Activism / StudentNation / September 5, 2024

After an Agreement to Divest From Israel, What’s Next for Trinity College Dublin?

The school’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment ended in just five days. But the path to divestment began before the encampment—and stretches far beyond.

Aaron Boehmer

People organize a pro-Palestinian protest outside Trinity College Dublin.


(Mostafa Darwish / Getty)

Almost every corner of the student union offices are full of supplies. László Molnárfi apologizes for the mess. Groceries are piled up in the kitchen. Signs and broken-down tents, pillows and folded-up blankets are scattered across the hallways. Molnárfi, then-president of the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU)—or Aontas Mac Léinn Choláiste na Tríonóide in Irish—says the supplies would later be distributed to asylum seekers sleeping in tents outside of the International Protection Office and along the Grand Canal. Handwritten in black ink on the wall of Molnárfi’s office, right above a line of megaphones sitting single-file in front of his desk, reads “Victory to the students”. Below that, etched in a bold red marker and time-stamped to just two days prior on May 8: “TCD agrees to divest.”

As the new school term begins, Jenny Maguire, TCDSU’s new president, says the union is fundamentally changed by the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and remains steadfast in its commitment to a free Palestine. A large banner used for the encampment hangs on the wall behind her desk, serving as a symbol of the student movement’s ongoing efforts. It reads: “You are now entering Free Trinity,” a nod to Free Derry, an Irish autonomous area self-declared in Derry, Northern Ireland during The Troubles in the early 1970s. “We have reminded the university and all universities within Ireland of the power of the students and the bite that we still possess and are not afraid to use—which makes our bark a lot louder,” Maguire said. “The entire structure of the union is doubling down this year to become an even stronger campaigning body.”

The Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement has had a presence on TCD’s campus for the past eight years. In 2022, TCD BDS’s organizing led to Trinity’s divestment of over $2.7 million of equity investments in weapons manufacturers, including over $788,000 invested in Lockheed Martin, nearly $958,000 in Raytheon Technologies, and over $185,000 in BAE Systems, all of which sell weapons and surveillance technology to Israel. However, the past eight years of BDS campaigning, Molnárfi said, has mostly been ignored by management. Mobilizing for Palestine through direct action, such as the encampment in the spring, gained traction after Molnárfi and the 2023-24 sabbatical officers instilled a bottom-up grassroots approach from the beginning of the school year. “Power comes from people,” he said. “It is through the ability to threaten the reputation and the financiers of the university that we can actually challenge the authorities into abandoning things like fee and rent increases or securing things like divestment from unethical ventures.”

Energized to escalate, the union and its BDS campaign organized temporary occupations and sit-ins for Palestine throughout the year. “Once Columbia University set up its encampment, we felt inspired to do the same,” Molnárfi said. “It really felt that there was a mass movement here.”

Culminating after almost a decade of past BDS campaigning and a year of increased mobilization, the students established an encampment in Fellows’ Square in front of the Book of Kells entrance on May 3, demanding that Trinity College Dublin sever all ties with Israel. On May 8, the college issued a divestment agreement, and the Trinity students’ movement became one of the first around the world to have its demands met. The deal included divestment from Israeli companies with activities in occupied Palestinian territory and on the UN blacklist, cutting ties with its one remaining Israeli supplier, Enspire Science, expansion of support for Palestinian students, and the establishment of a task force that will consider divestment from remaining investments in Israeli companies and review all academic ties, student exchange programs, and research collaborations —the latter of the three amounting to over $2.7 million in funding for ongoing research projects that involve Israeli universities and institutes, including Tel Aviv University, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Weizmann Institute of Science, KI Research Institute, and Ben-Gurion University.

The victory wasn’t always assured. Less than two weeks prior to the deal, the university put student representatives, including Molnárfi and Maguire, through discipline hearings and issued a fine of more than 214,000 euro to the TCDSU for alleged financial losses brought on by disruptions from protests throughout the year. But the fine didn’t deter the students from upcoming direct actions. They had found that polite, non-disruptive protests often go ignored.

Trinity’s fine against the union, later withdrawn, resulted in public outcry against the school, and—in conjunction with US schools’ violence against students—laid a favorable course for the union come May 3. “Now with the encampment started, the college knew that we had to win because, in turn, they would win,” Maguire said. “The United States colleges’ handling of encampments was so horrific and internationally condemned. In working and dismantling so quickly, and giving us what we wanted so quickly, we also gave them the opportunity to get out of this PR nightmare.”

Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Quinn Katz-Zogby started at TCD in 2023 and immediately joined the BDS campaign. He said his call to organize draws on a long tradition of advocacy within his family—his father Jewish American, his mother Lebanese American, and his maternal grandfather running the Arab American Institute. “I never really chose to get involved in this sort of advocacy,” Katz-Zogby said, who is now the TCD BDS chair, “I grew up with it.”

Katz-Zogby was home in Baltimore during the encampment, which was around the same time as demonstrations at Johns Hopkins University, American University, and other schools in the D.C. area, many of which were met with brutality at the hands of the police. “Coming from an American context, I had to retool my brain to be like, ‘Well, realistically, the Garda are not going to come in and start smashing heads.’ We’re a global movement, but we have such different material conditions to America.”

The issue with the police in Ireland, Maguire said, is inconsistency, particularly in allowing, for example, the far-right to attack refugees and transgender people. “It’s negligence and it’s a lack of understanding the true threat that’s happening,” Maguire said. “What happens in [America] shows the power of the state and that the state is not out to support marginalized people. That is the same here, but it shows itself in different forms.”

The Nation Weekly

Fridays. A weekly digest of the best of our coverage.
By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

The conditions in which Trinity agreed to divest are far different from that of American universities, particularly regarding the state-sanctioned violence inflicted upon students across the United States. Yet TCDSU’s achievements—small but crucial nonetheless—signal a broader shift in public consciousness, according to Molnárfi. “This is a worldwide movement, and a movement of which Trinity is only a small part,” Molnárfi said. “With our combined efforts, it can finally be the start of the loss of social legitimacy for what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for more than 76 years. We see other deals being made between protesters and universities, and all of this shows which way the wind is blowing.”

The work is far from complete. Maguire said the relationship between the union and the university is currently a good faith, constructive one, but that is provisional. She said TCD fully divested from investments in occupied territories in June. Additionally, the task force on which Maguire will sit on is on schedule to be established during the first meeting of the Trinity Board on October 9. Although Molnárfi said the task force holds uncertain outcomes, it follows behind Trinity’s Colonial Legacies project, which began in 2021 and led to initiatives such as the denaming of the former Berkeley Library to the Library of Trinity College Dublin (its previous Anglo-Irish namesake, George Berkeley, was an enslaver and white supremacist, and also from whom the city of Berkeley, California—and its associated UC campus—gets its name).

“Everything is going according to plan, but the union is not naive,” Maguire said. If TCD fails to keep its word regarding full divestment, or if the task force appears ineffective, she said the union will take action. “Should we need to mobilize again, we will come back stronger, because we have to. We owe it to this,” she gestures to the handwritten victory declaration on the wall behind her. “We owe it to the Palestinian people.”

Support The Nation this Giving Tuesday


Today is #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that typically kicks off the year-end fundraising season for organizations that depend on donor support to make ends meet and enable them to do their work—including
The Nation

To help us mobilize our community in this critical moment, an anonymous donor is matching every gift The Nation receives today, dollar-for-dollar, up to $25,000. That means that until midnight tonight, every gift will be doubled, and its impact will go twice as far. 

Right now, the free press is facing an uphill battle like we’ve never faced before. The incoming administration considers independent journalists “enemies of the people.” Attacks on free speech and freedom of the press, legal and physical attacks on journalists, and the ever-increasing power and spread of misinformation campaigns all threaten not just our ability to do our work but our readers’ ability to find news, reporting, and analysis they can trust. 

If we hit our goal today, that’s $50,000 in total revenue to shore up our newsroom, power our investigative reporting and deep political analysis, and ensure that we’re ready to serve as a beacon of truth, civil resistance, and progressive power in the weeks and months to come.

From our abolitionist roots to our ongoing dedication to upholding the principles of democracy and freedom, The Nation has been speaking truth to power for 160 years. In the days ahead, our work will matter more than it ever has. To stand up against political authoritarianism, white supremacy, a court system overrun by far-right appointees, and the myriad other threats looming on the horizon, we’ll need communities that are informed, connected, fearless, and empowered with the truth. 

This outcome in November is one none of us hoped to see. But for more than a century and a half, The Nation has been preparing to meet it. We’re ready for the fight ahead, and now, we need you to stand with us. Join us by making a donation to The Nation today, while every dollar goes twice as far.

Onward, in gratitude and solidarity,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Aaron Boehmer

Aaron Boehmer is a journalism student at The University of Texas at Austin. His work has also appeared in Texas Monthly, The Drift, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and The Dallas Morning News.

More from The Nation

WTO protests Seattle

25 Years Ago, the Battle of Seattle Showed Us What Democracy Looks Like 25 Years Ago, the Battle of Seattle Showed Us What Democracy Looks Like

The protests against the WTO Conference in 1999 were short-lived. But their legacy has reverberated through American political life ever since.

Colette Shade

Amin El Gamal speaks at an LA event sponsored by Generation Rescue and the International Rescue Committee in June.

Hollywood’s Vocal Actors Union Goes Silent on a Gaza Ceasefire Hollywood’s Vocal Actors Union Goes Silent on a Gaza Ceasefire

Amin El Gamal, head of SAG-AFTRA's committee on Middle Eastern and North African members, has advocated for a statement supporting a ceasefire in Gaza—so far without success

Ben Schwartz

The Mirabal Sisters

The Mirabal Sisters The Mirabal Sisters

Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal were sisters from the Dominican Republic who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo; they were assassinated on November 25, 1960, und...

OppArt / Sylvia Hernández

What Will a Peace Movement Look Like Under Trump’s Second Presidency?

What Will a Peace Movement Look Like Under Trump’s Second Presidency? What Will a Peace Movement Look Like Under Trump’s Second Presidency?

An all-hands-on-deck approach to the coming world of Donald Trump and crew is distinctly in order.

William D. Hartung

Hope in Action

Hope in Action Hope in Action

Our pain will cultivate activism.

OppArt / Andrea Arroyo

A presentation at a conference hosted by Class Action and Brown University Students for Educational Equity.

The Elite College Students Fighting to End Legacy Admissions  The Elite College Students Fighting to End Legacy Admissions 

In November, organizers at more than 18 universities met for a conference with Class Action to discuss how to democratize higher education.

StudentNation / Aina Marzia