Daniel Manulak is a historian of Canada and southern Africa and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Canada Program.
On campuses across Canada and the United States, students, faculty and alumni are organizing to press their universities to divest their holdings in companies doing business in Israel. Students are holding rallies and constructing encampments, and they have occupied college buildings. Some commentators have dismissed these actions as naïve or a flash in the pan that will soon dissipate. The lessons of history tell us that this is not likely to be the case.
Perhaps the closest historical analogue to the present-day campus protests occurred in the mid-1980s, as students mobilized against the South African apartheid regime. Indeed, student activists today have deliberately borrowed the traditions, tactics, symbols and language of arguably the most successful social movement of the 20th century for their campaigns.
Divestment – the objective of students protesting the war in Gaza – came to prominence as a means to combat the apartheid regime more than 40 years ago.
In the mid-1980s, South Africa made international headlines after the government’s ruthless crackdown of the township uprisings. In response to the images coming out of South Africa and calls from the victims and opponents of apartheid, students formed anti-apartheid groups on campuses, demanding that their universities sever ties with the white-minority regime.
Columbia University, then as now, was at the epicentre of the student activism. In April, 1985, Columbia students occupied, blockaded and then renamed Hamilton Hall “Mandela Hall” in solidarity with the world’s most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Similar initiatives took place at Rutgers, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and elsewhere. Encampments that were dubbed “shantytowns” – a visible representation of the oppression faced by Black South Africans – appeared on nearly every campus green.
In Canada, student anti-apartheid protests likewise became a regular occurrence at universities. In November, 1985, at the University of Toronto, anti-apartheid activist Lennox Farrell threw a ceremonial mace at South African ambassador, Glenn Babb, who was invited to speak at a debate about divestment. Mr. Farrell’s action prompted a public discussion about free speech, and led observers to argue that on-campus activists were emotional and immature.
But under immense and sustained pressure from students and faculty, universities in Canada and the U.S. would eventually divest, though many did so partially. McGill was the first major Canadian domino to fall in November, 1985, followed by others in quick succession. By 1988, 155 universities and colleges worldwide had withdrawn more than $3.6-billion from South Africa.
What difference did student anti-apartheid activism make to the end of apartheid, and what does this tell us about campus protests surrounding the war in Gaza?
Divestment did not end apartheid. In theory, boycotts, divestment and sanctions would compel the South African government to make concessions to avoid further financial costs. This overlooked the fact that Pretoria was willing to endure economic hardship to maintain apartheid – considered a matter of national and cultural survival. The current divestment campaign against the war in Gaza may yield limited results on the ground for similar reasons.
And yet, in the South African case, it also had symbolic impact. Students and faculty believed that their universities’ association with the apartheid regime, however minimal in dollars, made it complicit in the oppression of Black South Africans. Through divestment, framed as support for the anti-apartheid movement and, by extension, racial equality, universities could morally cleanse themselves.
University divestment also contributed to a growing national and, indeed, global consensus that apartheid had to be dismantled. If universities divested, lending their legitimacy as an institution of higher learning to the cause, it could cascade, shaping public opinion and governmental policy toward apartheid.
This did not happen overnight. Most universities in Canada and the United States disassociated from South Africa in the mid-1980s, yet negotiations leading to the end of apartheid only began in 1990, concluding four years later with the election of that country’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela.
As in the South African case, student campus activists opposing the war in Gaza face two practical challenges moving forward.
First, how to appeal to a wider segment of the university community while maintaining unity within their movement. Second, how can they sustain momentum moving forward? With the school year ending, there will be a lull in campus activity. More difficult, as media attention shifts away from the war in Gaza to other issues, student activists will lose their greatest tool for mobilization and bargaining leverage with universities.
Regardless of whether the current student campus protests achieve their immediate objectives, we should not dismiss them as only noise.