Swarthmore College Sanctions 15 Pro-Palestine Student Protesters

Swarthmore College, a Quaker institution that has often championed protests and human rights, sanctioned 15 pro-Palestine student protesters on March 6, according to the college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). One graduating senior was suspended for allegedly using a bullhorn indoors, which the college categorized as “assault,” the students said.

The Pennsylvania college issued warnings to five of the other students, and nine were placed on probation. The move marks the first time the college has suspended a student for protesting since at least the 1960s, according to SJP.

Swarthmore is one of 60 colleges and universities that received a letter on March 10 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, stating that they were under investigation for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act related to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.

“Swarthmore’s administrators want to throw a student onto the streets over a literal speech act, protecting themselves from [President Donald] Trump’s lawless threats, because we’ve stood up against Swarthmore’s complicity in Israeli genocide and apartheid,” said a student quoted in SJP’s press release who was not named out of fear of further reprisals. “Fascism has come to our campus.”

The sanctions represent the latest escalation of Swarthmore’s targeting of anti-genocide protesters, the group said. In late February, the administration placed the SJP chapter on an interim suspension following a protest in the college’s Parrish Hall.

The March 6 sanctions relate to campus protests held between October 2023 and March 2024. Organizers with SJP said that while these events were attended by hundreds of students and reflected the demographics of the student body — of whom 30% are white, according to data released by the college — only a handful were charged, most of whom were students of color. Activists with SJP further attest that the college has been crafting cases against organizers for Palestine through various surveillance measures, including entering their dorm rooms and tracking the use of their ID cards needed to enter shared spaces like the campus dining hall.

The single suspension was directly related to a December 2023 protest at a dinner hosted for the college’s Board of Managers. SJP organizers said the demonstration lasted roughly 20 minutes and involved protesters entering the building, giving speeches, and chanting. The suspended student was photographed at the event using a bullhorn, and the college later accused the student of assault for using the device indoors. The college alleged that using a bullhorn indoors caused damage and violated the Student Code of Conduct, according to a statement released on the college’s website by President Val Smith.

In an email to Prism, Swarthmore media relations specialist Cara Anderson said, “Swarthmore values and supports individuals’ rights to express their views and engage in peaceful protest and dissent. But those rights do not extend so far as to infringe on the ability of other students, faculty, and staff members to fully engage in the life of the campus, nor do they give license for protesters to disrupt the essential operations of the College.”

Anderson also noted that “the overwhelming number of students who participated in the vast majority of protest-related activities did so freely and without incident, underscoring Swarthmore’s support for individuals’ rights to express their views and engage in peaceful protest and dissent.”

Anderson further stated that the sanctions were not related to the content of what was said, but rather for “specific actions and behaviors that violated the Student Code of Conduct” and “created an untenable learning, living, and working environment and that constituted significant, numerous violations of the Student Code of Conduct.”

But SJP activists said the college has singled out organizers for Palestine despite other advocacy groups using similar tactics.

“The use of a bullhorn is very standard practice at any protest and also in Swarthmore College’s history,” Dara, who is using a pseudonym due to fears of retaliation from campus administration, told Prism in an interview. “We have activism that goes beyond Palestine activism. There’s labor rights activism that happens on campus, there’s climate justice activism that happens. In many of those instances, students also did very similar acts of protest where they disrupted board meetings or went inside buildings and used bullhorns, and they have never received any notice of any disciplinary cases at all, let alone get suspended. This is very clearly the Palestine exception on display.”

Swarthmore’s SJP chapter is just one of more than 350 Palestine solidarity organizations across the country. The national organization has been in existence for more than 20 years. The chapter has asked the college to commit to better financial transparency so that the student body can understand what their $3 billion endowment is invested in, as well as the divestment from all companies aiding Israel. Dara said this could include weapons manufacturing and surveillance technology companies that provide services to the Israeli army.

An opinion article published in the campus newspaper The Phoenix in February provided an overview of the college’s divestment practices and shed light on a lesser known and little publicized policy that has shaped Swarthmore’s response to divestment campaigns for more than 30 years. In 1991, the college amended its investment guidelines, according to the article, stating that “the endowment would be maintained solely with the goal of preserving the financial standing of the college, rather than pursuing other social objectives.”

According to the writer, Erin Picken, the ban would slow down the ultimately successful campaign of South African divestment and entirely hamper later campaigns around fossil fuel divestment.

“Entirely Hypocritical”

SJP members and allies also argued that the college administration’s sanctions against protesters in support of Palestine stand in stark contrast with how the college presents itself both to the student body and the public at large. Swarthmore has long prided itself as a bastion for social justice.

“Swarthmore College has supported the right to peaceful assembly for more than 150 years,” the college’s admissions webpage announces to prospective students. “Your peaceful participation in demonstrations has no negative impact on your application or admission to Swarthmore.”

Since 2011, the college has also run the Global Nonviolent Action Database, which tracks campaigns and successful cases of nonviolent political agitation. The database draws from all continents and showcases people “struggling for human rights, economic justice, democracy, national and ethnic identity, environmental sustainability, and peace.” Among the cases featured on the database are the 2018-2019 march and demonstrations by Palestinians in Gaza at the Israeli border protesting to return to their homes.

“It’s so entirely hypocritical for the college to boast all of this on its website, to promote itself as an institution that’s dedicated to social justice and activism, and rooting this all in its ‘Quaker roots,’ when there are Quaker institutions that are calling for colleges and Western institutions to divest from Israel, and it’s refusing to,” Dara said.

The Quaker organization, American Friends Service Committee, for instance, has an entire webpage dedicated to advocacy around the “crisis in Gaza.”

Swarthmore’s actions come as colleges face increasing pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on pro-Palestine protests, which the administration is targeting via a newly created Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Earlier this month, the administration announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its handling of campus protests. Columbia has since acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in order to restore its funding.

SJP members on Swarthmore’s campus have been in conversation with student activists at the growing list of targeted colleges who are similarly facing repression from their administrations in light of the federal investigations. Members told Prism that students are seeking advice from one another on how to proceed after receiving sanctions. On Swarthmore’s campus, a host of affinity groups have penned letters to the college’s administration in support of SJP students facing retaliation, and a petition calling for the reversal of these sanctions has garnered almost 3,000 signatures.

SJP members have additionally sought out advice on how to support students at risk of losing their housing and funding provided by the college. At Swarthmore, suspended students lose access to academic and residential facilities on campus, including their dining plan, access to events, and the ability to attend classes. As a graduating senior, the suspended student will have to apply to re-enroll in the spring in order to obtain the final credits they need to graduate. The student is entirely financially independent, according to SJP’s press release, and has relied on the college for housing and an on-campus job.

“If the college holds the suspension and doesn’t overturn it soon, [the student] is essentially homeless. The college has made [them] homeless,” Dara said. “They were notified of that through the impact statement that [the student] had written, and they still chose to target [them].”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.