Student Activism for International Support of Palestinians
Location
FA-152
Department
Sociology
Abstract
Inspired by both historical and contemporary international youth protests advocating for an end to the Palestinian genocide, we will synthesize student claims regarding their activism, identity, and motivations. Our group will be conducting interviews with students at a Midwestern university who are actively engaged in a campus group dedicated to organizing students and bringing awareness to the ongoing mass expulsion, starvation, and killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. We will conduct a focus group with 5-6 members of the student organization and subsequent individual interviews will be conducted. The purpose of these interviews is to gauge the social makeup of the student group as well as the respective and collective views of the organization. Our methods will include snowball sampling to recruit focus group participants and purposive sampling to help decide which students will be selected for an individual follow-up interview. We are interested to learn more about how social identities influence support for this social movement and what shapes views of those who contribute to the movement. This research is important now more than ever because higher education institutions have been particularly scarce in making official statements denouncing the Israeli colonist regime, genocide, and apartheid. A better understanding reflects what universities – and all institutions – need to be doing better in order to uplift youth movements and ensure a sense of support and safety, while at the same time demonstrating how institutions may be enabled to take a position of silence.
Faculty Sponsor
Juan Martinez
Student Activism for International Support of Palestinians
FA-152
Inspired by both historical and contemporary international youth protests advocating for an end to the Palestinian genocide, we will synthesize student claims regarding their activism, identity, and motivations. Our group will be conducting interviews with students at a Midwestern university who are actively engaged in a campus group dedicated to organizing students and bringing awareness to the ongoing mass expulsion, starvation, and killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. We will conduct a focus group with 5-6 members of the student organization and subsequent individual interviews will be conducted. The purpose of these interviews is to gauge the social makeup of the student group as well as the respective and collective views of the organization. Our methods will include snowball sampling to recruit focus group participants and purposive sampling to help decide which students will be selected for an individual follow-up interview. We are interested to learn more about how social identities influence support for this social movement and what shapes views of those who contribute to the movement. This research is important now more than ever because higher education institutions have been particularly scarce in making official statements denouncing the Israeli colonist regime, genocide, and apartheid. A better understanding reflects what universities – and all institutions – need to be doing better in order to uplift youth movements and ensure a sense of support and safety, while at the same time demonstrating how institutions may be enabled to take a position of silence.