Clemson University students to resume protests after speaking with official

Clemson University students plan to continue to protest on university grounds after speaking with an administration official.

Though the protest paused earlier this week after beginning Saturday, student organizer Abigail Friedman said it would continue.

Friedman said she sat down with Charles Miller, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, on Monday and explained the demands, which included disclosing any investments the university has made with Israel or Israeli businesses, divesting from those investments, and putting pressure on the South Carolina government to cease sending any more funds to the Israeli government.

She said Miller indicated he would do some research and get back to her in a week due to end-of-year activities such as graduation and the doctoral hooding ceremony.

More: 'You support genocide': Clemson University students hold protest against stance on Israel

“As of right now, we are still going to be out protesting to make sure he actually does research and that our voices do not just go on the back burner,” said Friedman, a 20-year-old political science major who will be among those graduating this week. The protests resumed on Wednesday bringing attention to the civilian lives being lost in the Israeli-Hamas war.

Friedman also requested the university retract a 2014 statement, in which university president Jim Clements signed off on a statement as board chair-elect of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities opposing calls for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions.

Since then, neither Clements nor Clemson University has made any public statement on the current conflict.

Miller did not respond to Greenville News’ request for comment.

During the peaceful protest on Saturday, students donned black and white keffiyehs, a traditional Arab headdress, that has become a symbol of resistance.

“Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” protestors chanted on Saturday.

Similar protests, but not all peaceful ones, have taken place on university campuses across the U.S. in recent weeks.

'What if they never left?'

Although the protest was student-led and mostly students attended, non-student Noura Abualeinan said she came out to the protest because it was part of her responsibility to advocate for Palestinian voices.

As a first-generation Palestinian Lebanese American, the war in the Middle East strikes particularly close to home. She said her grandparents fled during the Nakba, which translates to “catastrophe” in Arabic, which was a mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War.

According to the United Nations, conflict between Arabs and Jewish people intensified in the 1930s as Jewish people began to move to what is now known as Israel. In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution separating the land into two states for both Jews and Arabs. When Arabs rejected the plan, Jewish militias launched attacks on Palestinian villages, causing them to flee.

Abualeinan's grandparents relocated to a refugee camp in Lebanon and then to Syria. Eventually, her parents immigrated to the U.S. Abualeinan said she often wonders what would have happened if they had never left.

Though conflict between Israel and Palestinians has existed for years, violence came to a head on Oct. 7 when the militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel’s military and border towns that killed 1,200 people. Israel responded with airstrikes, which continued into 2024.

In January, the International Court of Justice found it was “plausible” that Israel violated the Genocide Convention. In May, Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Program, said northern Gaza was experiencing a famine.

“It’s very emotional,” Abualeinan said, adding she thinks it's necessary to “advocate and uplift” Palestinian voices and has organized and led protests and vigils in Greenville to that end.

Savannah Moss covers Greenville County politics and growth/development. Reach her at smoss@gannett.com or follow her on X @Savmoss.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Clemson students to resume protest after meeting with administrator