The student-led protests at Emory University in Atlanta have stood out from other protests in the US in at least one way: Protesters are seeking transparency about and divestment from Israel, as well as from a $109 million police training center known as ‘Cop City’.
A broad-based movement against the training center, now in its fourth year of existence, has made national and global headlines, especially after police shot dead an environmental protester at a campsite in a public park last year – the first such incident in its kind in American history.
Emory protesters opposing Israel’s war in Gaza and Cop City have led some in the local media to cast doubt on who was behind the protests and their merger. A recent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated, “Anti-war protests are susceptible to co-optation by activists seeking to prevent construction of the public safety training facility.”
But multiple interviews at the school by The Guardian reveal that the issue of Cop City and its connections to Israel has been on the minds of at least some of the student population – and faculty – for some time, especially after Emory’s president, Gregory L Fenves Atlanta police entered campus in April 2023, as students set up a camp on the school’s quad to protest Cop City.
Emory student Oren Panovka was at the protests last year and this year. Sitting on a stone bench at the edge of the school’s lawn, dotted with oak, pecan and maple trees, he gestured around the campus on a recent afternoon. “Just look around,” he said, pointing to the names on some of the buildings nearby.
“Names like Woodruff and Cox – some of the largest donors to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Then there are Rollins and Blackstone, who are on the [Emory] board of trustees,” said Panovka, who like many students involved in the Emory protests in recent weeks, is Jewish.
He explained why students demanded that the school reveal and divest itself of its involvement with Israel and Cop City, as he viewed the two as linked.
Foundations named Woodruff – former head of Coca-Cola, and Cox – a global communications, automotive and mass media company, have each given $10 million to Cop City. These same foundations have donated generously to Emory. Board members are also linked to donations in support of the project.
The issue of transparency is of particular importance to students at Emory, which has an endowment of $11 billion — the 11th highest in the U.S., according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Students in the metro area — and not just at Emory — have long protested a direct link they see between police in Atlanta and Israel: the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (Gilee), a nonprofit program that sends American police officers to Israel and vice versa, for training and other activities.
The Rev. Keyanna Jones, a Baptist minister and part of an Atlanta-based faith coalition against Cop City, was asked by Emory student organizers to speak about these and other connections on April 25 as part of a protest camp launch.
Jones arrived at Emory and had barely made it through her remarks at a news conference when state patrol officers from Emory, Atlanta and Georgia burst into the quad. “I looked around and saw pepper balls and rubber bullets being shot,” she said. “I saw three young women in hijabs. One was paralyzed; she couldn’t move… I went there and told them, ‘If you don’t move, you’re going to get hurt!’”
One of the women kept shouting, “What’s going on?” Jones recalled. Eventually the three ran away from the quad.
At the time, this was probably the fastest closure of a student protest encampment of the dozens that took place across the country. It was also likely the first in which police used Tasers on protesters.
“There are reasons why the movement to end Cop City and the push for a ceasefire are related,” Jones said. “You have the same Israeli forces in both places. [Gilee] trains APD, GSP and other local police departments… and you see the obvious militarization… You can’t deny it when you see local police officers walking around in riot gear, and local governments try to make you believe this is normal.”
A few days later, a black Muslim Emory student named Nadia who was at the camp said, “The police are trained by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is a connection that cannot be overlooked. The show of force we saw [on 25 April] shows that all our struggles are connected.”
Emory history professor Clifton Crais spent six months talking to colleagues about how the school should respond to students protesting these and other issues after Fenves called Atlanta police to campus a year ago. This involvement also includes the president’s membership in the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a group that supports the training center.
“It is very important to remember the profound contradictions, if not the hypocrisy, of what happened last April,” Crais told the Guardian. “A peaceful protest against the Atlanta Police Department was accommodated by the Atlanta Police Department.” The move was “a direct violation of our open speech policy,” he said.
Fenves promised in an October 31 letter to the Guardian that a report would be published examining the events of April 2023. The report was never produced, Crais said. The history professor wrote a vote of no confidence against Fenves after police were called to campus again during the most recent protest; Three-quarters of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved the motion last week. Emory students also expressed their confidence in the president.
The history professor drew attention to student motivation during the protests in recent weeks. “One thing that has confused some people is how Cop City is pouring into Palestine,” he said. “Students see them as interconnected. Police training in Atlanta, Israel raises major concerns among students, and this is often lost in the noise.”
Recalling the university’s response to the two protests students organized at Emory in the past year, Jones said, “It seems like there are two things that can’t be talked about – Cop City and Israel.”
