In sit-ins at Swarthmore and Haverford, students push for cease-fire in Gaza

Students at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges are preparing for finals, but some supporters of Palestinians are also spending the final days of their semester holding antiwar demonstrations in their school administration buildings.

More than 50 Swarthmore students were occupying a building that’s home to the office of college president Valerie Smith on Thursday afternoon. At Haverford College — another liberal arts school that joins Swarthmore in a consortium with Bryn Mawr — around 30 students sprawled throughout the lobby of Founders Hall on Friday as a large “Ceasefire Now” sign hung above the building’s entryway.

The protests come after students demanded that campus leaders speak out against Israel’s ongoing strikes in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Gaza health officials estimate that since the war’s outbreak, over 17,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict.

Palestinian-aligned student groups at both schools estimate that more than 100 students have attended each sit-in this week. Both groups say they intend to remain until university administrators meet their demands.

At Swarthmore, students urged administrators to release a statement condemning “Israeli aggression in Gaza,” and to drop disciplinary warnings against pro-Palestinian student organizers.

Students also called on the school to divest portions of its $2.7 billion endowment from companies they believe are involved in the military-industrial complex, and to remove hummus made by Sabra, a company owned in part by an Israeli conglomerate that’s connected to the country’s military, from student cafés.

At Haverford — where many on campus are still reeling after Palestinian-born classmate Kinnan Abdalhamid was wounded in a November shooting in Vermont — students called for the administration to endorse a cease-fire in Gaza, and to offer academic leniency to those on campus affected by the conflict.

“Seeing the community that has formed here has made me feel so incredibly supported as a Palestinian student,” said Ragood, a 19-year-old Swarthmore student who requested her last name be omitted due to security concerns. What is going on in the region “does affect me directly — this is my identity, these are my people.”

Colleges throughout the Philadelphia region have become hotbeds for political debate in the aftermath of Hamas’ surprise October attack that claimed the lives of 1,200 people in Israeli, according to the country’s Foreign Ministry.

In November, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was investigating allegations of both antisemitism and Islamophobia on a handful of college campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania and Lafayette College in Easton.

At Penn, several antisemitic incidents since the war’s outbreak spurred calls from donors for administrators to do more to address the concerns of Jewish students. While Penn’s president Liz Magill announced a plan to combat antisemitism, her comments before a congressional hearing about the university’s free speech policies this week have led to calls for her resignation.

The blowback has left other higher education institutions considering how their leaders approach divisive campus environments.

At Swarthmore, around 30 student organizations have endorsed the pro-Palestinian demonstration, according to members of the Swarthmore Palestine Coalition. Demonstrators entered the building Monday, setting up mattresses and sleeping bags and hanging signs depicting Palestinians killed during Israel’s campaign.

Some coalition members, including Ragood, said that some Muslim and Arab students protesting Israel felt targeted by threats of disciplinary action from campus administrators for their involvement in earlier demonstrations this semester.

A spokesperson for Swarthmore said the college has long valued freedom of expression and freedom to protest peacefully.

“Since the start of this latest violence in the Middle East, community members have held multiple campus vigils, protests, and other demonstrations of free expression, and have done so without interference, and in some cases with support from the College,” said Alisa Giardinelli, assistant vice president of communications.

Giardinelli said that prior to the sit-in, several students, including those supporting a state for Palestinians and those supporting Israel, received warning letters over their participation in other activities that may have violated the college’s conduct. Those students received warnings after the school spoke to them and attempted to discourage them from further violations, according to Giardinelli.

“Many of these events have lived into the spirit of the College’s belief in peaceful dissent,” Giardinelli said of earlier protests. “However, we must maintain our commitment to cultivating an environment free of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination. We will hold accountable anyone found to be in violation of our policies.”

Students concerned about discrimination can report their concerns to the college’s Bias Response Team, she added.

Meanwhile, at Haverford, some students like junior Ellie Esterowitz are staging the Haverford College Students For Peace’s demonstration in Founders Hall — while still processing the trauma of the shooting of her friend, Abdalhamid, over Thanksgiving break.

Authorities are still investigating whether the shooting, in which two other students of Palestinian descent were struck, was racially motivated.

“It’s hard to even breach that kind of suffering and pain,” Esterowitz said. “Words feel a little bit inadequate.”

Students described feeling that their concerns were being ignored by their administration, and were troubled that school leaders — a historically Quaker institution with a rich history of antiwar demonstrations — had not publicly called for a cease-fire.

“We want an end to violence,” said Ellie Baron, a 20-year-old student. “This is not a radical ask in many ways.”

Chris Mills, a Haverford College spokesperson, said the college supports “students’ rights to expressive freedom and peaceful protest while together advancing our shared educational goals of Haverford.”

The “nuances and implications” associated with the topics students are discussing, Mills said, are the subject of “many ongoing conversations.” In an Oct. 12 letter, college president Wendy E. Raymond said she had participated in a peace circle where attendees mourned “more devastation to come for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Students at both schools said campus security have not removed students from their locations. One Haverford student suggested students would continue to protest next semester, if necessary.

At Swarthmore’s Parrish Hall, 22-year-old student Gaven Perez-Green sat on a mattress as some students, backpacks in tow, maneuvered through the throng of students. Some who were protesting hunched over their laptops, cramming in work before the holiday break.

Perez-Green, a first-generation college student, worries that potential disciplinary action could harm his standing with the school, and noted that the sit-in had upended typical college life at a critical point in the semester.

Still, “I would absolutely call it a much-needed disruption,” Perez-Green said.