Daniel Manulak is a historian of Canada and Southern Africa and a postdoctoral fellow in the Canada Program at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
On campuses in Canada and the United States, students, faculty, and alumni are organizing to pressure universities to divest their holdings in companies doing business in Israel. Students have been holding rallies, building encampments, and occupying university buildings. Some commentators dismissed these actions as naive or temporary that would soon disappear. History lessons tell us that such a thing is unlikely to happen.
Perhaps the closest historical parallel to current campus protests occurred in the mid-1980s as student mobilizations against South Africa's apartheid regime. In fact, today's student activists intentionally borrow into their campaigns the traditions, tactics, symbols, and language of perhaps the most successful social movement of his 20th century.
Divestment, an objective of students protesting the war in Gaza, gained attention more than 40 years ago as a means of fighting the apartheid regime.
In the mid-1980s, South Africa made international headlines following the government's brutal crackdown on township rebellions. In response to footage from South Africa and calls from apartheid victims and opponents, students formed an anti-apartheid group on campus to demand that the university sever ties with the white minority regime.
Columbia University was then, and still is, a center of student activism. In April 1985, Columbia University students occupied and blockaded Hamilton Hall in solidarity with Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner, and subsequently renamed it “Mandela Hall.” Similar efforts have been made at Rutgers University, Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, and others. Encampments known as “slums” were a visible representation of the oppression faced by black South Africans and appeared on nearly every campus green space.
Similarly, in Canada, student anti-apartheid protests have become a regular occurrence at universities. In November 1985, anti-apartheid activist Lennox Farrell at the University of Toronto threw a ceremonial mace at South African Ambassador Glenn Babb, who had been invited to speak at a debate on divestment. Mr. Farrell's actions sparked a public debate about free speech, leading observers to claim that activists on campus were emotional and immature.
However, under immense and continued pressure from students and faculty, universities in Canada and the United States would eventually withdraw, and many did so partially. McGill was the first major Canadian domino to fall in November 1985, followed by a succession of other dominoes. By 1988, 155 universities around the world had extracted more than $3.6 billion from South Africa.
What difference did student anti-apartheid activism make to the end of apartheid, and what does this tell us about campus protests over the Gaza war?
Divestment did not end apartheid. In theory, boycotts, divestment and sanctions would force the South African government to make concessions to avoid further economic costs. This overlooked the fact that Pretoria was willing to endure economic hardship to maintain apartheid, which was seen as a matter of national and cultural survival. The current divestment campaign against the war in Gaza may have limited success there for similar reasons.
But in the case of South Africa, it also had a symbolic impact. Students and faculty believed that the university's association with the apartheid regime, even with modest funding, contributed to the oppression of black South Africans. Through divestment, undertaken in the context of anti-apartheid movements and, by extension, support for racial equality, universities were able to morally cleanse themselves.
University divestment also contributed to a growing national, and indeed global, consensus that apartheid must be dismantled. If a university sells its legitimacy as an institution of higher education to a cause, it could lead to a chain reaction that could shape public opinion and government policy toward apartheid.
This didn't happen overnight. Most universities in Canada and the United States ended their affiliation with South Africa in the mid-1980s, but negotiations to end apartheid only began in 1990 and ended four years later with the election of Nelson Mandela, the country's first black president. did.
As in South Africa, student campus activists opposed to the war in Gaza face two practical challenges going forward.
First, it's a way to appeal to a broader segment of the university community while maintaining unity within the movement. Second, how can we maintain momentum moving forward? The academic year is over, and campus activities are winding down. Even more difficult, as media attention shifts from the war in Gaza to other issues, student activists will lose their greatest tool for mobilization and bargaining power with universities.
Whether or not the current student campus protests accomplish their immediate goals, they should not be dismissed as mere noise.
