SFSU President Begins Negotiations With Campus Gaza Protesters

Amid a wave of student protests that has spurred attacks and arrests on other California campuses, San Francisco State University’s top administrator met publicly with pro-Palestinian student protesters for the first time Monday to discuss their demands as news spread of a cease-fire proposal in the Gaza Strip.

The “moderated, open negotiations session” between President Lynn Mahoney and representatives of the SFSU Students for Palestine Encampment is believed to be one of the first of its kind, student organizers said. It came as Israel launched strikes in Rafah after saying the terms of a cease-fire deal agreed to by Hamas were not acceptable, NPR reported.

“If the cease-fire is true and it happens and, you know, there’s a free Palestine – because that’s what we’re reaching towards – of course we’re going to be relieved and we’re going to be happy, but at the same time we lost a lot,” said Monia Alsena, 22, who graduated from SFSU last year and attended Monday in support of the protest encampment.

“I wish it was a permanent cease-fire,” said her friend Nermeen Elsaghir, 23, who is graduating this month and has family in the West Bank. “I wish it was freedom for Palestinians, for all of us.”

Still, Elsaghir said she is “not very hopeful about having any kind of victory soon for Palestinians or a cease-fire. We’re helpless, and our leaders, especially Arab leaders, they’re not doing anything. It’s very sad.”

“I don’t see how I’m hopeful,” she said. “I’m not.”

According to Gaza health officials, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, which Israel launched after Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage in a wave of attacks Oct. 7.

Since April 29, a group called Students for Gaza has camped on a central lawn at SFSU to demand the California State University system disclose its financial ties to Israel and to divest.

Students also rejected what they called Islamophobic censorship of speech and activism on campus.

During Monday’s public meeting with student representatives at the university’s Malcolm X Plaza, Mahoney said she would take steps to increase transparency around where the endowment money is invested and to “take another look at that investment policy.”

“Let me just say you’ve all been heard,” Mahoney said. “You have been heard.”

Atzeli Ramirez praised Mahoney for being willing to negotiate with student protesters publicly, but she felt Mahoney didn’t go far enough in meeting their demands.

“It felt like President Lynn Mahoney was trying to save face rather than negotiate,” Ramirez, 21, said.

Amey Kulkarni is a media liaison for the protesters. Kulkarni has stayed in the encampment intermittently over the last week. He was upset that Mahoney declined to declare the war in Gaza a genocide.

“That’s something we’ve been explicit about from day one,” Kulkarni, 25, said. “Me as well as so many others in this camp do not want to normalize this.”

In 2020, the SFSU student government passed a resolution requesting a university boycott and divestment from Israel, but Mahoney refused to support it.

The school administration’s agreement to publicly negotiate with protesters this week, however, is starkly different from the approach of leadership at some other campuses. Nationally, more than 2,000 students have been arrested in protests against the war as of last week, according to the Associated Press.

Campus police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters in a parking structure at UCLA on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported, days after officers cleared the encampment there and arrested more than 200 people. Early Sunday, a student encampment at the University of Southern California disbanded after Los Angeles Police Department officers threatened to arrest the students. There were at least 14 pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses in California as of last week.

On the other side of the country, Harvard warned students Monday that protesters would be placed on involuntary leave from school, according to CNN.

Not all university leaders have responded to encampments with police. Sacramento State University President Luke Woods gave approval for the campus’ pro-Palestinian encampment late last month, and UC Riverside pro-Palestinian student protesters voluntarily ended their encampment last week after reaching an agreement with university leadership to explore divestment from Israel, according to the Riverside Record.

SFSU has faced a decades-long challenge in responding to demands of its students around the Israeli-Palestinian  conflict. Former SFSU President Leslie Wong drew criticism from students and faculty for an email he sent in 2018 saying “Zionists are welcome on our campus,” according to the Golden Gate Express, the campus newspaper.