Responding to Campus Tensions as the Practitioner in Residence at DePaul University

Between April 22nd and May 21st 2024, I have been invited as a “practitioner in residence” by the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University in Chicago. This involved teaching classes on Conflict Resolution and Dialogue, and running workshops for faculty and staff on the art of dialogue on the Israel-Palestine topic. I was also going to initiate steps to foster a culture of constructive engagement and dialogue across difference, in a moment of increasing polarization. But with the current tensions due to the impact of the Israel-Palestine situation on campus, it was clear I also needed to try and build the conditions for restoring trust between various student and faculty groups, some of whom were no longer willing to interact with each other.

Before my arrival on Campus, I met online with 40 members of DePaul, including 9 members of administration, 13 faculty members and 18 students and student leaders from various groups, to develop an understanding of the situation and start identifying potential steps to rebuild relationships. Everyone I talked to was extremely welcoming and hopeful that my presence would be beneficial to them and the University. This helped me not only understand the dynamics on campus but was also decisive in preparing me for what was coming next.

A week after my arrival, a coalition of student organizations decided to set up an encampment on the quad of the University to join the national and international movement protesting against the ongoing military operation in Gaza. This coalition, named the “Divestment Coalition DePaul”, emitted ten demands, the main ones being a “condemnation of the genocide on Palestinians” and a “divestment from companies profiting from Palestinian suffering”. This led the President of the University to ask me to play the dual role of Mediator and advisor. My Mediator role consisted of facilitating the negotiation between the divestment, coalition leaders and the administration. My advisor role consisted in attending meetings with the administration to elaborate a strategy regarding the encampment, and the demands of the student coalition. I made myself available to the Divestment Coalition to play a similar role but that only happened informally.

While it was challenging to navigate those two roles, switching between mediating between two parties and specifically advising one of them, this was not unsurmountable and both roles brought value to the situation. The negotiations lasted for about 10 hours over 10 days and enabled both parties to make progress on some of those demands, yielding creative solutions. For instance, even though the University refused to divest from companies that had potential activities in Israel, it was amenable to investing in Palestinian organizations and infrastructure, including the educational infrastructures destroyed by the war.

However, another crisis started when the Administration received threatening calls from hate groups, intimating to shut down the encampment now. This pushed the President to accelerate the rhythm of negotiations and to ask the Coalition leaders to come to a resolution by Saturday, May 11th and to end the encampment as a result the following day. Unfortunately, this attempt failed. The immediate reason was that the Coalition leaders continued to ask for more time before responding to the University’s proposal, although the President made it clear that waiting further was not an option. The more fundamental reason was that the University started losing trust, based on previous interactions, towards the Coalition leaders’ ability to carry out any agreement involving the dismantling of the encampment without obtaining several of their demands.

As a result, the negotiations came to a stalemate, even though the Coalition leaders, refused to call it as such and insisted on asking the president to reconvene, in vain. The Divestment Coalition issued a press release and organized a press conference after the stalemate was declared to condemn the University leadership. The University also released a press statement disclosing and expressing its intention to implement some of the responses provided by the Coalition leaders, even in the absence of an official deal. The encampment remained for 15 days before being dismantled and evacuated by the Chicago Police. The police evacuation took place with apparently limited violence but it was a sad outcome and one that everyone wanted to avoid.

I learned many lessons from this experience. One is that there is a real need to invest time in spaces for dialogue. Students should have efficient and ongoing channels of communication available among them and with the administration to avoid feeling like they need to escalate. Institutions should also support and invest in justice work by helping students find non-violent and legal ways to ask for and obtain justice. To the same end, internal community organizing training for students may prevent them from needing to seek support from external organizations who may not have the University’s best interest at heart. However, the most important steps should be to open spaces for dialogue to address differences constructively among all campus community members and build policies that address the specific needs and dynamics of each campus. Everyone may not be ready or willing to dialogue, and that is respectable. But those who want should be supported to do it, not only to help them overcome their divisions but also to reinforce their capacity for a culture of respectful discourse.

It appeared very clear during the negotiations that dialogue was not the enemy of justice, on the contrary. Those negotiations helped reach a level of understanding between students and administration to a level that had rarely been seen in other similar cases. But in situations of crisis or escalation, any mediation attempt is very fragile. This one didn’t resist the multiple contingencies that were going against a peaceful resolution.

Today, student organizations who took part in the encampment are seeking other ways to be heard. The University is determined to invest in dialogue across campus as a way to heal from this difficult moment and renew the culture of discourse and relationships on campus. Soliya is ready to support them in that process.

- Rafael Tyszblat, Director Innovation and Design