Penn ‘Freedom School’ sit-in offers safe space for pro-Palestinian views
Students at the University of Pennsylvania discontent with the school’s response to the local impact of the Israel-Hamas war have returned to a vintage protest tactic: a sit-in.
Called “ Freedom School for Palestine ,” the sit-in has been active for more than two weeks. Held at Houston Hall, a student union building meant for hosting events and extracurriculars, it aims to remain an ongoing invitation to stand with the Palestinian people, call for a lasting peace, and rally against aspects of Penn’s response to polarizing events on and off campus.
Participants feel the university is abdicating its responsibility as an educational institution by not allowing free discussion of ideas on the topic, sit-in co-organizer Larissa Johnson told Billy Penn.
“We are really serious about taking the education that we are not receiving,” Johnson said, “and think[ing] critically about what those syllabi — for lack of a better term — would look like.”
About 15 people, mostly grad students, help run the sit-in on a daily basis. Five typically sleep over each night to maintain the small portion of the hall decorated with pro-Palestinian and pro-ceasefire posters.
“We took it on ourselves as graduate students to use the liminality of our position as both students and teachers,” Johnson said — and as people who have the needed flexibility and time to curate daily interfaith services, lectures, open conversations, vigils, and reading groups.
“Freedom School” has three main demands for the university:
During the sit-in’s first week, guest speaker Rasmia Kablaoui spoke about surviving what is often called the Nakba — the 1948 expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, amid armed clashes over the UN’s 1947 plan to partition Palestine.
Another speaker was Nitzan Lebovic, a history professor at Lehigh University who specializes in studies of the Holocaust. An Israeli Defense Forces vet whose uncle was killed and cousin was kidnapped on Oct. 7, he gave a presentation on solidarity between struggles and the hard realities of institutional complicity.
“The question for us right now is whether we are complicit or not in the actions that may lead [to genocide],” Lebovic said. “If we choose to turn a blind eye that means that we assume our agreement and our consent and our complicity with it.”
One purpose of “Freedom School” is to provide a space that allows criticism of Israel, organizers said, which some students believe is not true across much of campus.
“There’s a growing group of students who have been doxed,” said Hilah Kohen, an Israeli American doctoral student and sit-in participant. “It’s clear that there are people inside and outside the campus who are determined to find individuals who expressed support for Palestinian life and attempt to exploit that in order to inhibit their chances to make a living.”
Students are being careful to remain within the university’s “ Guidelines on Open Expression ” so as to avoid any administrative dispute over the space they’ve created. They relocate the sit-in within the building during times when other groups have rooms reserved.
People come with study materials in tow, per organizer Johnson, with new faces every day, from the university community and beyond. All are welcome, though campus authorities have only allowed people with a valid Penn ID to stay overnight.
It’s a setting where they can let their guard down on an otherwise tense campus, students say. Johnson called the space “as soft a landing spot as possible” for students seeking more conversations and affirming space to mourn, reflect, and share their views.
The overwhelming perspective among these students is that a genocide is unfolding in Gaza.
Finding space for ‘real education’ on campus“Freedom School” participants believe Penn has been lackluster in caring for the safety and sorrow of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students — a view some have held for years — and that official connections with outside groups representing Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians have been pursued with less vigor than with Jewish organizations.
The university’s actions around the recent Palestine Writes literary festival are a prime example, according to Israeli American grad student Kohen, who volunteered at the event held on Penn’s campus in late September.
“There’s direct correspondence between the president of this university and the [Anti Defamation League],” Kohen noted, “and nothing similar was publicized regarding any group that stands for Palestinian life.”
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, some angry university donors drew links between the festival and antisemitic incidents on campus, without presenting substantiating evidence. ”Freedom School” supporters say those same links were made in Penn President Liz Magill’s Oct. 15 statement .
“It’s a very specious connection that has been promulgated by trustees and university administration,” Penn English professor Chi-ming Yang told Billy Penn. She is one of around 20 faculty members, including some from other Philly-area colleges, helping out at the sit-in.
Facing threats ranging from doxing to outright violence , pro-Palestinian students and the faculty looking out for them feel unprotected, Yang said.
“We have witnessed Penn students as well as others ... who have been physically aggressive and harassing at peaceful protests on campus,” she said. “University police and the Division of Public Safety are present and do nothing to curtail aggressive moves.”
When Kablaoui, the 90-year-old Palestinian woman displaced during the Nakba, spoke with attendees about diaspora, return, and survival across generations, it resonated deeply.
“That was a moment where I think people who attended the space felt that they were interacting with real education,” said a Palestinian student at Penn who requested anonymity for personal safety reasons. “Because our teacher was not someone who has tenure at an Ivy League. She was a Nakba survivor.”
During the last Israel-Hamas war, in May 2021, they hadn’t felt comfortable celebrating a major academic achievement as “people were dying back home.” It wasn’t noted by the university, the student said. “My dean, and my faculty, and my school, did not even say a word about this.... That just made it clear to me that I am not a priority for this institution.”
That jibes with a public letter signed by hundreds of academics which calls on Penn to “step up and defend, protect, and support its Arab, Palestinian and Muslim students, faculty, and staff under attack.”
“I think what we did with the Freedom School,” the student said, “is to create a space that community members were looking for, for a long time.”
