On October 7th, 2023, Hamas militants launch a coordinated attack targeting various locations across southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of at least 695 Israeli citizens and an estimated 250 individuals taken hostage.
In the following weeks, counteroffensives by Israeli forces lead to significant infrastructural destruction and the deaths of over 20,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
On December 4th, 2023, in a suburb 15 miles outside of Philadelphia, Swarthmore College’s Student Palestine Coalition begins an ‘occupation’ of Parrish Hall, the institution’s primary administrative building. In the week following the start of their occupation, more than one hundred students participate in the coalition’s efforts.
Throughout their time in Parrish Hall, students are catered an assortment of provisions including (but not limited to) shawarma and donuts, dim sum and boba, rice bowls, pizza, Jamaican food, and Chipotle. Participants engage in a dance class and crochet lesson, screen movies, and hold a capoeira workshop—“dedicated to dance as a form of resistance,” of course. They even have a “certified Restorative Hypnotherapist” brought in for a “mindfulness workshop.”
For the occupiers of Parrish Hall, these past days have been—according to one student—“filled with mourning, [and with] grief, [and with] anger.” They persist, believing that the strong sense of solidarity they are cultivating may somehow, someday reap the fruits of justice.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians continue to lose their homes and mourn the losses of their loved ones amidst an unyielding climate of fear and uncertainty. Just miles away, Israelis yearn for their departed friends and family members, restlessly praying for the safe return of those kidnapped.
As they stand, the Swarthmore SPC’s demands for President Valerie Smith and the rest of Swarthmore’s administration are ridiculously ineffectual. A brief, nonpartisan audit of the organization’s demands makes apparent the lack of pragmatism and substance in their asks. It also prompts the question: has anybody involved taken even a moment to consider what exactly they are asking for?
For the sake of relevance, only specific “action items” will be discussed—the demands of “Protecting of Peaceful Protest,” “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and “Reforming Public Safety” (as referred to by the SPC) have little to do with the direct matter at hand.
The SPC first “insist[s] that [Swarthmore]… call for an immediate end to Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine.” In essence, this ask is purely symbolic; its effects cannot extend outside of the immediate Swarthmore community. A pronouncement from the president of a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania will certainly have no influence on the military arrangements of Ismail Haniyeh or Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor is it likely to inspire other schools to follow suit—Swarthmore simply does not have sufficient cultural influence. The extent to which this demand will have a tangible impact on anything real is negligible. While the case could be made that this proposition would contribute to broader social movements applying pressure on the American government, stubborn foreign policy and a comfortably solvent IDF render more direct manners of aid—raising humanitarian funds, for instance—much more productive. In other words, while a statement from the college may hearten participants, it most definitely will not contribute to “Palestinian liberation.” The SPC’s first demand is a superficial ask meant to cosset students and serve as a cosmetic gesture.
A recent addition to this demand “urge[s] [Swarthmore] to publicly call on [Pennsylvania] Senator John Fetterman to support a permanent ceasefire,” which, considering his steadfast support for Israel’s efforts, adds effectively no value to the cause.
Next, in an effort “to affirm… a material commitment to justice, peace, and equity,” the SPC calls on Swarthmore to “recogniz[e] the SGO-approved BDS resolution of 2019” (which prompts divestment from Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, Hyundai, and Bank Hapoalim) and “publiciz[e] its concealed investments.” The SPC also suggests a series of implementations including the “hiring [of] socially responsible fund managers,” the “establish[ment] [of] a committee... ensuring that the institution's investments remain socially responsible,” and additional proposals concerned primarily with the military-industrial complex.
Seems sensible, right? Not really. As the SPC themselves make a point to communicate, Swarthmore’s endowment investment portfolio is not publicly available. In other words, other than an ambiguous quote from President Smith “mention[ing] investments in weapon manufacturers,” the SPC has no material indication that Swarthmore even has any stakes in these particular companies. Moreover, the majority of Israel’s defense resources are provided by domestic firms, only one of which is mentioned by the SPC. The truth is that little to no thought went into their selections; quite plainly, the list seems to have been heedlessly recycled from other BDS-related divestment initiatives which, unsurprisingly, have themselves proven to be ineffective.
Regardless, let’s entertain for a moment that Swarthmore does indeed have significant holdings in the listed businesses, and let’s also discount the specious extension of holding shares in generic, publicly traded defense companies to “funding genocide.” Imagine that the SPC’s demands are fulfilled and that divestment is realized. The unfolding of this scenario is embarrassingly predictable, and it looks something like this: Swarthmore offloads its shares, those shares are promptly picked up by other investors (God Bless the Free Market!), and the companies coast along with unstirred share prices. In the event that the companies somehow face enough social pressure to discontinue their engagements with Israel, the IDF pursues other options with its 24-billion-dollar defense budget and unequivocal support from Uncle Sam.
Though it has since been removed, a previous iteration of the SJP’s demands asked that Swarthmore stop offering The Vanguard Group’s services for employee retirement plans. Why? Because Vanguard—a highly diversified investment firm that just so happens to have seven trillion dollars worth of assets under management—is a significant “shareholder in weapon manufacturing companies.” Putting aside the glaring triviality of such an impractical demand, it seems worthwhile to consider that the Chief Risk Officer of Vanguard Institutional holds the position of Vice Chair on Swarthmore’s Board of Managers—an unaccounted detail that could possibly complicate efforts at discontinuance. Perhaps irrelevant, this fact nevertheless elicits two valuable insights: one, that this information was a mere Google search away yet seemingly unbeknownst to the SJP, and, more importantly, institutional matters of these sorts are almost always more complicated than they seem.
Finally, the SPC “call[s] on Swarthmore to boycott” the following brands: Sabra, due to its parent company Strauss Group’s support for an IDF brigade by means of preparing care packages for soldiers, and HP. For the sake of avoiding superfluity, here it remains necessary only to note that the path to “Palestinian liberation” is likely not paved with boycotted hummus dips and printers.
Voices—Swarthmore’s student-run publication “dedicated to centering marginalized voices”—published an article last month in which a student proclaimed: “there is so much apathy on this campus about what is going on in the world, and… that apathy feels worse than opposition. It is an incredible privilege to be able to decide to tap out of these conversations and choose not to engage with what's going on in the world.”
What is most unfortunate about this sort of sentiment is that it seems to be genuinely founded in compassion. By all means, it is clear that the author of that article means well and feels authentically towards their cause. When they proclaim that “there's blood on our hands,” they mean it. When they decide that it is “our bare minimum duty… to absorb the grief those who have been martyred leave behind,” they really do mean it. The problem is that choosing to “absorb grief” that is not yours is not noble. Asserting that the hands of the greater American populace are somehow marked with blood is not virtuous. It is unnecessarily bleak and plainly untrue. Ironically, the campaign of demagoguery and guilt-mongering of which this sentiment is a part inadvertently promotes inaction; “washing the blood” of military-industrial investments off of one’s own hands is not a commitment to action. It is a commitment to self-salvation.
The truth is that what is much more dangerous than apathy is delusion. The practice of ostensible altruism which is designed to, above all, relieve the helplessness of its constituents exhausts resources on misguided, inefficacious efforts carried out through agendas that, viewed objectively, can be deemed net-negatives by any rational individual with or without allegiance to the cause. It is upsetting—regardless of differences in political standing—to see that such a consolidated and unified (and, as perceived by its proponents, benevolent) fervor is applied in a manner that, does not just result in vanity, but consciously works to dogmatically suppress ideological alternatives.
Unfortunately, the defect of the SPC’s movement is not a new one, and it most definitely is not uncommon. The occupation of Parrish Hall and the SPC’s demands are reflective of a greater deficiency of the modern leftist cohort which has dominated student bodies across the country for some years now, and it essentially boils down to this: American leftists persistently conflate trivial local success with remote impact. For most, the mere sensation of action is sufficient to quench a yearning for agency and influence over perceived injustices, to infill a hole of guilt cratered in their hearts by the sight of inequity and prejudice. Regrettably for the thousands of victims of a very real humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the sensation of toppling down evil imperialist overlords appears to feel much more potent than that of soberly engaging in constructive initiatives. Poorly thought-out, reactionary worldviews and their imprudent campaigns rarely produce anything more than wasteful performance.
For the genuflectors and the virtue-signalers and even the large majority of participants who may genuinely feel a sense of angst, it is easy to gather around and hold “poetry circles.” It is easy to write up a glib list of “action items” with an underlying rejection of economic and political realities. It may be preferable to “engage with what's going on in the world” by holding “vent session[s]” and indulging in “kebabs and baklava.” It is much more difficult, however, to understand that matters such as these—longstanding, contentious matters—are longstanding and contentious for a reason, that ideological opponents are not dissidents but prospective collaborators, that there are other perspectives to consider and moral gray areas which must be traversed. It is even harder, then, to take the necessary time to thoughtfully develop an effective, pragmatic proposal.
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — maybe not, but at Swarthmore College it might just be catered.