Around 150 students, faculty and community members gathered in White Plaza Thursday for a walkout and vigil to support Palestine and mourn the nearly 42,000 lives lost in Gaza one year since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza War. Protesters also called for the University to divest from the state of Israel and weapons manufacturers.

The walkout was the first major protest over the war in Gaza and institutional divestment this academic year. Student protests and demonstrations in support of Palestine have become more frequent on campus since October 2023, when student organizers began the 120-day Sit-In to Stop Genocide in White Plaza — the longest in Stanford’s history.

“​​People are dying at exponential rates, and in ways that our institutions of governance and our institutions of higher learning are silent about,” Anna Bigelow, a professor of Islamic and Religious Studies and member of Stanford Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP), told The Daily. 

The last year has seen a surge in student activism, including a tense counter-protest by pro-Israel students and community members, the walkout of over 400 pro-Palestine students from Stanford’s Commencement Ceremony in June and the occupation of the president’s office by pro-Palestine students activists which resulted in 13 arrests, including of a Daily reporter. 

During Thursday’s walkout, three speakers delivered speeches about divestment, the intersectionality of Palestinian and Congolese liberation and the University’s response to student protests.

“The president of this university, Jonathan Levin, will say that Stanford is not a place for political action and social justice,” said the first speaker, who identified themselves as a master’s student in the political science department but did not share their name. “We cannot learn in a vacuum.”

The Daily has reached out to the University for comment.

Protesters on stage also held up a sign reading, “We will honor all our martyrs.” After the speeches concluded, attendees were encouraged to walk up to the stage and write down a name or create art to “remember the lives and names of all our martyrs,” said a student activist on stage. 

Yousef, a Palestinian undergraduate from Gaza, told The Daily that he joined the walkout for deeply personal reasons. “I don’t know how to count the losses,” he said. “Just a couple of months ago, in July, our house was airstriked for the third time. My cousins, who were in it, were martyred.” 

Yousef requested not to share his full name due to fear of retaliation online.

“Everybody knows what it means, maybe, to lose a loved one, or sometimes lose a house, ” Yousef said. “No one knows what it means to lose your city. No one knows what it means to really lose the place you grew up in.”

Many attendees wore keffiyehs or face masks. Organizers led participants through several chants, including “Stanford admin you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution.”

Several organizations — including Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP), Stanford Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), FSJP and Stanford Medical Community for Justice in Palestine — announced the walkout through a post on Instagram. The Raging Grannies, an activist organization made up of older women from around the Bay Area, also attended and sang at the protest.

The post called for students to walk out of their classes “to say that our classes, meetings and plans are a [minuscule] sacrifice in the face of this horrific genocide.” 

Joanna Baker ’25, a member of Stanford Jewish Voice for Peace, told The Daily that her organization was both part of the broader Palestinian movement and a space for Jewish students who might feel “alienated” by Jewish organizations that support Israel.

“We know as Jews that our own history of oppression demands that we look for what it means for a group of people to be systematically oppressed, and to be in a position such that they can be victims of genocide,” she said. “When we say never again for anyone, it really just means never again.”

A vigil for victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel was held on Monday. Several attendees of the walkout told The Daily that they did not consider it inappropriate to engage in protest during the week of Oct. 7.

“There’s no humanitarian denial that victims of Oct. 7 have lived a very tragic event, but forcing Palestinians to talk about Oct. 7, when they are getting slaughtered, when Israelis have never been asked about their war crimes for the past decades, is unfair,” Yousef said. “It’s just dehumanizing. It just shows you that the value of a Palestinian human is not [treated] the same as the value of any other human.”

Baker cited the Jewish principle of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, and the teaching that “every life is a universe.”

“We know that members of our Jewish community are personally mourning losses from Oct. 7,” she said. “That is not contradictory to believing that causing these losses onto another people does not keep Jews safe, and does not reduce antisemitism. In fact, it fuels the flames of it.”

Protesters who spoke to The Daily expressed dissatisfaction with the University’s position on the war and inaction on demands for divestment.

“It’s mind-puzzling to think that the institution I go to invests in companies that kill my family,” Yousef said.

Lucy Sandeen ’24, who joined the walkout, told The Daily she found it “ridiculous that Stanford has consistently gone against the wishes of its students, refused to take any action in support of Palestine and is steadfastly standing behind Israel.” 

Sandeen cited a ballot initiative from the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections in April supporting institutional divestment from Israel. The statement received support from 74.64% of graduate student voters and 72.86% of undergraduate voters. These totals accounted for 18.53% of all graduate students and 25.99% of all undergraduate students.

Bigelow said that faculty, particularly those with tenure, were uniquely positioned to share their views publicly. “Those of us who feel moved to do so can provide that role,” she said. Bigelow also called for greater University investment in Arab and Palestinian communities.

Earlier on Thursday, several pro-Palestine students protested next to weapons manufacturer RTX  at Stanford’s Fall Career Fair at Canfield Court, the largest career fair of the year. 

“A lot of people here go on to work at companies that are complicit with genocide,” said Brian Liu M.S. ’25.

During the demonstration — a joint action between Stanford Tech for Liberation and the SAAP coalition — protesters put up a sign reading “BOEING BOMBS, RAYTHEON KILLS.” They also handed out pamphlets that appeared to advertise employment at RTX on the cover, while the inside of the pamphlet depicted bombings and criticized the company’s role in building weapons used by the Israeli military.

Several career fair attendees voiced their support to the protesters when passing by.

A protester at the Career Fair, who was affiliated with Tech for Liberation, told The Daily that an employee of Stanford Career Education had instructed them to stop chalking a protest statement against Raytheon on the asphalt in front of the Law School because Raytheon was represented at the career fair.

In an interview with The Daily, James Tarbox, assistant vice provost and executive director of Stanford Career Education, confirmed that one of his colleagues had instructed the demonstrators to stop chalking.

After reviewing the University’s new free expression guidelines online, however, Tarbox concluded it was acceptable for the protesters to chalk on the asphalt, choosing to interpret the free speech policy “liberally,” especially as the fair took place outdoors and in a central part of campus.

“From my perspective, they’re fine,” Tarbox said, though he also said it would be unacceptable for the protesters to “interfere with someone going to a booth” at the fair.

After the walkout, protesters hosted a study-in and dinner. Later in the night, around 50 participants reunited at White Plaza for a candlelight vigil honoring the Palestinian lives lost in the conflict. During the vigil, speakers told stories about loved ones they had lost.

“We want to humanize their stories,” said Yousef, who spoke about the loved ones he has lost in Gaza. “We aren’t just numbers on the news.”