous, and language is your accomplice and alibi in all of it. Language euphemized, instrumentalized, and abused, put to work for your cause and only for your cause, so that it does exactly and only what you want it to do.
From what I gathered, UofC activists meant to help stop the killing. They had actionable demands about divestment etc. That did all get complicated with the protest culture of Intifada chants, and the range of (more extreme) factions within the encampment. And, perhaps, there’s force to the critique that it’s an exaggeration to argue American universities are key players in genocide of Palestinians. (Yet, cmon, UofC could find a way to avoid investments linked to killing children…Get those Chicago Boys workin. The University surely seems motivated to organize raids and find justifications to suspend diplomas from activist students.) Moving past the specific demands, Smith is right that Palestine/Israel discourse tends to rest on easy verities not uncomfortable truths. I haven’t run across pro-Palestinian activists addressing, say, the history of Mizrahi (exiled/refugee) Jews in Israel. It’s also been rough reading pro-Palestine Twitter’s responses to Smith’s careful work. A glance at trending posts proves polemicists are missing the opening of her piece where she explicitly avows her respect for the commitment and sacrifice of college students at encampments!
Encampment week didn’t just come down to goings-on at the Quad. The Encampment occupied daily life. I presented in my French class on Senegal’s recent elections one of those sunny afternoons when the Encampment rally’s megaphones made quick work of Cobb Hall’s sound proofing. I tried to relate the great democratic moment my mother’s country had just achieved: kicking out their turning-dictator president Macky Sall and replacing him with a duo who had worked as anti-corruption watchdogs (and been imprisoned for it). In my talk, I noted that the incoming president had plans to distance Senegal from French hegemony, buying out of the CFA and re-negotiating natural resource contracts. During Q&A, one peer, Pedro, a Portuguese student I’d come to know well, interjected something along the lines of, well, won’t Senegalese independence from French stewardship mean democratic backsliding, a failed state etc. Confronted with Pedro’s colonizer confidence—his dismissal of natives’ capabilities—I was at a loss at how he assumed a West-is-Best proposition would fly even in this spring of the Encampment.
I hosted a dinner that week, too. It didn’t go well. I overcooked the chicken, and I was making it for someone else. My guest didn’t let me live down my faux-pas. He’s very polite: in the salad fork, three course meal kind of way. Perhaps, I should say he has manners because his politesse is sharp, almost harsh. But he’s alright. I’m overdue writing about him, actually. In part, I remain friends to see how his life flows. I’m wondering if it might all break down at some point. He’s one of the cohort that has gone from private school to elite university to recruiting, and onto IB—“Happy JP Morgan” we cheered at his job offer dinner. (He paid…) Anyway, the night of our dinner, O., as I’ll refer to him here, let slip that his family donates a lot of money to UChicago. He had remarked in passing that his mother had news that the Encampment was to be swept away that night. Puzzled, I asked how his mother had that type of information. He told me that she was in a donor group chat. I wanted to learn more. How it works, well, each year O. tells his parents what part of the university he’s appreciated—for example, one particular study abroad program that he’s attended—and it gets a nice hit from his family. I wondered if I should press him to consider whether what-O.-likes-budget-policy is the best way to run the university. But I backed off. When I’ve pushed in the past, O.’s confidence that’s he one of the deserving rich (given how hard he and his family have worked) has been impregnable. Our dinner during Encampment week stressed our relationship. His usual ironic sensibility hadn’t been touched by campus crises. I wondered how long I’d end up waiting on his turn to real life. It might take too long.
I remember walking past the fraternities’ counter protest to the Encampment. I saw DDJ, a campus personality, who actually does go by his initials. Devin’s linkedin must terrify his fellow investment bankers: this specimen of black capital in a hurry has thousands of followers, drawn by his numberless posts on business developments and his well-lit professional photographs (he wears a different suit in each one). I know him decently well. He’s always friendly. Before I knew his politics, I was in a video endorsing his student government campaign. DDJ, there he was, embedded in the quite white crowd at the frat counter-protest. I wonder if he felt at home? It’s always a bit sad seeing the black guys at the fratty West Loop bars, amid the sea of blue jean and black top —blond girls’ basic uniform.
Techno night—in the basement of one of the chill, not Encampment counterprotest aligned frats—during the first weekend of UCUP’s mobilization. I arrived just as DJs were switching off. Through the smoke machines and rave lights, recent alumnus DJ Will took over for his “rave generator tutorial.” I was happy to see another black guy among the hipsters: I could make out he was lightskin, and we had the same coily hair. Will mixed Four Tet’s meandering Daydream Repeat into a real dance song. I had a sore knee from playing soccer, so I couldn’t give his whole set everything. But I made up for my legs with my arms and pumped my chest, rocked my head. A girl, one of the organizers, took Will’s mic and thanked attendees for coming out and contributing to a gofundme the hosts had set up for a refugee trying to get out of Gaza. A drunk Brit in the crowd started chanting “Israel is a Cunt.” The girl shut him down: “that’s not helpful” she said. The crowd clapped him out, too.
On the side path—now the only way to get to class because the quad’s main road is all closed up with graduation infrastructure—I walked with my girlfriend Elena to her last class of college. She was telling me she thought it was important I should be there for her graduation. I had planned on staying, but the last week, and the raid, had soured me on the University. She took my point but argued back that the University need not come down to admin. It was the teachers, friends, the pretty campus spots to take in sunny spring and new ivy. We walked by a younger black woman, “security ambassador” in big letters on her neon and black uniform. Sometimes black women glare at Elena and I. I’m aware my choice of a white-looking partner can come across as a diss to black women’s beauty and pride. So I always tense up even though I know it’s mostly all in my head. This young woman looked mournful when I caught her eye. This time, the job, or, life’s other lows, not our easy going, had her down. After I dropped Elena off, I skated back. As I came closer to the young woman, I flashed to a conversation I’d had the day before with my friend Chris, a dining hall worker I’d known since my first year. He had asked me what I was up to this summer. I had answered too quickly, too excitedly, “I’m going to Mexico!” Chris asked me how come? I told him I had a grant to study Spanish. He asked how much I was getting to cover trip costs and almost gasped at my answer, then shook his head slightly. I asked him what he was up to. He said he was staying in Chicago, trying to save up, aiming to stop sports gambling. A couple of my other friends at the dining halls would tell me they wanted to move on, that this job wasn’t what they wanted. My friend N’Kendra, usually lively and happy, turned serious as she mused about her life the last time I saw her, telling me by mid-twenties youth is over, that I needed to seize every shot I had. Skating by the young lady, security ambassador, I hoped she wasn’t stuck. I should have asked her about her day. I might have learned she was all good and that my shame need not get rooted. But flying by her, I wished my eyes and small smile communicated I wasn’t living privilege unawares.
The videos of bombed out Gaza and bloodied Palestinians keep coming. On graduation day, pro-Palestinian students made their stand again. I missed the larger walkout and action at the main convocation, but at the smaller diploma granting ceremony I attended, keffiyeh-ed students unfurled their flags, handwritten demands for divestment and University accountability, as they walked the stage. I was moved by a friend’s, Alex’s, bold, almost joyous strut past pissy parents. I had caught her at another moment worried about violent escalation at the Encampment. Alex, at grad, was lifted by her solidarity with Palestine. Another friend Emilio was equally upright. I had talked with him about his path through the Encampment, navigating his desire to stand with Palestinians and keep his Jewish friends and family close. Seeing those two up there, affirmed for me there was a way to keep it moving despite the reign of shibboleths. Their humane example compacted more hope than the last post-Encampment protest—a confused occupation of the Institute of Politics campus center.
That demo’s high point—a student climbing the building and planting a Palestinian flag—incited a clapback that made me lean back toward the protestors who yearn to make history (however). A frat across from IOP responded to the Palestinian flag-waver with an electric guitar version of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I was listening closely, wishing for flair, or an unexpected extended note, but this bland rendition played it safe and rote. UofC’s wannabe All-Americans lacked the imagination to play Hendrix. Then again his anthem could never serve as a perfect antinomy to youthful acts of insurrection.