Above photo: Student protesters participate in the Gaza encampment at The George Washington University. Taytum Wymer.
In Retaliation For Encampment Protests.
As alumni of The George Washington University, we condemn the university’s retaliation against students arrested at the Palestine solidarity encampment on GW’s campus.
At The George Washington University’s (GW) request, the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutors recently included stay away orders as a condition in the stet agreement for students arrested at the Palestine solidarity encampment on GW’s campus, preventing them from entering the entirety of the Foggy Bottom campus – with Pennsylvania Ave NW, 18th Street NW, E Street NW, Virginia Ave NW, and 24th Street NW delineating the boundaries. Initially, prosecutors formulated the orders to include exceptions for commuting to and from home and work, going to classes, and meeting with faculty. However, immediately before the second round of status hearings for students arrested during the Metropolitan Police Department’s May 8th encampment raid, GW successfully pressured the government to revoke these exemptions. The agreement bars five students, who are already stuck in the protracted legal process, from attending their classes, living on or near campus, accessing any university spaces (including dining halls and the Multicultural Student Services Center), passing through Foggy Bottom on the bus or metro, accessing GW Hospital, or even walking on public streets in the area.
As alumni of The George Washington University, we condemn the university’s retaliation against students. We stand in full solidarity with the persecuted students and with Palestine, we condemn the university’s ties to the ongoing genocide, and we will continue to withhold any donations until GW meets the popular demand for divestment.
GW’s escalation is simply another symptom of the long imposed restrictions on pro-Palestine speech on their campus. This decision underscores the university’s role in endorsing and funding a genocide that also strips Palestinians of their basic human rights; their actions reveal a disturbing pattern of hypocrisy and racism, where the struggle for Palestinian life is not only marginalized but actively erased from academic life. GW is already infamous for historically targeting members of our community who they perceive as threatening their greed– their imperial and financial interests. This is best exemplified by the university’s preceding refusal to divest from South African apartheid and, now, the genocidal Israeli state, which was ruled responsible for apartheid by the International Court of Justice.
Though GW claims that these stay away orders are a preventative security measure which many perceive as unique, similar frantic attempts at repression have been seen before. The university has formerly failed to protect and even retaliated against its anti-zionist staff, such as in 2020 when Ilana Feldman faced intimidation from Zionist groups upon her appointment as interim dean of the Elliott School, and in 2022 when Dr. Lara Sheehi was dragged through kangaroo courts under false claims of anti-semitism for criticizing Israel.
GW has consistently overlooked and sponsored zionist intimidation for years: from having Canary Mission on campus in 2018, allowing GW Hillel, alongside other organization, to host the Israel Security Agency attaché Doron Tenne in 2022 (and subsequently targeting SJP and one of its members for protesting this decision), to their lackluster response to the doxxing truck which harassed current students on campus just last year.
In previous years, GW more discreetly reduced anti-zionist and Palestinian students’ access to resources by effectively shutting down the Office of Advocacy and Support (OAS) after canceling “virtual processing spaces” for students affected by the 2021 bombing of Gaza. Not only did the university neglect the pain of their Palestinian students, but they forced OAS to issue a formal apology for considering their needs to begin with and threatened to fire OAS staff. It is more than clear that GW finds Palestinian identity itself insulting and intimidating and it will stop at no end to suppress it— even if that means banning Palestinian students’ psychological care.
When GW claims that it has resources for the community, but neglects a critical demographic, it makes it obvious that this is because it does not consider Palestinian students part of the community and that it will do everything it can to isolate them from it—why else would they treat their own students with disrespect at best and flagrant hostility at worst?
GW has never cared for the wellbeing of its anti-zionist students, rather, the institution consistently makes apparent that pro-Palestine speech is not welcome on campus, nor is Palestinian identity. This is further evidenced by GW’s neglect of students grieving the ongoing genocide in 2024, including President Granberg calling their vigil a “celebration of terrorism”, the university’s 90-day ban of Students for Justice in Palestine in 2023, and the forced removal of Ramie Abounaja’s Palestinian flag in 2015.
The University’s treatment of its anti-zionist community members is further encapsulated in the open Title VI complaint against GW for anti-Palestinian discrimination by Palestine Legal in 2023— it serves as a testament to the hostility and violence this university has long tolerated and even perpetrated. As the first ever U.S. Department of Education investigation into Anti-Palestinian discrimination, this case, which centers around a student targeted under false vandalism claims, the shut down of OAS, and the mistreatment of Dr. Sheehi and her students, is unprecedented. Given our history, it’s hardly surprising.
Nevertheless, stay away orders remain largely unprecedented among institutions of higher education, but are in line with GW’s years of escalating anti-Palestine suppression. The Student Code of Conduct allows students threatened with suspension or expulsion by GW to have their case heard by a panel of their peers, allowing students an opportunity to appeal the decision should they find it to be unfair, as is standard across academia. Now, the administration has discarded their own checks and balances in order to pursue retaliation and lawfare, through the court, at all costs.
Few other academic institutions have sought this level of inhumane measures against students through the legal system without prior internally-issued suspensions and full representation through Student Rights and Responsibilities. These students will face what constitutes one of the most severe punishments issued by a university while being denied access to the very channels established to protect students’ ability to represent themselves. We believe this decision is a complete violation of the rights of students, even as GW makes the baseless claim they are its foremost concern.
In the same breath that GW preaches about student safety, they restrict their access to a major area that includes access to essential needs: housing, meal plans, jobs, student support services, pharmaceutical and medicinal services, LGBTQ+ support services, and religious resources— all of which fall within the administration’s punitive red lines. Somehow, an institution that keeps raising its tuition, all the while accelerating gentrification and failing to address food insecurity on campus, has managed to make D.C. even more inaccessible for the students it claims to protect. Yet, when we illuminate the all-encompassing punishments GW has imposed on students, we understand its true purpose – the administration must make student’s living conditions difficult in order to silence any skepticism over GW’s complicity in making Gaza unlivable.
In yet another flawed decision-making process, the university argued the solidarity encampment for Gaza had such a “disruptive” nature on the community’s ability to learn, that their only response was unfairly revoking students’ rights to learn. Through seeking to ban students from the library, classes, office hours, study groups, public streets, and living on campus, the University interferes with their daily schedule to a degree that will make academic success, and even the most basic means of engaging with education, impossible.
GW’s desire to protect academic excellence and educational access are only extended to those they deem “worthy.” Yet, when we understand the struggles of the students, we understand its true origin – GW interferes with its students’ academic success as a means of scholasticide– to hide any knowledge students may produce exposing the university’s connections to companies and institutions funding the annihilation of Gaza’s education system.
Not only is the university cutting off these students’ access to necessary resources, they’re cornering them so as to deny them representation throughout this disciplinary process. By banning students from campus, they are effectively imposing a quiet six-month suspension, all while totally circumventing their own procedures.
The University’s blatant disregard for its own students’ wellbeing– and its willingness to deny their housing, education, and livelihoods proves that the administrations’ loyalties are not to its students. The thin veil of student safety has been lifted to reveal the Granberg administration and the university at large’s true values: revenue and prestige, no matter the humanitarian cost.
We ask you to show your solidarity with students by taking 5 minutes to send an email to GWU’s administration using the template here.