Monday, May 20, 3:00 PM EDT - Zoom

Divesting from Apartheid: Continuity, Difference, and Historical Lessons - Panel Discussion - A roundtable with Angela Y. Davis, Jess Ghannam, and Robin D.G. Kelley.

Sponsored by: UC Riverside Faculty for Justice in Palestine & Center for Ideas and Society’s “Decolonizing Humanities (?)” initiative

Virtual Event. Register Here: Meeting Registration - Zoom

Through the 1980s, campuses throughout the United States and internationally were the sites of a student-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid regime, a campaign called for by South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC). In many cases, anti-apartheid campaigns conjoined with demands for an end to “apartheid on campus” as students contested racial and gender discrimination and the rollback of affirmative action in their own institutions. Administration buildings were occupied, shanty-towns constructed on campus, and the meetings of Regents or Trustees disrupted. This was a campus movement that also coordinated with trades unions, religious communities, and a broad spectrum of social movements. And over the course of several years or organizing and protests, and despite obdurate administrative resistance, it succeeded in bringing many universities to divest and contributed greatly to the mainstreaming of the anti-apartheid movement as a moral and political cause for civil society as a whole. Notably, this campaign succeeded despite the Reagan and Bush administration’s deep support for the apartheid regime as a significant Cold War ally and source of raw materials.

Now the campaign for divestment from Israeli and from corporations that support its genocidal war and apartheid regime is spreading across US campuses in response to Palestinian civil society’s call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). This round table is intended to offer insights for the present from the history of the previous anti-apartheid movement. How was it organized? What were its overall strategies? What varieties of practice were used to advance the campaign? What tactics succeeded most effectively? How did campus organizations succeed in growing and drawing support? How were coalitions built with other civil society movements? In what ways did university administrations and police seek to repress or contain the divestment movement? And how does the present conjuncture differ from the 1980s in ways that demand new thinking and strategies? What has changed since the Reagan era, both in terms of the experience of social movement activism in neoliberal America and in terms of the strengthening of the state’s forces of repression? How specifically must the campaign against Israeli apartheid differ in its language, analysis, and strategies from the campaign against South Africa?

For more information, including speaker bios, & to register: Divesting from Apartheid: Continuity, Difference, and Historical Lessons Roundtable - UC Riverside