Sixty years ago, a powerful student movement (Students for a Democratic Society) took shape in the US in the heat of anti-war sentiment. Since that time, we have witnessed student-led movements demanding the end of apartheid in South Africa, labor rights, the movement for Black lives, and the call for liberation more broadly. For the last twenty years, students across the country have been organizing around the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions and Palestine liberation. In the last seven months of a US funded Israeli genocide of Palestine, we have witnessed a new effervescence. Building on the shoulders of fifty years of organizing in the US, brave students and academic workers call for an end to genocide. Together they call for Palestinian liberation. Together they oppose the US funded and armed Israeli regime of rule of apartheid, occupation, and settler colonialism. The bravery and ingenuity of students across the country teach and lead us. They confront institutional authorities and armed agents of the state with resilience and courage. Most of all, they demand that we keep our eyes on Gaza, on the West Bank, on Palestine, as Israel kills a Palestinian child every ten minutes, and as we witness the uncovering of one mass grave after another. 

This movement is growing. We anticipate an escalation of protest and repression. On some campuses, faculty have played a frontline role, physically and materially. Now is the time for all of us to step up to support and join the students. As the scale of the repression brings quietist colleagues off the fence, our growing numbers ensure support and protection of students and of higher education more broadly.  Students should be able to rely on us to put our voices and bodies on the line. This is an historic, transgenerational opportunity.

As academic terms end, we need to plan for the summer, when administrators take advantage of the absence of community scrutiny and pressure to introduce undemocratic and punitive measures. We should be extra-vigilant about this customary conduct. We must assist with the transition to a summertime phase of the movement. Now is the time to think ahead, while we act to amplify the voices on our campuses. 

Lastly, let us remember, as the Israeli genocide on Palestinians in Gaza and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank continue, what the slogans and chants demand that we always work for -- the cause of Palestinian freedom and the justice of Palestinian resistance in pursuit of that cause. 

We will not stop. We will not rest. Viva Palestina!