A new political diagonal: how students in the United States constructed internationalist solidarity with Palestine.

Thousands of students across the United States participated in campus protests, building occupations, and encampments during their Spring 2024 semesters. This was done in response to the US-backed Israeli Genocide in Gaza, Palestine, that began in October 2023. However, these anti-genocide, pro-Pale...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 401 - 431
Autor principal: Mueller, Jason C.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Dec2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Thousands of students across the United States participated in campus protests, building occupations, and encampments during their Spring 2024 semesters. This was done in response to the US-backed Israeli Genocide in Gaza, Palestine, that began in October 2023. However, these anti-genocide, pro-Palestine uprisings were more than student-focused activities. University professors, staff, labour unions, and community organizations across the United States built new links of solidarity with these students – and people in Gaza – despite acts of intimidation and repression carried out by university officials and law enforcement. As protests spread across the country, novel political formations emerged, simultaneously supporting the students' rights to assemble, while maintaining their focus on the end-goals of forcing their universities, and government, to divest from the sustained Israeli assault on Gaza. This article documents, analyses, and theorizes the political activities that took place across US campuses. It identifies acts by student militants that worked to overturn the status quo of the modern, militarized neoliberal university, and argues that these acts were emblematic of internationalist universalism. These newly forged links of solidarity between students, intellectuals, and the dispossessed of the world-system may reshape the terrain of social struggles in the twenty-first century.