AMHERST — Chanting “hands off our students now” and “up, up with liberation, down, down with deportation” more than 100 students, staff and faculty at the University of Massachusetts, participating in a pro-Palestinian rally and march Thursday afternoon, demanded both divestment from Israel and improved protections for international students, including those whose visas are being revoked.

With more than a dozen UMass students from abroad having their student statuses terminated by federal authorities this month, organizers from the UMass Students of Justice in Palestine, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and the Professional Staff Union’s Solidarity Caucus are calling on Chancellor Javier Reyes to do more to help those students and prevent additional students from having their immigration status changed.

The three demands include having UMass cut ties with “war profiteers” and ending study abroad programs in Israel, protecting students from federal surveillance, expunging arrest records of students and creating a “non-carceral first responder network” and offering sufficient funding for humanities departments and STEM research related to women’s health and trans people in light of cuts by the Trump administration.

Beginning outside the Student Union and concluding at Whitmore Administration Building, with stops along the way for discourse about repression and atrocities occurring in the Middle East, some of the chants included “free, free Palestine, from the river to the sea,” and “all the Zionists are racist.”

While many of the signs, such as “labor demands ceasefire” and “stop arming Israel” referenced the war between Israel and Hamas, some spoke to the campus situation, such as one reading, “when our peers disappear, we take notice. Hands off UMass!”

Organizers made explicit calls for those participants to not publicly identify themselves and many covered their faces with masks and their heads with scarves and bandannas.

“We are refraining from talking to the media on behalf of these (international) students,” one person holding the megaphone said.

UMass officials are regularly monitoring the Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database, known as SEVIS, and like other campuses, are doing what is possible to offer support to affected students, none of whom were immediately identified as taking part or being arrested during the sit-in at Whitmore in October 2023 or an encampment near the campus pond in spring 2024.

Thursday’s speakers agreed with that assessment, that those with revoked visas don’t appear to have been active participants in any rallies. “There is nothing to suggest they were involved in Palestinian solidarity work,” one speaker said.

Amherst councilor reflects

With significant uncertainty for international students studying at UMass, Freke Ette, a District 1 councilor, at this week’s Town Council meeting reflected on his own experience growing up in Nigeria and familiarity with coming to the United States to study.

The revoked visas are problematic, he said. “This has left the international community reeling,” Ette said.

Ette said it is hard enough leaving one’s home country for a foreign land to study, and then to have the added worry of having to think at any moment about legal status. “That has left a lot of them in distress,” Ette said.

While he didn’t have any imminent solutions, Ette said he hoped that councilors would in their roles do outreach when possible and be a source of support, with open arms and reminding internationals they are welcome.

“I know that this is a welcoming town, and that we as a town can continue to be welcoming to them, and continue to encourage the international students.” Ette said. “They bring a lot to the town.”

He pointed to last weekend’s Global Village and the spectacular demonstration of the beauty internationals bring.

Ette said it is critical to recognize these are not normal times and there can be despair, but he is encouraged that a core value of the United States is that extremism cannot quench extremism and confidence that the idea of the United States outlasts any party or ideology, referencing how both the Federalist party of the late 18th century and the Whig Party of the 19th century are both extinct, and any form of politics that relies on winners and losers is a lost cause.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com