By Martha Grevatt
September 27, 2024

Cleveland

Over 100 pro-Palestine activists rallied and marched to the office of Case Western Reserve University on Sept. 18 in protest of the expulsion of Yousef Khalaf, a leader of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. CWRU students erected the encampment on April 29 and kept it up until May 10.

After Khalaf appealed the discriminatory expulsion and related discipline, a hearing was held in August. There, Jewish students and community members challenged the university narrative equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Nevertheless, the CWRU administration upheld its original decision. The one victory was that all of Khalaf’s tuition and housing payments were refunded.

In addition to being barred from taking classes during the fall semester, Khalaf was notified on Sept. 9 that he had two days to remove his belongings from campus housing. He is persona non grata, meaning he cannot be present on school property. If he enrolls for the Spring 2025 semester, he will be on probation for one year.

The punishment also includes an insulting requirement that Khalaf submit an “introspective essay” on “how you can use civility, civil discourse and advocacy efforts to enact dialogic outcomes and productive, progressive change.”

If it was possible to simply convince school administrations to divest from Israeli apartheid, none of the encampments on scores of campuses would have even been necessary!

As they have done since last semester’s encampment, students and supporters chanted loudly: “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!”