In one of the largest demonstrations in campus history, about 2,500 pro-Palestinian protesters marched across UC San Diego Wednesday, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and pressing the student government not to do business with companies they regard as hostile to Palestinians.
The Associated Students board was considering a resolution Wednesday night that would comply with the protesters’ demand.
The group had intended to hold its hearing in public, on campus, but moved everything to Zoom at the direction of the university, which cited safety concerns.
Earlier in the week, the university had advised students, faculty and staff to consider taking alternative routes around campus to avoid the demonstration, or to work from home. The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had announced plans for a major rally online on Feb. 27.
Wednesday’s largely peaceful protest was composed of a mix of students and pro-Palestinian protesters who had come from elsewhere to participate.
The demonstration began with a series of short, fiery speeches by people who did not identify themselves.
“For too long, our cries for justice have fallen on deaf ears,” one speaker told the crowd. “But today we say, enough is enough. Today we say no more complicity and genocide. Today, we demand divestment.”
The speaker was referring to calls by a long-standing movement that urges boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel, known as BDS, for its treatment of Palestinians.
In March 2013, Associated Students passed a resolution calling for the University of California system to create such a boycott. Last November, the board reaffirmed that position. On Wednesday night, Associated Students were discussing whether the board itself should impose the boycott. Similar discussions have been occurring at many UC campuses.
Protesters also shouted many chants on Wednesday, including, “Occupation is a crime, UC out of Palestine” and “Biden, Biden you’re a liar, we demand a cease-fire.”
The chanting elicited anger from some Jewish non-participants in attendance, including Tom Levy, a UC San Diego anthropologist who does a lot of field research in Israel.
“Last week, my laboratory was desecrated,” Levy said. “They put all kinds of Palestinian propaganda on the doors, covering my name. They put up false statements about archaeology … They are trying to make it uncomfortable for Jewish faculty and students here at UCSD.”
Summer Ismail, a UCSD senior and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke in front of the crowd and called for institutional policy changes on Israel, while a group of counter-protesters behind the audience yelled their own talking points into a megaphone.
Ismail asked for the crowd to remain peaceful and keep their distance from the counter-protesters, some of whom carried Israeli flags or held signs of their own questioning the use of the word “genocide” in describing Israel’s current war following the Oct. 7 attack.
After the speeches, the protesters began to walk west across campus and picked up many supporters along the way.
At one point, the line of marchers extended from the Price Center to the North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood, more than a quarter of a mile away.
Campus police initially estimated that about 1,000 protesters were on campus but raised that figure to 2,500 after the marchers reached the west side of campus.
UCSD records suggest that the rally was larger than some of the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations that roiled the campus in the 1970s.
