Discontent over the war in Gaza had been growing for months at Trinity College Dublin, but what had been a roar last week suddenly became a roar. It emerged that Trinity had demanded a hefty sum from the students’ union after protests blocked tourists’ access to the Book of Kells, a major attraction for paying visitors.
Trinity’s request for about $230,000 angered students and attracted a flurry of media attention, and last Friday some anti-war protesters set up a camp like those in American schools.
Irish lawmakers were concerned that the university was trying to quell independent protests, and there were offers of help from lawyers and pro-Palestinian groups. The university closed parts of its campus that day, citing safety concerns.
As the university dispute went national, Trinity, Ireland’s oldest and most prestigious university, agreed on Monday to negotiate with pro-Palestinian protesters. After several days of turmoil, Trinity first agreed to abandon some Israeli investments, a move that nearly all American colleges and universities have so far resisted, and then said Wednesday that it would study the possibility of divesting from all such investments.
“It felt like we had won,” said Jenny Maguire, president-elect of the student union. “Not only us, but all the people who campaigned for this had won. We got exactly what we wanted and what we came there to do..“
She said of the university: “It was shocking how quickly they changed.”
Soon, the camp of tents and two Palestinian flags, which some 60 students had rushed to erect just days earlier, was packing up. On Wednesday night, students wearing checkered kaffiyeh scarves gathered their equipment and left. Within minutes, all that remained were discolored patches of grass.
A Trinity spokeswoman declined to comment on any link between its change of course, the monetary demand and the resulting scrutiny. The bill, as the university called it, against the student union was not discussed in the divestment negotiations, but will be discussed later, she said. Student leaders said they hoped it would be rescinded.
But to some students and outside observers, it was obvious that Trinity had made a serious miscalculation. Instead of quelling them, it had added fuel to protests that threatened not only the finances but also the reputation of a university whose alumni include writers such as Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Samuel Beckett and a cavalcade of illustrious politicians, physicists and philosophers.
“The message the fine sent was that Trinity was trying to quell and dismantle the student protest,” said student union spokesperson Aiesha Wong, who called it a “fear tactic.”
David Wolfe, editor-in-chief of Trinity News, the student newspaper, said: “They may have decided that it would cost us less to divest from Israel than not to.”
The pro-Palestinian movement has been active in Trinity for years, as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. And at Trinity, like other campuses around the world, it gained momentum after the current war began seven months ago.
Students, faculty and staff members have pressured the university to more strongly condemn Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian groups have shared petitions, written open letters, and organized disruptions of university meetings.
But nothing attracted as much attention as the €214,000 fee the university charged for blocking entry to the Book of Kells, a world-renowned illuminated manuscript about 12 centuries old housed in the university library.
Each year the book attracts around a million visitors. Its tourism supplements the university financially, and past protests that had nothing to do with Israel have prevented access to it as a way of putting pressure on the Trinity administration. The bill covered protests for other reasons that blocked entry to the Book of Kells exhibit, but it was the pro-Palestinian protesters who attracted the most attention.
In the days after news of the fine became public, more students became involved in the anti-Israel movement, the student union said. Plans for a camp were already being made, but the schedule sped up.
legislators invoked the Trinity withdraw what they described as a “drastic fine,” and a group of them sent a letter to the university asking officials to ensure students had space to protest.
As at universities in the United States and elsewhere, there were some complaints that student leaders had not addressed the anti-Semitism that was growing alongside anti-Zionism. Jewish students felt excluded by the student union’s stance, Agne Kniuraite, president of the university’s Jewish society, said in an article last month.
“Jewish students have been subjected to an endless barrage of prejudice and have spoken of the isolation, fear and sense of rejection they have experienced on campus this year,” he wrote.
On Monday, leaders of the anti-Israel protests and the university met in a senior dean’s office to negotiate a deal.
“They made it clear that they would immediately divest from companies in the occupied territories,” said Maguire, president-elect of the students’ union, in what she described as a striking reversal from Trinity’s previous statements. The university agreed not to call on outside forces to break up the protests or the encampment, as some American schools have done, and in a statement issued after the meeting, Trinity called the response of other institutions “disproportionate.”
The school said it would divest three Israeli companies listed by the UN for their involvement in settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and had offered a place and exempt fees to eight Palestinian academics.
Protest leaders said they pushed for a stronger stance, and on Wednesday the university agreed to explore the possibility of stripping its endowment of all ties to Israel. Students are still negotiating with administrators about how to ensure the university meets its long-term commitments.
A university spokeswoman declined to say how much money it had invested in Israel, but said it involved 13 companies and was a “very small percentage” of the university’s €250 million endowment; American universities have said similar things about their own investments. Maguire said that in meetings with administrators the students were told that the investments amounted to at least 70,000 euros.
Aidan Regan, associate professor of politics and international relations at University College Dublin, said he imagined Trinity’s management would have weighed up the financial and reputational cost of clearing the protesters and instead sought a deal.
Given that public opinion in Ireland favors the students, he said, it was “unthinkable” that the university would call the police to forcibly expel them.
Many Irish have drawn parallels between the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and centuries of British rule in their country.
“Ireland has a long history of solidarity with Palestine, motivated by a shared colonial history,” said Hannah Boast, a fellow at the University of Edinburgh who has worked on politics and culture in Israel and Palestine, saying the camp would have added to pressure on the university to act.
The decision to divest was too big to attribute to image rehabilitation after inadvertent bad press, he said, but “the announcement of the divestment certainly appears to have made the bad press of the fine go away.”