Students are under investigation for participating in campus protests, and some may already be facing charges, according to a series of emails sent by Swarthmore College President Valerie Smith and Vice President for Student Affairs Stephanie Ives. On Jan. 25, Smith’s email announced code of conduct violations for students involved in protests last semester, specifically mentioning the two-week Swarthmore Palestine Coalition (SPC) sit-in as a violation of the Academic Freedom and Responsibility Policy. Smith wrote that students supporting Israel are under investigation, as well as those supporting Palestine. The Phoenix could not independently verify this claim.
“For a variety of reasons, we allowed the students to remain in Parrish until the semester ended,” Smith wrote in the email. “However, in the interest of transparency, let me state that we cannot permit any similar events to take place this spring. It is simply unfair and unreasonable to expect the campus community to endure such a disruption.”
Ives’s email – sent the following day – explained the rules and process of code violations and investigations. After the college collects evidence, students will have an opportunity to present their case in a full hearing. If they are found responsible, they will face repercussions ranging from a warning to suspension or expulsion. The college may also take interim measures if they determine it necessary, such as suspension of students or freezing club funds if “resources are used to support events that are prohibited.”
The emails were met with student and faculty outrage that accused the college of restricting student protest while outwardly promoting values of protest and social engagement in school messaging.
On Feb. 5, at the “Walkout for Palestine” event held by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an anonymous speaker, “Sam,” read an email sent by SJP in response to Smith. “While we understand the ‘pressure’ that you might be under to write such an email, we believe that your words are careless and dangerous for Palestinian and Jewish people alike,” “Sam” read. “The ongoing and exponential violent grief and suffering that Israel continues to inflict on the Palestinians as a form of collective punishment on Gaza continues to be neglected to a shameful extent, despite the fact that South Africa has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for its genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine.”
SJP also criticized Smith’s claim that the phrase “from the river to the sea” is “antisemitic and a direct threat against Jews,” stating that they and the student body disagree with this characterization. “The chant ‘from the river to the sea’ refers to the freedom of Palestinians from the Jordanian River to the Mediterranean Sea, not for the violence against Jewish people,” “Sam” said. “This interpretation is due to the fact that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have been heavily conflated at Swarthmore College in a part of a broader global effort to silence Palestinian voices like ours.”
“[The emails are] very contradictory. A lot of what students are putting into action is what they’re learning at the school,” an anonymous student member of SPC going by “Alex” said. “I’ve participated in a few teach-ins. We ran one using material that [we] learned in class. I used theories that were pulled from lectures and seminars. Where do you think we’re getting the knowledge that is informing our opinions on the current state of the world?”
Professors across disciplines have experienced difficulties teaching material and facilitating discussions related to Palestine. Associate Professor of English Literature Sangina Patnaik noticed students’ hesitancy to specifically name Palestine in her Human Rights and Literature course, even while discussing readings related to genocide.
“There were a couple of comments in class where students were referencing the killing of Palestinians but didn’t want to say the word Palestinian,” she stated.
Patnaik believes the top-down administrative emails have produced a “chilling effect” on campus, and she hopes for more direct conversations on divestment and protests.
“I think it is difficult to let go of power when you have it. I think you cannot have collaboration without letting go of some power,” Patnaik said. “As professors, we’ve spent a lot of time…figuring out what sharing the space of the classroom looks like as an important pedagogical venture. I wish we could get to that point as an institution. I don’t know how it happens. Something as important as how we show up even in ways that are confrontational, I think that has to be a community-wide conversation and deliberation. I don’t think that it can come from an email.”
Department Chair of Educational Studies Edwin Mayorga compared the code of conduct’s enforcement and his past research on the “incommensurability of decolonization in the university.” Throughout his time working with students, he has observed similar patterns of “pain and struggle” within The Spring of Our Discontent in 2013, Mountain Justice’s Divestment Escalation Pledge in 2015, The Coalition Against Fraternity Violence and Organizing For Survivors (O4S) in 2019, and most recently, the Black Affinity Coalition movement in 2020.
“Again and again, you see these patterns of protest and harm…I think we make the mistake of focusing on policy to the detriment of actually harming or perpetuating harm because we don’t take people’s feelings and situations nowhere seriously enough to animate a pedagogy and policy approach that is participatory, rather than just mandated,” Mayorga stated.
Similarly, Associate Professor of English Literature Laura Cohen has witnessed various student protests and noted the unusualness of publicized disciplinary action against students.
“Parrish has been occupied so many times. I’ve never seen this kind of disciplinary action taken against students, and so it does seem to me that there is a double standard when it comes to Palestine,” Cohen said. “There’s the phrase ‘Palestine exception’ that various progressive or left positions are allowable, but not Palestine. I’m not sure, given that kind of exceptionalism, what respectful disagreement really means in this context?”
Visiting Assistant Professor Michael Wilson Becerril critiqued the college’s definition of peaceful protest, remarking that peaceful protest “often requires discomfort and disruption of the status quo.”
“Sometimes, that means taking over a building and interrupting business as usual to signal the urgency of the moment and the need for action, particularly when it becomes clear that institutions are unwilling to make better choices on their own initiative,” he said. “Where better to demand accountability than from our home institutions, our closest communities? Where better to push reticent systems and start these conversations?”
In contrast to community criticism, Smith said in her message that the actions were to keep students safe and build trust.
“Nothing I’ve written here is intended as a threat to free expression or an attempt to silence any particular view on campus. On the contrary, my intention is to maintain an environment where individuals are free to express varying views and opinions without fear of retaliation.”
“Alex” disagreed with Smith, stating that the emails from the administration were seen as threatening to members of the SPC. “I’m not as worried for myself as I am for the leaders of SJP, SPC, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and just brown students in general. [Administration] has shown in the past, with the first few warning emails, that they’re targeting core members of SJP, as well as brown and Muslim students. I’m not in any of those categories, so I don’t feel as afraid, but I’m afraid for my peers.”
According to Ives’s email, expressions that violated rules included excessive noise, failure to disperse a closed building, and interruption of events. Expressions that may be hurtful in content to some are protected if they are exercised responsibly according to the code of conduct.
“Again, there are countless ways to engage in freedom of expression that do not involve overstepping the Code,” Ives wrote. “To claim that one must violate the College’s rules in order to speak, be heard, create change, or because the global crisis demands so, devalues the many diverse, effective, and fully protected modes of expression.”
When asked how they think the situation will develop, “Alex” said they hope that the SPC will successfully push the college to divest and that the code of conduct will be amended to more strongly protect “free speech on campus and peaceful protest.” They also expressed fear that the college’s emails reflect future crackdowns by the college.
“The goal of SPC was to show that it’s not just SJP and JVP that are fighting for Palestine. It’s a large [part] of campus, and if [the college] continues cracking down on clubs, in the way that they are now, will students continue to be able to meet [in extracurriculars]?” “Alex” said.
Patnaik emphasized the importance of open, critical discussion within the campus community.
“I think that in moments of social, world, and historical importance, if we can’t be the place where we can have fricative conversations and difficult conversations and seek out nuanced answers with and from each other, where is it going to happen?” she remarked. “I am waiting for an initiative on campus that is engaging the substance of what students are protesting about.”
Amidst Sweeping Investigation, Swarthmore Administration Provides Little Clarity on Specifics
Smith’s email to the community outlined how co-acting presidents Vice President for Finance and Administration Rob Goldberg and Provost and Dean of the Faculty Tomoko Sakomura will enforce college policy this semester, alluding to potential future escalations in the administration’s response.
“I’ve asked them, along with Vice President for Student Affairs Stephanie Ives and other members of the senior administration, to consider all options that are consistent with our policies and procedures to ensure that the campus community is not disrupted as it was last fall,” she said. “Being willing to face the consequences of one’s actions is an important tenet of civil disobedience.” With an unknown number of students still under investigation and potentially facing disciplinary action in the coming months, The Phoenix reached out to the administration for clarification.
When asked about the role of the Code of Conduct within the college’s mission of engaged scholarship, Stephanie Ives referred The Phoenix to Academic Freedom and Responsibility Policy paragraphs 1-4. According to the policy, “those who seek to call attention to grievances must not do so in ways that significantly impede the functions of the institution…It is a violation of the norms of this academic community for anyone to prevent the conduct of College business, including lectures, meetings, events (such as admissions tours or job interviews), ceremonies, or other necessary business and community functions.”
With regards to her email’s condemnation of “expression violat[ing] the rules of the College or the law,” Ives wrote, “The College does not plan to pursue legal action for last semester’s alleged Code of Conduct violations. However, generally speaking, there are times when violations of the Code can also be violations of law, such as trespassing.”
In an email, The Phoenix asked if students who merely attended the sit-in and did not participate in any other behavior the administration alleges violates the Code of Conduct would be subject to disciplinary action. Ives wrote, “As with any activity on campus, students who are found to be in violation of College policy will be subject to possible disciplinary action, as determined by our conduct process detailed in the Student Code of Conduct,” an answer likely uncomfortable in its ambiguity for the well over one hundred students who attended the sit-in.
I applauded Val Smith’s email and message. Students are there to learn. SJP and JVP and their affiliates do not have the right to disrupt the College’s classes and waste resources in order to push their political agendas.
Hello! As a student at the college who felt Val Smith handled the situation in a relatively adept way considering the many complicated social, political, and financial factors involved, I would nevertheless like to challenge your implication that protest and pushing back in the name of personal values and social justice is not an essential part of the learning process. Developmentally, it is a crucial part of young adulthood to challenge the administrations we interact with. Just as kids will naturally rebel against our parents, there is a larger social trend of younger generations pushing for reform and facing up against the structures older generations have put up in our way. Without rebellion, there would be no societal growth and no maturation in the young adult mind. If humans did not push back against the structures put in place by our predecessors, the college classes and resources you care so much about would be limited to a much smaller elite population. SJP and JVP’s goal was to come together and make their collective voice heard, as they are allowed to do in accordance with the college’s policies on peaceful demonstration. While the administration believes that their demonstrations surpassed what they are allowed to do, that does not change the fact that their goal was admirable from an activism standpoint and that their methods were appropriate to the stage of life we are in as young adults. I hope you will consider that learning may be more than sitting in a classroom. While I myself did not actively participate in the protests, I myself learned valuable things about administrative proceedings in the face of protest, the social aspects of a campus engaged in demonstration, and how to engage with conflict in a thoughtful way. I do not know anyone, whether they participated in the protests or not, who found their academics last semester interrupted or stunted by the proceedings. Rather, I think we grew as a community of deep thinkers.
Swarthmore does indeed have a long history of activism. But not all activism is created equal. Combating climate change is certainly a noble and valuable goal, but students’ activism a decade ago around it was blinkered and inflexible, refusing to engage the issue in good faith and resorting to flimsy ad hominem attacks to justify their positions. There was certainly quite a bit to the outcry against sexual impropriety at the frats, and the movement for racial justice in 2020 were fundamentally rooted in a desire to make positive change. But the consistent pattern that I’ve seen in nearly 20 years since I arrived on campus from activist groups is bullheadedness and intellectual rigidity.
Which brings us to this somewhat unique movement. Because while targets of climate protests or racial justice protests or anti-sexual harassment protests aren’t themselves vulnerable groups, pro-Palestine protests not infrequently veer into antisemitism. And while Israel’s defenders are prone to characterizing any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, it’s also the case that there is genuinely quite a bit of antisemitism that infects these protests., and it’s a necessity for schools to monitor and keep a finger on their pulse for that reason.