Baala Shakya, Contributing Photographer

On Oct. 22, Yalies4Palestine launched the Sustain Our Scholars — or SOS — campaign to call for Yale to invest in educational initiatives on Palestine studies and relationships with Palestinian universities and scholars. 

As part of the campaign, members of Yalies4Palestine emailed University Provost Scott Strobel to request a meeting to discuss these demands, to which Strobel has not responded. According to Strobel, initiatives similar to some of the campaign’s proposals are already “being carried out across the campus.”

“This is about investing in education and investing in the people who have been directly impacted [by Israel’s war in Gaza] — people our age, younger schoolchildren, all the way to university professors,” Reem Abdo Kahin ’27, a member of Yalies4Palestine, told the News. “They’ve been affected in a way that we can understand as people who spend their entire days learning at university. It’s a campaign that focuses on righting some of the wrongs that we have been paying for.”

The SOS campaign comes after a recent United Nations statement that Israel’s destruction of 80 percent of schools in Gaza amounts to “scholasticide.” In a press release on the campaign, students pointed to Yale’s mission statement of “improving the world today and for future generations through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation and practice.”

In an Oct. 22 email to Strobel, organizers outlined 12 specific demands, including establishing “an outreach program, full scholarships, and psychological and social support for Palestinian students to study at Yale College and the Graduate and Professional Schools.” 

Organizers demanded that the University expand programs such as the MacMillan Center Council on Middle Eastern Studies, the Fox International Fellowship and Open Yale Courses to be more accessible to Palestinian scholars. They also asked that the University collaborate with external initiatives such as Birzeit University’s Rebuilding Hope initiative in the West Bank and Research4Life, which provides virtual academic resources to institutions in developing countries. 

According to Abdo Kahin, Yalies4Palestine organizers chose to pressure Strobel because of the “far-reaching” academic scope of the campaign as well as Strobel’s role in overseeing educational policy at Yale. 

“I received an anonymous petition on October 22 from a sender who claimed to be Yalies4Palestine,” Strobel wrote in an email to the News. “The letter requested a meeting with the provost but did not indicate who was requesting such a meeting. It is my policy not to respond to anonymous petitions.”

The News could not determine if this policy is posted anywhere on the Office of the Provost’s website. Under the website’s policies and procedures, a link to the “Provost’s Procedure for Student Complaints” leads to an error page on the Office of Institutional Equity & Accessibility website.

Strobel offered examples of “the kind of work mentioned” in the SOS campaign currently being “carried out across the campus.” According to Strobel, the Scholars at Risk program extended invitations last spring to two scholars from Gaza. Strobel also pointed out that Yale is a founding member of Research4Life and provides “resources to fill the gap in the availability of academic content for institutions, students, and scholars in developing countries and regions, including those experiencing conflict.”

Strobel also added that many university initiatives, “including those to study, understand, and support scholarship and scholars from conflict areas,” are initiated by faculty, staff and administrators within individual units of the University. 

According to Abdo Kahin, organizers of the SOS campaign are currently in discussions with faculty involved in Yale programs such as Scholars at Risk to realize their demands.

“According to its own mission statement, Yale has a responsibility as a leading academic institution to protect and preserve education globally,” Jimmy O’Connell ’28, a member of Yalies4Palestine, said in the press release.

To continue pressuring Strobel to meet and discuss their demands, members of Yalies4Palestine have started a letter-writing campaign to Strobel’s office, with 125 letters sent as of Sunday. On Monday, Yalies4Palestine also plans to hold a “study-in,” where students will continue to write letters to Strobel to express their demands. 

Yalies4Palestine was founded in 2019.