On September 30, 2024, during a Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting, two dozen pro-Palestine protesters gathered off to the side of the room, tape over their mouths. They held paper signs with slogans such as “Princeton your hands are red,” “Anti-Zionism ≠ antisemitism,” and “drop the charges” — the latter a reference to the ongoing legal proceedings against pro-Palestinian activists arrested last spring. In front of the protestors sat a few members of Tigers for Israel (TFI), a group that opposes University divestment from Israeli companies, clad in casual business attire. Throughout the meeting, the two groups of students did not visibly interact.
Both groups had been awaiting the CPUC Resources Committee’s announcement on Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest’s (PIAD’s) proposal to divest and dissociate from companies involved in Israel’s alleged human rights violations. Jay Groves, Chair of the Resources Committee—an administrative body composed of faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate student representatives charged with examining endowment-related questions—ultimately announced that the Committee decided to open a new comment portal on its website “to assess mood on campus regarding divestment proposal.” After waiting nearly three months for an update, PIAD members were less than happy with the meeting’s reveal. “It’s quite frustrating,” reflected Jessica Ng, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the High Meadows Environmental Institute and member of PIAD’s admin-liaison committee.
After the Committee concluded its discussion of the divestment proposal, the protestors rose in unison. They walked out of the boardroom with coordination and purpose. Chants began immediately, echoing across Frist South Lawn as they exited the building: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop we will not rest;” “From the river to the sea;” “There is only one solution: Intifada; Revolution.” They drew stares as they marched to the East Pyne courtyard, where Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), in collaboration with other groups, hosted a protest and vigil following the meeting. When the protestors assembled, the mic was given to Ng. She condemned the University’s “fundamentally flawed and fatally slow” response to the divestment proposal.
Some see the University’s extended deliberation as wise. “They need to have time to go and figure all of this out themselves. There’s no shortcut,” said Chabad Rabbi Etian Webb. For pro-Palestine activists, however, the University appears to be stalling; SJP member Amber Rahman ‘25 called the opinion-gathering proposal a “process of distraction.”
At the time of writing, the CPUC has yet to decide on how to proceed with PIAD’s divestment and dissociation proposal; it is unclear when they will. Campus discourse surrounding current events in Palestine is fragmented — there appears to be no obvious resolution in sight.
Pro-Palestine activism has existed on Princeton’s campus since at least 2002; the movement intensified following Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent response. (“Pro-Palestine” and “pro-Israel” are commonly used terms to describe two opposing coalitions. I use them here with the understanding that both coalitions are composed of groups with multiple beliefs and motivations.) In April 2024, Princeton students joined peers across the country by establishing an encampment on campus— first by McCosh Hall, and later on Cannon Green — to protest the University’s alleged complicity in Israel’s violence towards Palestinians. The encampment drew protests at sizes not seen since the movement for racial justice on campus spearheaded by the Black Justice League in 2015. Groups including SJP, PIAD, and Alliance of Jewish Progressives (AJP) coordinated programming: sit-ins and hunger strikes accompanied prayers and community-building activities.
In spring 2024, several pro-Palestine activists met with administration representatives to discuss the encampment’s demands, which included dissociation and divestment from Israeli companies, a commitment to forming ties with Palestinian organizations, and an academic boycott. Ng reflected that in the spring, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 “was pretty dismissive of our concerns.”
“First they expressed a serious interest in ending the hunger strike and reaching an agreement,” she said. “But then they turned around and made it clear at the next meeting that they were not there to negotiate on the encampment’s demands.”
Emanuelle Sippy ’25, a lead organizer at AJP — a group of Jewish-identifying students who support Palestinian liberation— agreed. She said that the University ignored even “low hanging fruit demands, like making a statement. The University acknowledged the horror of October 7— they refused to acknowledge the horror of Palestinian civilians being targeted.”
Following spring student protests, activists increasingly turned to official university channels; a PIAD working group crafted a proposal to pursue the encampment’s demand for dissociation and divestment. (Dissociation refers to the act of refusing financial relationships with a certain company, and divestment to withdrawing endowment investments in a company. Princeton often pairs the two actions together when it deems them necessary.) The 66-page proposal, submitted to the Resources Committee in June, details the history of pro-Palestine activism at Princeton, outlines Israel’s alleged human rights violations, and breaks down Princeton’s divestment policy. The proposal recommends the University adopt a policy stating that “Princeton is committed to divesting” from entities that “enable or facilitate human rights violations” as a part of Israel’s “apartheid practices.”
The Resource Committee’s 1997 guidelines stipulate that the University may consider disassociation from a company or group of companies represented in the University’s investment portfolio when there is “considerable, thoughtful, and sustained campus interest in an issue” and a “central University value clearly at stake.” The University has previously divested and dissociated from certain companies involved in South African apartheid in 1987 and in the Darfur genocide in 2006, as well as from fossil fuels companies — albeit partially — in 2022 (Princeton subsequently altered its fossil fuel dissociation policy to allow certain relationships to continue), in response to violations of its values of humanitarianism and “pursuit of truth and knowledge.” Notably, Princeton’s Board of Trustees has final say on questions of divestment; the Committee is strictly an advisory body.
Almost every pro-Palestine activist I spoke to emphasized the urgency of divestment, pointing to the Israel-Palestine conflict’s humanitarian toll. According to Gaza’s ministry of health, between October 7th and November 10th, 2024, over 43,000 Palestinians died in Gaza and 780 in the West Bank, including more than 16,700 children. 1,139 Israelis died and almost 9,000 were injured. More than 125 journalists have been murdered; schools have been shut down or destroyed. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is committing apartheid in Occupied Palestine Territory. On November 12, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Sippy, as well as other activists, see divestment as Princeton’s moral duty. “It is our obligation to to call out how deeply morally bankrupt it is for an institution that claims to be in the service of humanity to profit off the killing of children,” Sippy said. “How is that in the service of humanity? How is it in the service of knowledge and truth and research?”
Multiple pro-Palestine activists expressed dissatisfaction with the CPUC meeting’s outcome. Ng said that processes like the CPUC “are extremely poorly defined and arbitrary.” The University has not clarified how it will evaluate community feedback, causing many to question CPUC’s decision to open the online portal; Rahman characterized the CPUC’s plan as “disorganized,” and Sippy noted its lack of precedent. Moreover, activists critique the University for lacking a timeline for making a divestment decision, and for failing to define what a “central University value” is and who can define one.
The CPUC’s guidelines require that divestment is supported by “consensus” among the University community, a contested term among divestment advocates and opponents. PIAD’s proposal states that “as past divestment from South Africa, Darfur, and fossil fuels demonstrates, ‘consensus’ is subjective and does not require unanimous support.” Pro-Israel activists contend that there is no consensus on campus. The University has not made it clear what the threshold for “consensus” is in the case of PIAD’s divestment proposal.
The committee’s lack of clarity makes multiple interpretations of their procedures plausible; activists on both sides cite the CPUC’s guidelines as evidence in their favor.
In fall 2024, Max Meyer ‘27 revived Tigers for Israel (TFI), a student group dedicated to combating antisemitism and supporting the state of Israel. Meyer, who grew up in a “strong Jewish community,” said that following October 7, he “started to notice that there was a real hole in activism and advocacy on campus on this matter.” After the PIAD proposal was introduced, he worked with other students and faculty to combat what they thought was “an egregious mischaracterization and misrepresentation of the campus perspective.” The coalition emailed the resulting “No Consensus on Princeton BDS” letter to the University community in late August. The letter, which has garnered more than 1,300 signatures, refers to a broader movement to boycott, divest from, and place economic sanctions (BDS) on Israel; PIAD’s proposal only calls for divestment. The letter’s signature count “certainly rejects any even potential semblance of consensus at this university,” Meyer said.
The coalition challenges PIAD’s characterization of Israel’s actions. “Incredibly, the PIAD proposal fails to mention how the current war began — when Hamas and other terrorist groups invaded Israel,” its letter states. “In the PIAD proposal’s version of reality, Israel’s aggressors do not exist.” Pro-Israel activists often contextualize Israel’s current actions under the umbrella of self-defense.
Many who oppose divestment also dispute the extent of Israel’s reported human rights violations and question the International Court’s legitimacy and potential biases. Rabbi Webb pushed back against the narrative that Israel is committing apartheid in Gaza, saying “Even if there is discrimination, discrimination and apartheid are not the same. There’s discrimination in the United States.”
Those opposing the PIAD proposal maintain that disassociation from Israel would not be conducive to Princeton’s values of humanitarian rights, truth and knowledge, and therefore those actions would not fit Prinecton’s guidelines for divestment.
Meyer argued that Princeton institutional connections with the state of Israel are essential given their status as a democracy: “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that allows women equal rights, that allows religious, ethnic, racial minorities equal protection under the law.”
“A boycott from an academic institution,” said Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, the Rabbi of the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) at Princeton, while reflecting on the movement’s broader aims, “would be antithetical to the University’s stated academic culture of free speech.”
Many who oppose divestment also claim it would single out Israel in a problematic fashion. If PIAD’s proposal passed, Steinlauf fears “it could embolden some who are hostile against Israel on campus.” Steinlauf, who is a member of a working group collecting data on Jewish students’ experiences at Princeton, believes that this hostility may harm Princeton’s Jewish community. “By and large, Jewish students on Princeton’s campus report that they do not feel unsafe on Princeton’s campus,” said Steinlauf. But, he stated that there is still “a group of students in the Jewish community who are reporting feeling deeply concerned.”
For instance, some Jewish-identifying students reported feeling targeted by protestor’s actions. As Meyer mentioned, at the spring encampment, one protester flew a Hezbollah flag. (The flag was quickly removed when it was identified by encampment organizers, according to The Daily Princetonian.) Students have reported feeling targeted by slogans frequently heralded during SJP protests — including lines like “From the River to the Sea” and references to an “Intifada Revolution.” Responding to the former phrase, Steinlauf said, “While many students use the phrase and honestly believe it represents a call to justice, historically the phrase was meant to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the Jewish community understand this phrase in its original context and therefore hear it as antisemitic.”
The definitions of antisemitism and anti-Zionism are highly politicized. The line between the two is contested: roughly, the former term refers to hatred and prejudice against Jewish people, while the latter refers to denying the legitimacy of the Israeli state’s existence. Many pro-Israel activists claim that anti-Zionism often bleeds into antisemitism, and use this act of definition to denounce pro-Palestine activities. “It is perfectly legitimate for anybody to complain about the policies of a modern democracy—that is not antisemitic,” Steinlauf said, adding that “to claim that only the Jewish state has no right to exist is, according to the majority of people within the Jewish community, is antisemitic.”
Meyer added that “weaponizing the term Zionist as almost a replacement for Jew, in many contexts, would be considered antisemitic,” since the term “represents the vast majority of Jewish people.”
Pro-Palestinian student organizers insist their movement rejects antisemitism. “Our movement stands for the liberation of the Palestinian people. We do not stand for antisemitism,” Rahman said, repeating a sentiment expressed by multiple other protestors. “In fact, a common tactic to silence our movements is to accuse it of antisemitism.”
Progressive Jews who describe themselves as anti-Zionist, including many members of AJP, reject the assertion that anti-Zionism must always be antisemitic. Steinlauf suggests that this group is a “minority within the Jewish community.”
The CJL does not officially support AJP as an organization because it self-identifies as “anti-Zionist.” Despite this, Steinlauf said the CJL remains “deeply supportive of the Jewish students who might be affiliated with AJP.”
Although AJP officially endorsed the PIAD proposal, Sippy acknowledged that “It’s not uncomplicated for us.” The suffering of Israelis is “personal to many of us in AJP. We have family, friends who have been affected, held hostage, and killed.” she said. She reflected on the grievous human rights violations committed on both sides of the conflict: “We can acknowledge the terror and horror of the Hamas attack, and also acknowledge that it did not come out of a vacuum—it came out of years of Palestinians being violently subjugated and oppressed.”
“We don’t believe that one set of war crimes justifies another set of war crimes,” she continued. “Especially one that is disproportionate and that has killed this many children and civilians.”
Conversations between those with opposing views on the issue are rare; a lack of mutually acknowledged facts appears to stymie productive engagement. Meyer pointed out that PIAD’s proposal does not acknowledge the horror of October 7th; Sippy said that the “No Consensus On Princeton BDS” letter “doesn’t talk about the Palestinian death toll, the scale of devastation in Gaza, the settler violence in the West Bank, or the last 80 years of Palestinians being oppressed, displaced, dispossessed and murdered.”
Moreover, multiple student leaders expressed the belief that those with opposing perspectives do not want to speak to them; many believe that conversation is unproductive altogether.
Rahman believes engagement with opposition is unhelpful given the issue’s moral weight. “People are opposed to BDS because they are not opposed to genocide. There are a lot of people who don’t want to stop genocide, and that’s the problem here,” she said. Ng similarly remarked that “a lot of those conversations are not really had in good faith, and so we’ve focused on building support where we see potential.”
“These are people who are not looking for a dialogue,” Meyer said, when asked whether he’s spoken with SJP members, “I would also argue it’s practically impossible to have a true dialogue with people who can’t come to a basic understanding of facts.”
In other spaces, however, there seems to be more discourse. “Particularly since many AJP members attend CJL for prayer services and communal gatherings,” Sippy said, “we have hard conversations with our friends and community members who disagree with us every single day not only on campus but with our families and communities at home.”
Most interactions between those who disagree vehemently occur at protests—venues which are not necessarily conducive to dialogue. Rabbi Webb reflected that he “attempted, on multiple occasions, to speak with [the protestors].” Many were stand-offish: “If we started a conversation, within two or three minutes, somebody from this group would come over and place themself between us, or pull the person away. It felt very cultish.” Meyer had a similar experience when protesting against the encampment. “They would often chant ‘Ignore him, Ignore him,’” he said.
Protestors’ attempts to shut down counter-protestors can be contextualized by safety concerns. When I approached protestors at SJP events, most were reluctant to speak on the record. Many wore masks to protect their identities. Doxxing has become increasingly common at pro-Palestine protests. Projects like Canary Mission have created online databases of people they consider “antisemitic,” releasing their personal information without consent. Several Princeton graduate students and professors have “profiles” on the organization’s website.
Multiple activists, including Rahman and Urvi — a member of PIAD who asked to be identified only by first name due to safety concerns — were also concerned about University retribution. Urvi ambiguously referred to “a massive movement of repression taking place at Princeton and nationally.” SJP branches have been disbanded at multiple Universities, including Columbia, Rutgers, and Brown. At the time of publication, there is no concrete evidence that Princeton is taking such action.
Rahman suspects that the University is monitoring SJP’s social media. When asked about this practice, Director of Media Relations Jennifer Morrill stated via email, “We generally track mentions of Princeton on social media, just as we monitor references to the University in news media.”
It remains unclear when the CPUC will deliver a verdict on PIAD’s demands, but activists have remained busy.
In early November, SJP brought forward a Undergraduate Student Government (USG) referendum calling on the University to divest and dissociate from weapons manufacturing companies, starting with five such companies that have documented ties to Israel’s alleged human rights violations. (The official ballot question was sent to the school community via email by USG on November 17th.) Pro-Palestine activists hope that passing the referendum will build support for broader divestment from companies associated with Israel’s war crimes. As of the time of writing, the results of the referendum have not been released.
Activists intend to prioritize community building activities and educational events in the coming months. “Our group’s name is Tigers for Israel,” Meyer stated, “We’d like to host fun events where people can come together and have a good time while supporting Israel.” Dozens of emails for events like TFI speakers, SJP dance workshops, and AJP Rosh Hashana dinners are sent out to residential college list-servers each week.
“Movement building has been really gratifying to be a part of, and that’s going to continue moving forward, regardless of what the CPUC tries to do, and regardless of what the board tries to do,” Ng said. “This isn’t going away.”
On October 29th, Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, spoke at Princeton as part of the SPIA’s Dean Leadership series. Meyer rose to speak, reading off a piece of paper. “You denied today your antisemitism. But let me lay out a few examples. In a classic antisemitic trope of accusing Jews of being responsible for our own suffering, you mocked French President Emanuel Macron for identifying Judaism as a driving factor in the October 7th Hamas-led attacks,” Meyer said. “You have consistently engaged in antisemitic Holocaust inversion, comparing —including today— Israel to the Third Reich and its pure race laws…”
“—So what’s the question? What’s the question?” Albanese eventually interrupted Meyer.
“Well, my question ultimately is: how dare you compare Jews to our oppressors, dismiss the antisemitic hatred that fuels violence against us, and deny us, unlike other oppressed groups, the right to define the parameters of our own oppression?”
Albanese responded with a growing impatience in her voice, asking Meyer: “Why are you speaking on behalf of all the Jews?” The audience burst into applause.
“It’s very disingenuous to try to force antisemitism on what happened on October 7,” she continued. “The hatred that killed Israelis on that day was not prompted by antisemitism. It was prompted by years and decades of dispossession, humiliation, subjugation, degradation. …The fact that you don’t want to see the pain of the other, the trauma of the other, doesn’t speak to my alleged antisemitism. It speaks to your humanity.”
To a pro-Israel spectator, Meyer may have “won” this exchange; to a pro-Palestine activist, the opposite. Perhaps the answer is both and neither. Each coalition remains stuck — stuck with seemingly irreconcilable beliefs, and stuck waiting for the University to make a decision.