MIT student group facing threats of expulsion for supporting Palestine

By Enes Taha Ersen

ISTANBUL (AA) - Students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the leading universities in the US, are facing expulsion for supporting Palestine.

The President of the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), Safiyyah Ogundipe, said that the university administration is trying to silence actions supporting Palestine with disciplinary investigations and threats of expulsion.

Ogundipe told Anadolu that she evaluated the banning of support demonstrations for Palestine and attempts by administrators to silence students, especially at MIT and other US universities.

The senior chemical engineering major said CAA emerged as an activism movement against the apartheid regime based on racial discrimination in South Africa in the past and today it takes a stance against Israel's illegal interventions against Palestine.

She said the group was established in the mid-1980s as a coalition of students, faculty, alumni and community members, to demand that MIT end its collaboration with companies complicit in racial discrimination in South Africa.

It was revived after Israeli courts evicted four Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem in 2021, a flashpoint of the escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, alongside the global movement surrounding it.

"CAA's goals evolved to oppose the Israeli apartheid regime parallel to the struggle in South Africa and to resist the Zionist occupation as a settler colonial entity," she said.

- Projects funded by Israeli Defense Ministry

Ogundipe noted that CAA has been conducting solidarity actions with Palestine with demonstrations since December.

She said at MIT there were several sponsored research projects funded by the Israeli Defense Ministry and through the Anti-Apartheid Scientists campaign launched in December. CAA urged students and staff to withdraw from companies and research projects complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide.

Ogundipe expressed that actions in support of Palestine -- a cease-fire and boycott demands -- have been tried to be thwarted by threats from the MIT administration.

She expressed that CAA at MIT organized protests in response to Israel's actions, including the bombings in Rafah resulting in casualties. It called on MIT to sever ties with Israeli forces.

As a result, CAA received a warning letter, was suspended and its leaders faced threats of expulsion and bans from leading unauthorized demonstrations. Expulsion from MIT was threatened for further rule violations.

Ogundipe said MIT Chancellor Sally Kornbluth swiftly announced in a video that CAA was expelled from the school.

That raised concerns about freedom of expression, highlighting the struggle of students to speak out against injustices like the killings and hardships faced by Palestinians.