By Kendall White, with photographs by the author
This piece has been lightly edited from the original, which was published by The Claremont Independent. Follow up articles are here and here.
Claremont SJP and PDfA instagrams.
The morning of October 7, I donned an inside-out shirt, surgical mask, sunglasses, and beanie. I made sure my phone was fully charged and turned off my location-sharing services. Before leaving my dorm room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The person looking back at me was nearly unrecognizable.
I was about to meet up with a group of Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) protesters demanding that our school, Pomona College, divest from Israel. My campus is no stranger to the BDS movement. Last year, Pomona hosted two encampments, navigated the arrest of twenty students and had a federal complaint filed against it by the Brandeis Center and Anti-Defamation League. This was set to be the first major protest of the semester, the date chosen to mark “one year after the beginning of the Zionist entity’s intensified genocide in Palestine.”
For those unfamiliar, a central tenet of the BDS movement is comprehensive anonymity. Protest participants are advised to conceal themselves from head to toe. By their logic, if you can’t be identified, you can’t be punished. But there’s a flip side to this coin: While your identity may remain secret, you also have no idea who anyone else is. This created an opportunity for me, a student journalist, to blend in with the protesters and get a glimpse behind the scenes of a typically opaque and secretive group.
That morning, I gathered in the streets with hundreds of my fellow students. After an initial outdoor rally, protesters marched into Carnegie Hall, one of Pomona’s main academic buildings. There, classes were disrupted with raucous chants of, “Intifada, intifada, long live the intifada” and, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.” Professors and students unaffiliated with the protests exited the building, in some cases through the windows.
Things only went downhill from there.
Zip ties and clamps were placed on the doors, sealing all but one shut. The remaining exit was manned by students, obstructing building access to any non-protesters. I spent the next several hours gathering footage from inside Carnegie, which protesters referred to as “Refaat Alareer University.” Photos of vandalization and property damage filled my camera roll. “Intifada,” “From the river to the sea,” and “Fuck Pomona” were emblazoned in red spray paint across walls and carpeting. Classroom equipment was destroyed, with projector screens sliced into pieces and electrical cords cut in two. I attended a workshop about “Fighting Pigs” and tucked a “De-Arrest Primer” into my bag to review later (it turned out to be literal instructions for how to resist arrest, complete with illustrations to demonstrate). As all this was going on, a professor remained blocked in a stairwell for hours, prevented from accessing his office and phone.
The protesters left the building after nearly five hours, streaming out through the back door as administrators and Campus Safety officers looked on. The occupation over, I immediately began working on an article detailing the day’s events with the editor of the Claremont Independent, the student newspaper I report for.
At this point, I was faced with a crossroads: I could either put my name on the piece or release it anonymously. After much deliberation, I decided on the former. We hit publish, and I returned to my dorm, sweaty and exhausted, but content.
The article was nothing but the facts, providing a start-to-finish overview of the protest. It was a news piece, not an opinion column. I strongly felt, and still do, that it was reported with diligence, fairness, and honesty.
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed.
In the days following publication, a strange thing began to happen. Classmates I used to wave to in the dining halls stopped waving back. My smiles and hellos were met with silence and blank stares. This didn’t come from all directions, but acquaintances that I knew to be BDS-affiliated became cold and unapproachable.
One of my closest friends writes for a progressive student publication that covers grassroots organizing on campus. A couple of days after my article was released, her editor approached her about our friendship. Apparently, it had been “brought to the attention” of the editor that the two of us were close. They wanted to ensure that my friend “aligned” with the values of the newspaper, given her questionable association with a reprobate such as myself.
I was then informed that photos of me were being circulated in various protest-sympathetic group chats. I was spared the details of what was being said, and frankly preferred not to know. I assume it was nothing good.
I knew that publishing my first piece in the Independent could affect my reputation on campus. Outside of the sensitive subject material the article covered, the Independent also has a reputation for employing students who lean conservative or libertarian (at least compared to the rest of the student body, which skews sufficiently left that even a moderate can seem starkly conservative). I was well aware that these unfashionable political persuasions are not looked upon favorably by most Pomona students. I did not, however, anticipate the extent of the blowback I received.
As much as their contempt burns, I can’t bring myself to resent my fellow students. Unlike what scores of Twitter pundits and armchair experts would have you believe, these protesters are not Mephistophelean zealots. By and large, they are good people. I’ve gotten to know many of them. I’ve listened to them speak with great hope for a peaceful and just future. I’ve experienced their kindness and sincerity firsthand. But good people can fall short of their noble aspirations, particularly when their best intentions are passed through a filter of moral absolutism and radical intolerance. Under the aegis of collective resistance, anything and everything becomes justified. Nuance is consumed in the flames of self-righteous indignation. Harms caused to community members, particularly Jewish ones, are seen as a small price to pay for victory.
I wish I could say that I’m the only student who’s faced the consequences of sharing an unpopular truth. Unfortunately, my experience is far from unique. According to a 2018 Gallup poll of Pomona students and faculty, 88% of students agreed with the following statement: “The climate on my campus prevents students/faculty from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” There’s little reason to believe that these numbers have since improved. A recent analysis by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that on their metric for self-censorship, Pomona ranked second worst of all 251 colleges they surveyed.
Higher education has been in crisis for years, with colleges across the country neglecting their commitments to free speech and academic freedom. It’s time for change.
To begin with, schools like Pomona must assume the mantle of institutional neutrality. Colleges are not mouthpieces to be seized by whichever interest group can shout the loudest. Their truth-seeking mission cannot be co-opted by whatever ideology happens to be in vogue. By planting their flags firmly on the side of academic freedom, colleges can clear the way for their students and faculty to speak freely and honestly.
Second, diversity must take on new dimensions. Ideology needs to join race, religion, class, and gender as important metrics for the heterogeneity of a community. Conservatives make up only 4% of Pomona’s faculty. This is far from exceptional, with similarly asymmetric ideological distributions found at most colleges. Given this pervasive ideological uniformity, it’s no wonder that many college students view the world in black-and-white terms. Operating under this worldview, every question has exactly one right answer. Individuals who are unable or unwilling to provide the “correct” response are immediately dismissed as amoral, inexcusably ignorant, or both.
This rigid dichotomy, embraced by adherents to the BDS credo and wider swaths of college students, can only be broken down through exposure therapy. Students must be shown the humanity on opposing sides of each issue. One of the best ways to do this is by introducing them to professors with diverse views. Through experience, they can discover that oftentimes, great minds actually don’t think alike.
Finally, colleges must not only establish clear demonstration policies but also enforce them consistently and fairly. Disruptions like the one Pomona experienced on October 7th must be met with justly appointed consequences. Students cannot be allowed to euphorically trample over the norms of campus life and the liberal arts tradition. Intimidation and coercion are antithetical to the vibrant intellectual environment that these schools claim to cultivate. At the same time, colleges must thread the needle, taking care not to be overly punitive as they mete out consequences. Becoming disproportionately reactive to dissent and protest could chill free expression and public discourse.
I have faith that with stronger institutional frameworks, the individual can be empowered to take a stand. Higher education can reclaim its status as a bastion of free speech and rigorous intellectual debate. With curiosity, bravery, and compassion, we can begin a virtuous cycle and move the needle in the direction of freedom and truth.
Kendall White is a sophomore at Pomona College studying Politics, Antiquities, and Arabic. In her free time, she writes for the Claremont Independent and enjoys reading and playing Spikeball on Marston Quad. If you have thoughts on her reporting, she’d love to hear them. Connect with her on X or via email.