Why it matters where people protest

On May 1, all that remained of Columbia University’s “ Liberated Zone ,” the Gaza Solidarity encampment that students formed on the campus’s South Lawn, were pale-yellow patches of grass where more than 100 tents once stood. It is a ghostly reminder of more than two weeks of occupation that ended in a brutal confrontation with law enforcement.



[Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images]



The night before, the school’s president, Minouche Shafik, authorized the NYPD to sweep all pro-Palestinian protesters—who had also occupied nearby Hamilton Hall—from the campus; 46 people were charged with criminal trespassing. By Wednesday morning , Columbia staff had dismantled and disposed of the tent city.



[Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]



Columbia’s encampment has received significant attention in the media, but it wasn’t alone, nor was it the first. Solidarity encampments have risen on college campuses across the country and around the world . Students today are carrying on the long tradition of occupations to voice dissent over the ongoing war in Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children.



Like Civil Rights-era sit-ins that targeted segregated places like bus stations, lunch counters, and beaches , the sites of protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict carry deep significance. From their locations on college campuses and national landmarks to their physical composition, the spatial elements of these protests speak volumes about the issues at hand and future that the protesters would like to see.



[Photo: Jia Wu/AFP/Getty Images]



Echoes of 1968—and 1985



Students started forming Columbia’s solidarity encampment on April 17, before taking over Hamilton Hall on April 30 and renaming it Hind’s Hall in memory of a six-year-old Palestinian girl reportedly killed by Israeli forces . The move echoes what happened in 1968, when students occupied multiple buildings to protest the Vietnam war, the university’s ties to weapons research, and the campus’s encroachment into Harlem ; at the time, they renamed Hamilton Hall “Malcolm X Hall.” 



1968 [Photo: Gene Kappock/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images]



Some of the issues that have sparked campus protests over the years were local and others involved foreign affairs, but a uniting theme in all of them is who gets to own space and who has a right to be there. In the 1968 Harlem protests, students were outraged over the university’s plan to build a publicly accessible fitness center in Morningside Park, which would have had one entrance for university staff and students and another for the neighborhood’s residents, who would only be able to access one floor of the facility . The conflict earned the name “Gym Crow.” By occupying the campus to denounce the university’s proposed actions, students confronted the heart of the issue directly.



Stefan M. Bradley, a professor at Amherst College who examined the 1968 campus occupation in his book, Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s , notes that the student protest challenged the power dynamics between Columbia and the neighborhood. The school had been steadily buying land around Harlem for decades, while the neighborhood was contending with ongoing displacement and gentrification. When students seized control of the campus, it was a role reversal. “It’s an important thing that space is in this conversation,” Bradley says. “You could take out the word ‘space’ and insert ‘power’ if you wanted to. In taking ownership of the campus, young people have claimed space and claimed power.”



1985 [Photo: Barbara Alper/Getty Images]



Fast-forward to 1985, when students occupied Hamilton Hall again, renaming it “Mandela Hall” in order to protest apartheid in South Africa and demand that the university divest from corporations that profited from it. They remained in the building for three weeks. Now, students are calling on Columbia to divest from Israel. Replicating the same protest actions underscores how similar dynamics between land, money, and power were in play through all of them.



“These repeat student manifestations help us understand the interconnectedness of struggles for liberation worldwide,” says Cruz Garcia, cofounder of WAI Think Tank , a design studio that interrogates the political aspects of architecture. “Whether against gentrification and displacement in Harlem, war in Vietnam, and apartheid in South Africa, or Nakba in Palestine, there’s a historical memory and consciousness that interlocks all these movements.”



[Photo: Emily Byrski/AFP/Getty Images]



Why Place Matters



Cutting through the media noise has become increasingly difficult for protesters, which has led organizers to think creatively about where and how they hold occupations. “Political action is a form of theater enhanced through consideration of its stage,” says Jay Saper, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).



Since October, the group has held sit-ins at the U.S. Capitol (“the site of the Israeli military’s purse,” Saper says), calling for a ceasefire in Gaza; the Statue of Liberty , (“because the words of our Jewish ancestor Emma Lazarus etched into that very moment that compel us to take action to support the Palestinians in Gaza yearning to breathe free,” they add); Grand Central Station at rush hour (“an iconic New York City landmark that merges the possibility of phenomenal disruption with stunning beauty,” Saper continues), Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn (which is near Senator Chuck Schumer’s home), and at the Manhattan Bridge . 



Holding actions in locations that will instigate a response is an important part of the group’s narrative-building. The Capitol Rotunda is a place where members of Congress routinely give interviews and so “the cameras are already pointed there,” says Saper.



Continuing with the analogy to theater, JVP also views costume design as an important part of its sit-ins. The group wears black t-shirts emblazoned with phrases like “not in our name” and “Jews say cease fire now,” among slogans. “We’re very deliberate about using our actions to intervene in narratives that are not representing us,” they say. “Sending the message to the world that Jews are saying ‘Not in our name’ takes away the legitimacy of those in power who are saying they are doing things for us.”



[Photo: Emily Byrski/AFP/Getty Images]



The significance of a campus



College campuses, in particular, are ripe with symbolism, which makes them a powerful place for demonstrations. “The college campus in the U.S. context is, in its form and structure, an idealized urban space where free inquiry is ‘encouraged,’ and where many different people share space or live in as a community,” Garcia says. “Since universities claim to care about freedom of speech or academic freedom, this also creates a framework for manifestations of these forms of free expression.”



The protests are a manifestation of what students believe their campus should be—a place where people can express their political views. The reality has proven far less idealistic. At Columbia and Barnard, college administrators evicted students for protesting . One of the most striking scenes from the protests came out of UCLA, where violent pro-Israel counter-protesters shot fireworks into an encampment, hit people inside with sticks, and started throwing objects while chanting “USA, USA,” according to a Daily Bruin report . In a press conference last week , President Joe Biden said that “dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can’t finish the semester and college education.” 



While the Israel-Hamas war may not always be the top story on social media, and as some Americans seem to ignore the Israeli military’s ongoing assaults in the region (a Pew survey from March found that 43% of U.S. adults are following news about the war “not too or not at all closely”), the campus protests are high-profile reminders that the war continues, now entering its seventh month, and with the destruction of Gaza’s many historic sites, some academics are calling it “urbicide.”



In Gaza, there are no universities left , the few hospitals that remain are barely functioning , nearly everyone has lost their homes, and there are 1.7 million refugees . Rafah, where more than half of the region’s population is sheltering, has become a tent city . The encampments are physical reminders that can’t be tuned out. Students are making visible the connections between their tuition dollars, university endowments, and investments in Israel and are refusing to let administrators dismiss their anger over this.



“The encampments and occupations emerge to make university administrations listen, as they have been ignoring those calls for too long,” says Architects and Planners Against Apartheid (APAA), a group of architecture educators and academics that formed in 2021 . “The encampments also offer many a space to breathe in an otherwise mostly suffocating environment of denialism and repression in higher education regarding the genocide in Gaza.”



[Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images]



Improvisational Communities



While a march or rally might conclude after a few hours, an encampment becomes an enduring presence that demands attention. The appearance and social organization of the encampments can say a lot, too. A student at the University of California, Berkeley’s solidarity encampment, which is on the steps of Sproul Hall, told The New Yorker that the tents alluded to the living conditions in Gaza. And in 1986, a student encampment on Yale’s Beinecke Plaza named “Winnie Mandela City ,” referenced the informal structures and settlements that many Black South Africans in Johannesburg were forced to live in.



As solidarity encampments have convened, they’ve functioned like temporary cities. As a Columbia Spectator report copublished with New York magazine states, organizers from Columbia University Apartheid Divest , a coalition of more than 100 student groups, started their initial encampment with a set plan: 40 mostly identical green camping tents “uniformly aligned in a systematic way,” encircling a white wedding-style tent that protected covered food and supplies. As the university suspended students and called on the NYPD to arrest those who participated in the action, campus staff started to clear the tents. Not long after, another encampment formed on the grass across a walkway. 



The day-to-day life in the student encampments, which has been generally quiet and not typically represented in the news, has instead focused on comments from school administrations characterizing the spaces as intimidating and describing them as “a clear and present danger.” But these encampments are remarkably sophisticated and have demonstrated a high level of community care through public bathrooms , first-aid stations , public art, libraries , and areas for prayer. They serve communal meals, which have included a Passover Seder , and take care to offer allergy-free , even kosher, food .



On the third day of the Columbia encampment, Jewish students held a Shabbat dinner under a sign that read “Shabbat Shalom from the Liberation Zone.” It was a powerful moment. Carrie Zaremba, a member of the group Students for Justice in Palestine , told reporters from the Columbia Spectator that “It’s a reflection of everything we’re fighting for: freedom, justice, and liberation for all. . . . I think the fact that they’ve been able to accommodate multi-faith prayer spaces in here is absolutely beautiful, and we’re showing to the outside world what kind of a future the students are trying to build.”



Through encampments, the students are not only protesting what they want to end; they are physical allegories for what they are fighting for—something that becomes more powerful when it’s performed in space, with community.