Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD)

PRINCETON, NJ, APRIL 29—On April 29, at approximately 4:30pm, 15 members of the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment—undergraduate students, graduate students, seminarians, and professors—took over Clio Hall. This escalation follows five continuous days of encampment in McCosh courtyard.

The university has sneered at and snubbed our demands for complete divestment from the genocidal Israeli state. They have responded to our peaceful requests to bargain with excessive force and disproportionate punishment. We are disgusted by the University’s brutal crackdown on all expressions of solidarity with Palestinian liberation. The administration has silenced our voices at all channels of communication—disregarding our peaceful demonstrations since October, dismissing the divestment petition we launched in December, ignoring us at the Council of the Princeton University Community meeting in February, and refusing to meet us at the bargaining table over the last week. We have escalated to show that we will stand our ground. We will continue our sit-in until the University meets us at the bargaining table. Princeton must hear us now.

Princeton has pursued a vicious regime of student repression. The university has made it clear that they do not care about their students—denying us our basic rights to free expression, protest, and assembly, and terrorizing us with intensive surveillance and aggressive policing. Princeton has actively produced a hostile climate in which speaking out against apartheid—against ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, ecological devastation, and culturicide— undermines our very livelihoods, destroys our sense of safety, and forecloses our futures.

We are staging a sit-in in the office of Dean Rodney Priestley, the Dean of the Graduate School, to protest its financial and research ties with the Department of Defense and all military projects. Last year, Princeton received more than $29 million from the Department of Defense to fund about 50 graduate research labs in 15 departments—labs contributing to the US-Israel war machine by manufacturing IDF helmets, surveillance technology, and military weapons. That $29 million is the only amount that Princeton has disclosed, continuing a protocol of zero transparency regarding Princeton investments in and funds from the Israeli apartheid state.

Our demands have not changed. Princeton must commit to:

1. Financial Divestment: Dissociate and divest its endowment of all holdings in companies that profit from or engage in Israel’s ongoing military
   campaign, occupation, and apartheid policies. Commit to full financial
   transparency on all its investments.
2. Military Divestment: Disclose and end Princeton research on weapons of war funded by the Department of Defense. This research includes automated software
   and artificial intelligence technology used to enable genocide.
3. Academic and Cultural Boycott: Refrain from any form of academic or cultural association with Israeli institutions and businesses, in line with
   the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. This boycott is of institutions, not individuals. End study abroad programs with Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Stop sponsoring and facilitating Tiger-Trek Israel, and end Princeton’s relationship with the Tikvah Fund.
4. Palestinian Affiliations: Cultivate affiliations with Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
5. End the Silence: End its silence and release a public statement calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemning Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.
6. Amnesty: Amnesty for all students involved in the encampments and the sit-ins.