A year to the day after the start of IU’s pro-Palestinian encampment, protesters were back in Dunn Meadow on Friday. Around 40 people marked the anniversary with speeches and the chants that had become characteristic of the encampment: “Free, free Palestine.” “From the river to the sea.” “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
Four IU Police cars were parked on different sides of Dunn Meadow during the protest, at the same time as the women’s Little 500 race.
Last year, on the opposite end of the same meadow, several of these protesters helped start what would be a months-long encampment in support of Palestine where more than 50 people were arrested.
That event, part of a larger encampment movement across many American universities, brought a police sniper to the roof of the Indiana Memorial Union, 100 days of tents in Dunn Meadow and national attention to IU.
Their demands of IU — and that very same mantra — have not wavered. And a year on, amid heightened federal pushback against pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses, protesters say those demands haven’t been met.
Soha Vora, a pro-Palestinian organizer who graduated IU in December, said it’s frustrating to see no progress on IU divesting from Israel, a year after the tents went up.
“It’s actually beyond frustrating,” Vora said. “It’s like, enraging.”
Pro-Palestinian activism on campus
The pro-Palestinian movement at IU did not begin during the encampment in Dunn Meadow last year, and it hasn’t stopped since.
The pro-Palestinian protests began two days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, as the Israeli response began pummeling the Gaza Strip. Hamas took around 250 hostages in the attack. Around 150 have since been released or rescued alive. Nearly 50 hostages were confirmed dead, and Israel believes another 35 have been killed.
Despite a ceasefire lasting about two months, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed about 52,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The health ministry says the majority of those are women and children, while Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants. Around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced by the war.
Two gatherings on Oct. 9, 2023 surrounding the conflict marked the first demonstrations at IU since the war began. The two groups — some in support of Israel and some in support of Palestine — began separately, but ended face to face, waving flags and yelling at each other.
On Oct. 16, 2023, about 30 people held a vigil at the Indiana Memorial Union, reading the names of people missing or killed during the war in Israel and Gaza.
On Oct. 29, 2023, more than 200 students gathered in Dunn Meadow to mourn Palestinian lives lost and advocate for a ceasefire. The Palestine Solidarity Committee then set up around 10,000 white flags Jan. 29, 2024, in Dunn Meadow to represent and honor the children killed in Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian protests continued throughout the school year, spurred on by the suspension of professor and former PSC advisor Abdulkader Sinno and the sudden cancelation of Palestinian painter Samia Halaby’s art exhibit.
Tensions came to a head during the Solar Eclipse last year, where IU police arrested one pro-Palestinian protester.
IU’s encampment was part of a nationwide trend of pro-Palestinian encampments last spring, started by one at Columbia University. Many were met with swift police backlash. State and IU Police arrested over 30 protesters on April 25, 2024, spurred by a university policy change just hours before. Officials also dismantled the encampment.
Protesters had re-established the encampment by the next day. On April 27 last year, police again forcibly arrested another 23 protesters. Those arrested faced one-year campus bans. One encampment figurehead, PSC graduate adviser Bryce Greene, received a five-year campus ban. All bans were eventually dropped.
The Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office declined to charge any protesters arrested for criminal trespass, citing IU’s “constitutionally dubious process” for changing its policy on structures in Dunn Meadow.
The protesters’ demands one year later
The IU Divestment Coalition, which organized the encampment, shared four demands prior to the start of the protest.
First was the resignation of IU President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav and Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs Carrie Docherty. They cited a faculty vote of no confidence against the three, the cancelation of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby’s exhibition and suspension of professor Abdulkader Sinno as reasons why they should resign.
All three administrators still work for IU. Whitten received a five-year contract extension and 28% raise in February. She now earns $900,000 per year, up from $702,000 annually.
The group’s next demand was the end of IU’s partnership with Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, which is a navy installation around 25 miles southwest of Bloomington. IU announced in October 2023 it would invest $111 million toward a partnership with NSWC Crane over the next several years.
The third was to divest financially from Israel. Vora pointed to a guest column written by Greene published in the IDS which showed IU held a bond in 2022 and 2023 sold by Israel. It’s unclear whether IU still holds those bonds, or how much they held.
The fourth demand was the creation of Middle Eastern and Muslim Culture Centers. While Shrivastav said in January last year the university was working on creating a Muslim culture center, student leaders have said there's been little progress.
But instead of answering their demands, IU only tightened restrictions against campus protest.
The IU Board of Trustees passed its Expressive Activity Policy in July, which restricted many of the tactics of the encampment, including camping, use of non-soluble chalks and paints and unapproved signs placed in the ground.
It also bans protesting from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. — though the board approved an amendment in November to allow community members to “spontaneously and contemporaneously assemble and distribute literature” during those hours.
Shortly after the policy passed, IU dismantled the Dunn Meadow encampment on its 100th day and closed the meadow for repairs.
Since then, the protest has taken different shapes. Demonstrators held several candlelight vigils at Sample Gates after 11 p.m., deliberately violating IU’s Expressive Activity Policy. In November, IUDC shared more demands: a biannual report that outlines IU affiliations with outside entities, the recognition of Palestine as a country experiencing war, the hiring of three Palestinian faculty to teach about Palestine and an apology and amnesty for protesters who’ve faced university sanctions for pro-Palestinian protest.
On Oct. 7, 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators met at Sample Gates to mourn the Palestinians killed in the one year since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
After the IU Divestment Coalition’s demands weren’t met by their deadline of Jan. 13, protesters began disruptions at Bloomington Faculty Council meetings in Franklin Hall.
What’s next
IU sophomore Sarah Alhaddad joined the PSC in 2023. She said the group’s demands have still not shifted a year after the encampment: Disclose, divest, resign.
Despite hearing criticism that the encampment was useless or ineffective, Alhaddad said success for the pro-Palestine community in Bloomington isn’t just defined by achieving their demands.
“It had a really big social impact,” Alhaddad said. “I think this was also the first time for a lot of people at this school that we could really expose the way that the administration is kind of, I guess, insidious in the way that they would call state troops and snipers on their own students that pay to be here.”
Alhaddad ran for IU Student Government as a candidate for vice president with her running mate Omeed Mehrzad. Their platform, EMPOWER, focused on uplifting student voices, protecting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility institutions, safety and sustainability. They ultimately lost, receiving 45.61% of votes to the ACTION campaign’s 54.38%.
The latest development is the People’s 2030 Project, a group of several organizations which drafted their own 2030 strategic plan for the university. The coalition held an involvement fair April 17, featuring the PSC, Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition and Students for a New Green World, among others.
That coalition-building will be a focus going forward, freshman PSC organizer Malak Samara said. Samara, who is Palestinian, said at the rally Friday that while she wasn’t at the encampment last year, she was inspired by college students demonstrating on behalf of her country.
At the Friday rally, protesters wrote down what a free Palestine means to them on a banner. Among the writings were “a liveable climate,” “ending colonization everywhere” and “solidarity.”
Samara said solidarity is especially important in the current political climate. The PSC held a joint rally with the IGWC to protest the U.S. Department of State revoking several IU international students’ visas earlier this month.
“That is also what fighting for Palestine means, is keeping people that are wronged based on things such as race, such as gender, such as religion, things like that, to keep them safe,” Samara said. “They should not be oppressed like that. No one should be oppressed like that.”
Alhaddad said she and other members of the PSC and other activist groups are still scared to speak about their experiences and opinions.
“Everything requires a level of sacrifice in my mind,” Alhaddad said. “Nothing good will come from staying in your comfort zone and no change will ever happen on a larger scale if there is not one person who doesn’t do something. High risk, high reward.”
Alhaddad said there is inherent sacrifice in being Palestinian.
“You were kind of raised with a cause,” Alhaddad said. “Your existence is so much bigger than yourself when you're Palestinian. Your identity is like a collective.”
