Student Protests are Back: the Acampadas and the Global Pro-Palestine Mobilizations in the Universities, from the USA to Sicily

For a year now, we have witnessed the unexpected return of student protests in universities and streets around the world. In fact, since the invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army as a consequence of the attack on October 7, 2023, many students, together with some professors and researchers, have mobilized against the war policies of the state of Israel, in support of the resistance and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. If the protests had already begun in the fall of 2023 in universities, especially in Europe, it is with the first acampadas in US colleges in the spring of 2024 that the pro-Palestine student movement spreads throughout the world, first in other American colleges and immediately after in the universities in many Western countries as well as Arab ones. Since then, the protesters have been asking the academic authorities to boycott Israeli universities and weapons manufacturing companies, considered complicit in the “genocide” in Gaza and, more recently, in the war in Lebanon. Except for the partial acceptance of the requests by some universities, the repression by the police and pro-Zionist groups, especially in the USA, and the instrumental accusations of anti-Semitism have been the responses of political and academic institutions. Why have students, mostly from Generation Z, returned to mobilize diffusely after years of relative calm on an issue that does not directly concern the student condition? What characteristics have their mobilizations assumed? How do they differ from past ones and what are the elements of continuity? Have they used innovative tactics between digital activism and occupations of university areas (acampadas)? How have they countered anti-movement (pro-Zionist) framing and authoritarian policies (governments and academic authorities)? I have therefore tried to answer these questions, based on literature, reading documents and online sites, participant observation and some interviews with student activists, starting from the empirical case of the protests at the University of Catania, in Sicily, to broaden the view to other mobilizations in Italy and beyond.