DUKE DIVEST COALITION STATEMENT

We, the Duke Divest Coalition (DDC), are a student-led coalition of Duke University undergraduate, graduate, staff, faculty, and alumni groups committed to Palestinian liberation and holding Duke University accountable for its financial and institutional complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid, and occupation in Palestine. Our movement follows the rich legacy of student and worker organizing that has taken place before us, including those who protested against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam and Iraq; who fought for Black liberation by taking over the Allen Building in 1969; who protested Duke’s investments in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s; who advocated for campus workers’ rights by occupying the Allen Building again in 2016; and who championed transformative institutional change to labor practices and systems of oppression at Duke by disrupting President Price’s Alumni Address and establishing the People’s State of the University in 2018. The Palestinian liberation movement is part of a complex network of liberation movements.

In the past seven months, we have witnessed Israel and the United States unleash unimaginable destruction in Palestine. As of now, Israel has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, including nearly 7,800 identified children and thousands more unidentified and missing under the rubble. 1.1 million people, more than half of Gaza’s population, are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity, and as of April 1, 2024, 32 people, including 28 children, have died of starvation.* The images we are witnessing are horrifying: children carrying pieces of their younger dead siblings, Israeli soldiers shooting at anyone who attempts to retrieve aid, and entire neighborhoods demolished. On April 20, a mass grave with over 300 bodies was discovered at Nasser Medical Complex, including medical staff and patients. After corralling 1.4 million people into a 25-square-mile “safe zone” in Rafah, Israel launched a full-scale military invasion on May 7, 2024. According to the UN emergency relief chief, Gaza has become “uninhabitable,” and a new UN report estimates that it would take a century to rebuild all the homes destroyed by Israel. As we study and work at Duke, we know no universities remain in the Gaza Strip.

On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that there is a “real and imminent risk” of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. While it may take years for the proceedings to fully resolve, experts in international human rights law — including the lawyer who secured the first-ever order from the ICJ under the Genocide Convention — anticipate that South Africa will prevail in its case due to an extensive body of evidence showing clear genocidal intent.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land has been ongoing since the original Nakba in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, and thousands more were subjected to Israel’s brutal military occupation and apartheid regime. The oppression is financially and politically supported by the United States government and its institutions. Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding.

Duke has refused to condemn or speak on the horrifying violence Israel is committing and which we are all witnessing. Despite calls from Duke community members to disclose and divest from companies profiting from Israel’s violence in Palestine, Duke has not indicated that it plans to assess its investments and has not issued any statements calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza or denouncing Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

President Vincent Price has released only two statements regarding these events. The first statement, released on October 10, 2023, failed to mention Gaza, Palestine, and Palestinians at all, despite nearly 1,000 deaths and 5,000 injuries documented in Gaza by the time of the statement’s release. His second statement, released on October 16, 2023, added a brief reference to all Palestinian and Israeli lives lost. While President Price and the administration claim political neutrality, they have released strong statements of condemnation in the past, including against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and firmly stated support for the Ukrainian people. It seems that Israel’s killing of more than 35,000 and wounding of 79,200 Palestinians is not enough to evoke “sadness” and “outrage” from President Price, given that he has chosen to remain silent since those two initial statements. Instead, administrators have censured students and faculty under the guise of institutional neutrality for the entirety of this past academic year.

Duke’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) and Student Affairs administrators have, on multiple occasions, failed to adequately investigate or speak on incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and national origin-based discrimination on this campus, including the repeated defacement of Muslim and Palestine-related murals on the Free Expression Bridge. The defacements included altering a Quranic verse on the mural, “Our Lord, indeed You are Kind and Merciful,” being edited to include the word “not” before “Merciful,” and placing posters of red cows over the flags of several Muslim-majority nations — images that are a reference to calls to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Muslim holy site in Jerusalem. OIE’s negligence has led the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s most significant Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, to call on state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate the repeated defacement of the mural as a possible hate crime.

Duke itself is a product of land theft and erasure. It contributes to the gentrification of Durham and the displacement of many Black and Brown residents who reside predominantly in lower-income areas, starting with opportunistic land grabs in the 1960s and 70s. In 1977, the Duke administration participated in the demolition of Crest Street by advocating for the extension of the Durham Freeway, which fractured a predominantly Black and low-income community near campus with ties to Duke’s labor force. In 1988, a Duke- owned property was rezoned from residential to office use, displacing 42 families. In the last decade, Duke has repeatedly undermined public transit projects, cutting funding for the Bull City Connector in 2017 and almost single-handedly killing the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project that would connect Durham and Orange counties while ignoring calls from low-income Black and Brown communities to invest in the existing bus transit system.

Duke’s use of land grabs, gentrification, and forced displacement to expand its operations and wealth are the same tactics used by the Israeli government against Palestinians in occupied Palestine. Tactics of state- sanctioned violence against and surveillance of minoritized communities in the United States are inextricably tied to Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians. Public surveillance and law enforcement militarization in the U.S. are enabled by the same technologies and public-private partnerships that facilitate the Israeli occupation. American technology companies like Google and Amazon — driven by profit over people — have contracts with the Israeli government and military; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; U.S. Customs and Border Protection; and the U.S. military to provide computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and other technology services. Exchange programs between the U.S. and Israel bring together law enforcement and military personnel to share tactics for violence and control. In 2018, a coalition of Black, Palestinian, and Jewish organizations in Durham led a campaign that made this city the first in the U.S. to pass a resolution prohibiting police exchanges with Israel. We are informed by and build upon the work of those who came before us and those who work alongside us.

The Palestinian cause is not for Palestinians alone — it is a cause for people of conscience concerned with humanity, freedom, and justice. Palestinian liberation is the vanguard of our collective liberation, for a world free of colonialism and imperialism and the interrelated systems of oppression that uphold them.

*The count of Palestinians killed by Israel was accurate as of May 2024, when this statement was written. We encourage everyone to stay aware of the most recent and accurate information, as Israel continues killing more Palestinians every day.

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WE DEMAND THAT DUKE UNIVERSITY: