NYU’s Pro-Palestine Coalition Says it Supports ‘Armed Struggle’

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Don’t expect the anti-Israel protests that roiled college campuses earlier this year to disappear for good. In fact, recent moves from one university group suggest they might get far worse when school starts back in the fall. 

Last week, NYU’s Palestine Solidarity Committee rebranded as the People’s Solidarity Coalition and announced a new mission hinting that they are prepared to use violence in their fight to “dismantle” the college’s “involvement in settler-colonial occupation, genocide and imperial wars.” 

The group went on to state that they “recognize and welcome the diversity of tactics that lead to victory,” including “armed struggle, non-violent direct action, cultural production, and world building.” The group declared it will “not condemn the brave actions of our allies nor will we limit ourselves to resistance through organizational means.” 

It is unclear how many students are represented by the new coalition, which binds together 44 different NYU-affiliated organizations ranging from the Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine and Jews Against Zionism to cultural and academic groups like the NYU Consortium Medievalists, the Climate Care Collective, and the Stonewall Policy Alliance. The People’s Solidarity Coalition states that it rejects “bigotry of all forms,” and while it is “strictly anti-Zionist,” it is also “de/anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchy, non-hierarchical, abolitionist, and disability justice–oriented.” 

And while the group’s mission is still centered around its “struggle for the end of the Zionist Entity”—which it also dubs “apartheid ‘Israel’  ”—the new statement expands beyond the Middle East. “When we take up the struggle against the Zionist entity,” it proclaims, “we take on the global fight against U.S. imperialism and its violences.”

The group accuses NYU’s Washington Square campus of “land theft and displacement everywhere it goes,” adding that it “invests in death” through its relationship with global financial company BlackRock. (BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, who is Jewish, sits on NYU’s board.) It also claims that NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus is an example of “neo-imperialism” that “seeps its hands in blood in Sudan” and that the school’s campus in Tel Aviv, Israel, is “a physical manifestation of its crimes against the Palestinian people.” 

Per its new statement, the People’s Solidarity Coalition is bound together by a set of “shared principles,” which include “the right to resist,” “the right to self determination,” the assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, and the endorsement of Palestinian refugees’ “right of return.” 

On July 25, NYU spokesperson John Beckman denounced the group’s statement, which he called “a deplorable ‘embrace’ of ‘armed struggle’ as a valid ‘tactic’ in achieving its aims on campus.” Beckman called on the group to “immediately retract their statement and repudiate it, as well as related conduct, such as vandalism, destruction of property, and threats and intimidation.” 

After Beckman’s condemnation, the coalition briefly took down its statement, although it has been reuploaded as a link in its Instagram bio as of Sunday afternoon.

Francesca Block is a reporter for The Free Press. Follow her on X @FrancescaABlock and read her piece “Union Lawyers Call Jewish Colleagues ‘Deranged’ and ‘Fascist’. ”