Minneapolis students protest inauguration of new U of MN president, demand divestment from Israel

Minneapolis, MN – On Wednesday, September 18, over 700 protesters rallied outside Northrop Auditorium as the new University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham was inaugurated inside. As university workers prepped the Northrop Mall for the massive celebration set to begin in just two hours, students walked out of class, joining the rally to demand that the University of Minnesota divest from Israel.

As the crowd chanted, “Neutrality is a lie! You’re supporting genocide!” nervous low-level administrators fidgeted with their clipboards and took photos of the protest. The rally was a campus-wide effort, called for by the UMN Divest Coalition, AFSCME 3800, and Educators for Justice in Palestine.

The UMN Divest Coalition, consisting of the local chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), spent the summer having biweekly meetings with administrators and attempting to work towards the passage of their divestment resolution through the board of regents, none of which would have been possible without the encampment movement at the end of last spring semester.

In response, President Cunningham pushed a “Neutrality Agreement” through the board of regents the week before students returned to campus to effectively block students’ ability to campaign the University for divestment now and in the future. In addition to this, her administration has been actively working to strip away academic freedom from faculty and has begun enforcing anti-protest policies on campus to justify political repression, including rules that limit protests to 100 people and sound amplification to one bullhorn.

Despite this, the UMN Divest Coalition doubled down on its demands for divestment from Israel, calling for a massive walkout on the day of Cunningham’s inauguration.

“The board of regents’ and President Cunningham’s cowardice is not only a clear rejection of student’s voices but also an overt violation of international human rights.” stated SDS member Freyja Wolfe. “Silence is not and never has been neutral and investing thousands of dollars into Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers that make the bombs that kill Palestinians and destroy their hospitals, mosques, universities and homes certainly isn’t neutral either.”

While the administration hoped that the rally would die out before the outdoor celebration began at 4:30, by 4:15 the rally had only grown in size and energy when 30 students, staff and faculty poured out from inside Northrop Auditorium, having disrupted the inauguration ceremony. Just moments before, inside the inauguration ceremony, as Cunningham walked up to the podium to address the crowd, the students, staff and faculty members stood up, and a Palestinian student shouted: “President Cunningham, Vice President Croson, and the board of regents: You are all complicit with the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza! We will not stop protesting until you meet our demands!” They then read off the following demands, reprinted here:

1. Divest from weapons manufacturing companies that are complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians.

2. End Investment in Israeli companies, banks and government bonds

3. ⁠Disclose all private investments.

4. End study abroad programs and all relations with complicity Israeli universities.

5. Fully fund 12 undergraduate students from Gaza.

6. Establish an ongoing relationship with Birzeit University.

7. Stop discriminating against Palestinian and pro-Palestine job candidates.

8. Stop criminalizing protests and respect academic freedom.

9. ⁠Respond firmly to hate violence against Palestinian, Muslim, and Middle Eastern students, staff, and faculty.”

The vice president of student affairs began to threaten suspension and legal action against the protesters should they continue, so they started to make their way out while chanting. Security then grabbed ten of the students, all but one being Muslim, and told them they were being suspended. The ten students were brought over to UMPD officers before a professor intervened with the help of a National Lawyers Guild lawyer, after which the threat of suspension was dropped.

Soon after, as students flooded Northrop Mall to receive free food from the outdoor inauguration celebration, three SDS members dropped a large banner from the scaffolding in front of Coffman Student Union that read: “Cunningham and the board of regents: you have blood on your hands! Divest UMN from Israel!”

The protest was still going strong when Calvin Phillips, vice president of student affairs, issued two dispersal notices threatening student protesters with suspension and arrest if they didn’t clear the Northrop stairs so that the board of regents members and Cunningham could have their scheduled photo-op. Despite these threats, shortly afterward, when Cunningham exited Northrop Auditorium to take photos on the mall students followed her chanting, “Cunningham you can’t hide! You’re supporting genocide!”

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