As students have called on USC to do more to recognize lives lost in Gaza this month, some are taking note that the school has ties to defense companies and military research.
On Thursday, 40 people came out to a campus “die-in,” a non-violent protest where students lie on the grass to symbolize casualties of the Israel-Hamas war.
Their protest also acknowledged the role of the United States, USC and defense companies in the conflict.
Arjun Bhargava led chants and spoke with Annenberg Media after the protest. They conveyed discomfort with how few resources were being offered to Muslim students.
They also acknowledged that “we cannot forget USC’s larger complacency in war industries in general and directly serving as a pipeline for many students to go work for massive defense companies.”
Defense companies including Lockheed Martin and Boeing both have initiatives with USC and actively recruit from schools such as Viterbi. USC self-describes as a “leading institution for military research, technologies, training” and “consistently rank[s] among the top ten private universities in Department of Defense sponsored research.”
Just last week, Biden requested $14.3 billion in military aid to Israel including “air and missile support,” per CNN. He also requested $10 billion in assistance to be shared among Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and other needs.
Bhargava noted that they saw disparities in how this conflict has been covered by Western and non-Western media. They cautioned students and bystanders to seek out diverse coverage, noting that students who know anything about international relations and media know “these systems are geared towards not telling the truth. They’re geared towards protecting these massive industries that profit from war.”
Bhargava voiced determination saying, “we will not be complacent in it. We are going to organize, and we are going to protest, and we are going to make graphic designs, and we are going to write until this genocide is stopped.”
Students at the protests chanted slogans like: “No more bombs, no more terror,” “Stop the killing, stop the hate. Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is a colonizer state,” “Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for Israel’s crimes,” and “When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
Nada, a senior majoring in Global Studies and an Arabic speaker, read a list of some of the dead, out of “honor and respect” for them. She only gave her first name out of fear of retaliation for attending and speaking at the protest.
The protest culminated in delivering USC President Carol Folt a letter, asking her to “condemn Israel for the continued bombardment of internationally recognized war crimes against the Palestinian people, including the use of white phosphorus and the intentional targeting of civilian men, women, children and elderly.”
The letter also said that “members of USC administration have explicitly prohibited departments from issuing statements on the ongoing violence unfolding before our eyes, in direct violation of our right to free speech.”
A leader of the protest with USC Grad Students for Palestine addressed the group after delivering the letter. While the group declined to comment privately, the leader publicly expressed feelings of futility. She said, “I spoke to [Folt’s office], and we’ll see if she responds. I doubt it, though.”
Previously, Folt released an Instagram post condemning the “terrorist attacks by Hamas,” after her initial statement which acknowledged “the tragic loss of life taking place right now in Israel and Gaza.”
Per Democracy Now, more than 7,000 Palestinians, including 2,900 children, have been killed in the region since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. Per NPR, the Israeli death count remains at 1,400.
President Joe Biden told Reuters he has “no notion Palestine is telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Aria posted on X that “questions about the Palestinian death toll is a wholly manufactured controversy to distract from Israel’s ongoing war crimes.”
