“I, like everyone else here, believe that … everything possible to liberate Palestine and end the genocide in Gaza must be done,” a senior studying history at the University of Michigan (U-M) told me on April 25, three days after U-M students erected an encampment outside the Hatcher Graduate Library.
The U-M student encampment remained in place from Monday, April 22 until Tuesday, May 21, when officers from U-M’s Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS) cleared more than 100 tents from the Diag while pepper-spraying students. (DPSS has declined to comment on this article, citing an “open and currently active investigation.”)
The student, who asked to be referred to as “R.” to protect his identity, went on to explain the goal of the Tahrir Coalition, the collective of student groups responsible for organizing the encampment: to convince university officials to divest $6 billion of U-M’s total endowment, which was valued at $17.9 billion as of June 20, 2023, according to a factsheet published by U-M.