Students at the Fashion Institute of Technology hang tough for Palestine

One of the organizers, Jonas, speaking to the demonstrators and the media, explained that the administration had refused one of the meetings they had promised last spring. In another broken promise, it refused to release information about new investments. The administration held only one of the three meetings they promised. And it maintained university punishments of some of the students, including Jonas.

The students demanded that the administration hold to the agreement it made with them last spring. This included providing details about all new investments so students could screen them.

Now the students demand FIT set up a screen for further investments so they invest no new money in military corporations supplying arms to Israel; all charges against students dropped, no suspensions or arrests; a referendum on divestment from companies engaged with […] apartheid; and divestment from companies that used forced prison labor at “slave” wages. Students demand that FIT President Joyce Brown make a statement condemning the genocide […] in Gaza.

Showing the development of students’ politics, chants were not only to “stop the genocide!” but “long live the Intifada!” and “liberation for Palestine!”

If FIT students give a fair measure of the mood on campuses in general, student solidarity with Palestine is refusing to diminish and attitudes are sharpening while the U.S.-funded genocidal war expands in West Asia.