Lawrence, KS, May 1, 2024 - We, students, faculty, staff, and members of the Lawrence community, are dispatching our first notice of our liberation encampment, on the grounds of the University of Kansas Lawrence campus, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We have borne witness to Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank experiencing more than six months of a genocidal campaign perpetrated by the state of Israel. The University of Kansas is complicit through its financial investments and associations which profit from the massacre of Palestinians.

We will not tolerate this complicity any longer.

As people of conscience, we believe that to sit by and allow our tuition and labor to support the Israeli war machine would be tantamount to aiding and abetting genocide. Therefore we undertake this project in solidarity with the numerous campuses across the United States and throughout the world that have taken a stand against genocide and for the Palestinian people. We have chosen this date, May 1st, because we understand the inextricable connections between the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the struggle of workers and opressed people everywhere, which May Day has historically recognized and celebrated. We hope to contribute to that global struggle for liberation however we can.

Therefore, our encampment declares that there will be no business as usual on our campus until there is justice in Palestine. We are committed to Palestinian liberation and freedom for all oppressed peoples. We will not tolerate any form of discrimination, including antisemitism, Islamophobia, antiblackness, transphobia, xenophobia, or homophobia in our encampment.

We call on faculty at the University of Kansas, at large, to join us and stand at the right side of history. We call on you to give up the façade of virtue signaling and recognize that the so-called crisis in higher education is not the conservative reaction but it is the complicit silence with genocide. It is time for scholars of racism, decoloniality, and critical theory to support actual material divestment from the war machine, instead of platitudes in peer-reviewed journals.

We have four demands for the administration of the University of Kansas:

First, financial divestment - The University profits from and financially supports the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the genocide of its people. We demand immediate divestment of all of the University's financial ties with all Israeli government and military interests and holdings, in addition to companies which operate within, profit from, aid in or otherwise serve to benefit the ongoing Zionist military campaign and broader occupation of the Palestinian people and their land.

Second, financial transparency - The University hides these investments through a lack of financial transparency which allows university administration to evade accountability for their actions. We demand the University make public all of its direct and indirect financial ties to the Israeli government, military, and Israeli corporations and universities.

Third, demilitarization - The University contributes to the militarization of both the KU campus and Lawrence broadly, while financially tying education to military violence. We demand the University refuses to accept grants, funding, and financial backing from companies contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense or Armed Forces, and an immediate end to all University ties with said companies, as well as all programs, interships, etc which tie the University to the U.S. Military and American police departments. These contracts, too, pave the way for U.S. contributions to the genocide in Palestine.

Fourth, amnesty - The University will seek to criminalize and repress those fighting for an end to genocide. We demand the University allows us to exercise our First Amendment rights and guarantees amnesty for penalties it will place on protesters for exercising those rights.

The University of Kansas has been and continues to be a colonial project committed to the displacement and disenfranchisement of Indigenous people, and remains on unceded Kaw/Kansa, Osage, Oceti Sakowin, and Kickapoo land. This colonial history is intimately connected to KU's ongoing investments in colonialism and genocide, and by staunchly refusing to answer the calls of its populace to recognize the genocide in Gaza and cut its ties with the organizations that make it possible, KU maintains that history. In the wake of over 40,000 preventable deaths in Palestine, we demand the University act on its own stated principles, including its alleged commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, by divesting from genocide. Until then and after, the people of KU will stand their ground for liberation.