Just a few miles from Harvard, MIT and Tufts University's pro-Palestinian encampments, the University of Massachusetts Boston sits largely removed from the fervor.
Life at Boston's only public university has carried on pretty much as usual, with finals and end-of-semester business.
“The fact that people are here just for their academics makes it a little bit less of a socially engaged campus than say some of the Ivies or some of the private elite universities that we've seen getting all of this publicity,” Noah Siegel-Stone, a Jewish student from Hawaii, said recently.
Siegel-Stone is one of just 9% of UMass Boston undergraduates who live in dorms. Most UMass Boston students commute to school and work off-campus jobs, which can make the turmoil on other campuses seem distant. There are no “liberated zones” or tent cities like those seen at other universities and on cable news.
Naomi Bethune, a junior who lives off campus and works as a swim instructor, said she and her classmates are invested in what's happening in Gaza. But Bethune, who is Jewish and Black, said it’s logistically hard to plan and execute protests, “let alone encampments,” on a commuter campus.
“That actually requires people who are in the area in a more consistent way,” Bethune said. “It’s also a massive university. Even now, during finals, it can be especially difficult to get a lot of people to come together in solidarity.”
That doesn’t mean UMass Boston students are indifferent. There have been teach-ins by some campus groups like the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.
About 50 people attended a teach-in last week led by political science professor Leila Farsakh, entitled “What is the Israeli Apartheid System?” The university removed the event page from its website after the event.
Farsakh, who is Palestinian American and has taught at UMass Boston for the past 20 years, emphasized the importance of historical context in her lecture.
“Our students are trying to grapple with what’s happening right now,” she said in an interview. “We’re trying to explain that there’s a history to this conflict and people sometimes do not know it and they just fixate on snippets.”
Among the attendees was Nadeen El-Zeftawy, a senior set to graduate in a few weeks. The Muslim daughter of Egyptian immigrants, she said she feels a personal stake in the region and the conflict.
“Maybe we’re not camped out at the moment, but we’re still engaged,” El-Zeftawy said.
She said she took classes at UMass Boston where she learned from Palestinian and Arab professors.
Despite her busy schedule as a student and babysitter, she said she and her friends are donating items to encampments at other schools.
“It’s kind of a more sustainable way for us students who are working but still really do care about it to stay involved,” she said.
Over at the UMass Boston food court, Siegel-Stone grabbed a bite to eat between his job facilitating a civics program and his evening classes on campus.
A political science major who leads the campus Hillel group, Siegel-Stone said Jewish students are a minority on campus. Although he said he supports a ceasefire in Gaza, he criticized the tone of the teach-ins on campus, including one he had attended earlier in this semester on the history of antisemitism.
“It felt like they were really downplaying the implications and the very real damage that it has done to Jewish students,” he said.
Some of his professors took political stands, he said, and university leaders are not providing a truly open platform for dialogue.
“In some of these conversations, it’s been mostly one-sided,” he said. “They’re more focused on sweeping it under the rug than actually handling it and having a mature discourse.”
A university spokesperson declined to address that claim specifically but said in an emailed statement that UMass Boston represents “a true reflection of the varied and complex world, with our members coming from many countries, holding different religious and political beliefs, and being shaped by disparate personal experiences.”
UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco said he is committed to civic engagement during a recent interview on GBH’s Boston Public Radio.
“Freedom of speech is to be respected, especially for us in a public university,” he said. “Our students have a moral compass. They want to learn. They’re moved by what’s unfolding.”
