Colonialism is challenged but also reinforced on university campuses

Across the United States, universities have become the epicentre of student-led movements opposing Israel’s war on Gaza. Local authorities and university administrations have unleashed intense crackdowns on these demonstrations under the false pretences of protecting campuses and fighting anti-Semitism. But in the face of violence and threats, students have stood their ground, and protests are not showing any signs of subsiding.

What we are witnessing from student protesters is not new. In fact, students have historically been at the forefront of resisting and denouncing colonialism and imperialism.

In the 1530s during the violent colonisation of the Americas, a group of Spanish students at the University of Bologna publicly rejected waging war, deeming it contrary to the Christian religion. The antiwar protest worried the Catholic Church so much that the pope dispatched Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda – a renowned Spanish priest and scholar, who held the strong conviction that the enslavement and dispossession of Indigenous Americans were justified – to deal with the pacifist students.