After days of protests, will Emory meet students’ demands?

Protesters have been demonstrating on Georgia’s college campuses for more than a week in pursuit of the same goal: to convince school administrators to cut ties to Israel.

Emory University students kicked off the effort a couple of weeks ago, when they tried to set up an encampment at the center of the Atlanta campus and were quickly met with police who made about two dozen arrests.

So far, Georgia colleges and universities do not seem interested in folding to that demand, even as students continue to stage demonstrations with frequent promises to keep going.

“It is possible. It has been done before. We know that it can happen,” said Daniella Hobbs, an Emory student and an organizer of the Occupy Candler movement, about divestment from Israel. “We will not take anything else as acceptable.”

But at Emory, focus is stretched between the war protests, the treatment of student protesters and longstanding efforts to stop Atlanta public safety training center. The decentralized protest structure doesn’t lend itself to concise action. And the looming end of the semester poses logistical challenges to the efforts. What happens when students go home for the summer?

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