Legal Support for Brown Divest Coalition 41

Brown Alumni for Palestine is raising funds to cover the costs of legal fees needed to support the 41 students of the Brown Divest Coalition who were arrested for staging a principled act of civil disobedience. In a staggering demonstration of campus activist repression, Brown University has had 61 of its own students arrested and charged with willful trespassing this semester.

On December 11th, 41 undergraduate students marched into University Hall to stage a de-occupation protest calling on Brown leadership to heed the demands of Brown students and community members, to end the university’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. The students wore t-shirts that read “Divest for Hisham” referring to their Palestinian classmate Hisham Awartani who survived a racially motivated attempted execution on November 25th in Burlington Vermont along with two of his Palestinian friends. Hisham sustained the most severe injuries and is paralyzed from the chest down, perhaps permanently. The students delivered a message to Brown University President Christina Paxson in the morning and refused to leave the building until their demands were met. Their statement went as follows:

“We are the Brown Divest Coalition, a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious coalition of students, urging Brown University to divest the endowment from companies facilitating the Israeli state’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Two weeks ago, one of our classmates, Hisham, along with two other students, was shot for speaking Arabic and wearing a keffiyeh. In light of this blatant hate crime and Brown’s continued refusal to divest from the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, we cannot stay silent.

As a necessary part of the call for an immediate ceasefire, we demand Brown University divest its endowment from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

The Brown Divest Coalition joins other activist groups and hundreds of protestors at Brown, outraged at Brown’s insistence on maintaining its financial investments in weapons manufacturers and other companies identified for divestment in a 2020 recommendation report from Brown’s own ethical investments advisory committee (ACCRIP now known as ACURM). This report was vetoed by President Paxson and never taken to the Brown Corporation for review. Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Caucus of graduate workers at Brown launched a petition in October that has collected over 2300 signatures from the campus community urging Brown to support a ceasefire, protect its students, and divest the endowment by implementing the ACCRIP report. Over 1400 alums signed a statement we circulated also calling on Brown to divest.

A few weeks prior to the arrest of the 41 students in the Brown Divest Coalition, 20 students in the group BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now also staged a sit-in at University Hall with connected demands calling on the university to “to do its part to promote an immediate ceasefire and a lasting peace by divesting its endowment from companies that enable war crimes in Gaza.” The 20 Jewish students staging the sit-in were subsequently arrested after the building closed at 5pm. In the aftermath of the shooting of the three Palestinian college students, including Brown’s own student Hisham, Paxson decided to ask for the charges against this group of students to be dropped. Jews for Ceasefire Now joins other groups, including Brown Alumni for Palestine, calling on Brown to now drop the charges against the 41 students arrested from the Brown Divest Coalition.

20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the brutal months-long bombing campaign carried out by the Israeli military with US financial and political backing. Nearly 50,000 have been injured and almost 2 million displaced. In the face of this unbearable violence, Brown students are speaking up and organizing in the long-held tradition of student activism Brown is known for, but appears to only celebrate retroactively. Please consider donating to support this courageous group of students. You can also support by participating in our email campaign calling on Brown to drop the charges.

Should Brown recommend that the charges against the students be dropped, and the cost of legal fees therefore be reduced, we will donate the remainder of the goal towards the fundraiser for Hisham's recovery. Please consider donating here also.