From seminary classroom to encampment

Last April, when students at Emory University began their encampment to protest the war in Gaza and demand divestment, I showed up as a faith leader to support and witness students at Candler School of Theology and Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion protesting alongside them. This multiracial, mostly Christian group of students had occupied a Candler academic building, transforming its lobby into a zone of support and solidarity.

I was struck by the contrast between the clarity and forthrightness of their activism and the response of the broader church. I knew similar things were happening at other seminaries and divinity schools. What did it mean for students to belong to these institutions—historically and presently associated with the Protestant mainline, housing various sorts of progressive Christianity—and also to respond decisively to what was happening in Gaza?

There are significant variations in student organizing for Palestine at seminaries and divinity schools, from the number of students involved to the strategies they engage. At Union Theological Seminary more than 50 students have been involved in organizing for Palestine. Dozens have engaged at Yale Divinity School, and smaller numbers at Duke Divinity School, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Broadly speaking, the students are young, racially diverse, and mostly (but not entirely) Christian. Many of them were present at encampments on affiliated or nearby university campuses last spring.