Demonstration on Yale's Beinecke Plaza. (Courtesy STAND)

Student speakers emphasized that Darfur was not a distant issue. Yale had been indirectly financing these 200,000 murders, for the university’s endowment included investments in seven oil companies connected to the Sudanese government, which funded the janjaweed militia in its campaign of violence. The crowd rallying in Beinecke drew the attention of Yale students, the administration, and local press as they demanded that Yale University immediately use its economic and political leverage to change the course of events in Sudan.

The students galvanizing the crowd were members of the Yale chapter of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND), a nationwide coalition of student activists committed to ending the Darfur genocide. Yale STAND worked for months to gather the evidence of Yale’s financial connections to Khartoum and the 1,000 student signatures necessary to persuade the Yale Investment Advisory Committee of the importance of the issues. The Advisory Committee was swayed by the students’ arguments and counseled the Yale Corporation to reassess its endowment investments in Sudan. Less than three weeks after the protest, the Yale Corporation announced its decision to divest from all companies found to have a connection to the Sudanese government.

This was a major achievement for Yale STAND, and the students took it as a symbol that they could do more. Shortly after Yale’s divestment, the student group began lobbying senators and pressuring the Connecticut legislature to divest state pension plans from oil companies providing revenue to Khartoum. Responding to this pressure, Connecticut divested in May 2006, joining a movement of state divestments triggered by student activists around the country.

These divestment campaigns are only one facet of a powerful student activist movement urging action on Darfur at the university, state, and national levels. In the face of international neglect, American students have alerted the country to the Darfur genocide and successfully compelled the government to make Darfur a national priority. Through STAND’s countrywide “Power to Protect” campaign, President Bush received a million postcards demanding that the administration strengthen its stance on Darfur. Yalies joined over 800 students in Washington, DC for a Darfur Weekend in April 2006 to rally on the national mall and lobby Congress to act.

“There is a totally linear relationship between student activism and legislative output on Darfur,” said Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Power credits students for spurring at least 50% of Congress’ actions against genocide in Darfur. One example is the 2006 Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which puts economic and diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government and supports African Union peacekeeping troops. “American student activists have had a colossal impact,” Power told The Yale Globalist. “It is only because there has been so little movement in other areas that we haven’t seen more action.”

Ronan Farrow (LAW ’09), believes that American students are “the moral force of our country” at this pivotal time in Darfur’s history. Unusual in the scope of his own activism, Farrow graduated from Bates College at age 15 with a passion for human rights and served as a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund in Sudan. He visited Darfur in 2004 and again this last June, witnessing the mounting atrocities and deplorable conditions of the refugee camps. While most students read about the importance of deploying a UN peacekeeping force in the region, Ronan felt the urgency first-hand. He remembers meeting Hawa, whose vivid scars bear witness to brutal raping and beating by the janjaweed militiamen. She was forced to flee her ravaged village as her husband and son were marched away at gunpoint. Hawa greeted Farrow with a painstakingly painted sign: “Welcome, Welcome, UN.” She stood with other refugees whose signs bore messages of “We Need Protection” and “Help Us, United Nations,” imploring the international community to send troops and resources.

The Sudanese government has recently suggested that it may allow United Nations peacekeeping forces into Darfur to assist the feeble African Union (AU) troops in the region. This is a huge step forward—although many obstacles remain before Hawa will have the protection of troops on the ground. Many obstacles remain for American student activists and the American government, too. The United States does not hold enough sway over the Khartoum regime to successfully urge follow-through and compliance with AU-UN troops, and it lacks the diplomatic standing to contribute troops to a peacekeeping unit in an Arab country. So what are students in the most pivotal countries doing to encourage their governments to act?

Missed Potential

France, initially a supporter of the Khartoum regime, has slowly come around to denounce the genocide in Darfur and call for UN peacekeepers in Darfur. With significant oil interests in Sudan and a seat on the Security Council, it initially opposed any UN sanctions or troop deployment in the country. Have students motivated this shift in government policy? In a country known for its tradition of protests and strikes, are French students capitalizing on this culture and history of action to take a stand against the genocide?

Damien Aubineau is at the heart of political debate among young people in France. A first-year student at L’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences- Po), his classmates will comprise the next generation of French politicians. But while he acknowledges that students discuss politics and international affairs “all the time,” neither students nor the French media focuses on Darfur.

French students enjoy freedom of speech and the freedom to form student groups. Yet student groups focus on fundraising for what Aubineau described as “institutional problems”—more static, sociological issues, like poverty in India— rather than emerging conflicts and controversies. Activism on international issues is not common. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that activism is a powerful agent of change, as French students proved just last year when they influenced the country’s new labor contract by demonstrating throughout France. But Aubineau points out that this was a separate case. “What I am sure is that nobody can impact the foreign policy of the government. It may be the only thing which would be too vital for France to change because of demonstrations.”

But because of France’s historic connection with Sudan and its critical role in changing the conflict, one of the most pressing human rights problems in the world today should be considered a matter of national and moral importance for each French citizen. French students have proven their power to effect national change through past protests. They must now use that leverage to demand the governmental action necessary to stop violence in Darfur.

Local Limitations

In two of the countries that have the most power to change the course of events in Sudan—China and Egypt—student activism is a challenge.

The Chinese government has been one of Khartoum’s greatest backers from the start of the conflict. Dependent upon south Sudan for more than ten percent of its oil, it has recently begun to invest in Sudanese gold and iron deposits, as well. Moreover, China has continued to send military equipment and small arms to Sudan despite clear evidence of the government’s crimes and a 2005 UN total weapons embargo on the country. It was China that demanded the crippling caveat in UN Resolution 1706 that deployment of UN peacekeeping troops could only occur with the consent of the Sudanese government, and, until recently, China openly declared its support for Khartoum’s persistent refusals. China has politically and financially supported the Khartoum regime in the course of this genocide.