The Weaponization of Recovery in the Imperial University: Reflections from the Student Encampments for Gaza and Beyond

Drawing on their experiences as a student on the Barnard College and Columbia University campuses during the Gaza solidarity encampments, the author lays out the multiple fronts of struggle students have engaged as sites of liberation. Framed by abolitionist and anti-colonial thinking, the essay unveils the ways in which the liberal university’s claims to recover and restore safety on college campuses in the wake of student escalations have been weaponized to justify the violent repression of a growing movement demanding divestment from the Zionist regime in the midst of its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Despite having been brutalized by militarized police forces, barred from entry to campus and their dorm, and then expelled, the author questions a world that practices recovery while genocidal violence and racial capitalist legacies endure. They affirm their commitment to a revolutionary collective that rejects a definition of humanity devoid of resistance for collective liberation.