2. The students obviously. Those goldfish-memoried flibbertigibbets that bounce from cause to cause. In reality, they’ve been consistently campaigning on BDS since at least 2015 2/14
They’ve been building skills and passing on institutional memories, absorbing setbacks and college sanctions, and winning victories – SU divestment, SU support for BDS, college divestment from weapons companies 3/14
All these victories, I hardly need to add, were dismissed as insufficient and meaningless from people who – there’s no other way of putting it – really don’t like students. The students wisely ignored these people. 4/14
The current SU is a radical campaigning one. They have the skills and action repertoires needed for direct action. More than that, people who stand up for themselves – campaigning on rents and fees – tend to stand up for others. 5/14
This ensured they conducted consistent disruptive actions and education in response to college complicity in Israeli genocide. After Columbia, a TCD encampment and student confrontation with college authorities was pretty inevitable. 6/14
3. Staff also matter! Specifically, staff-student solidarity which meant students weren’t isolated. On one level, students got on well with campus security. On another, @AfPTrinity offered full support to the encampment. 7/14
Before that, our group mobilised and informed staff with open letters, academic talks and personal contacts. We wrote to admin bodies and met with the Provost. We also organised our own demonstrations – separate from, but always in conjunction with student groups. 8/14
This helped ensure that even staff who disagreed with the disruption caused by the students (those innocent benches), understood that there was good reason for them to protest. There was legitimacy to their actions 9/14
4. College community exists and it too matters! After the million billion dollar fine was levied on the students for being disruptive, college alumni organised and demanded it be lifted. The fellows (TCD academics of distinction) met and urged compromise. 10/14
5. The final reason – college administration. All the above meant that coercion, as we’ve seen on other campuses, wasn’t really an option for them. But TCD was never going to put snipers on roofs. College leadership, to their credit, was concerned about protestor safety 11/14
Nor are they ideologically anti-Palestinian – again the contrast with other campuses is stark. They were honestly horrified by the slaughter in Gaza. They talked with us and while I admit I didn’t think so at the time, were listening to us. At least with one ear 12/14
So when business as usual was disrupted, they were open to resuming business by excluding a genocidal state rather than without large sections of the college community and, I like to think, their own consciences on the matter. 13/14
6. So we won. The benches are released and the spice will flow. Trinity is taking the same leadership on Israeli apartheid as it previously did on South African apartheid. And I hope this thread is useful for others trying to get their colleges to take the same leadership. 14/14
Academics for Palestine 