Chants of “Gaza you are not alone, this campus is a freedom zone” and rhythmic protest drumming reverberated through the air as around 50 students marched from University United Methodist Church to the College Park Marriott Hotel Wednesday afternoon to protest the 2026 University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents retreat.
The retreat is an annual dedicated event to discuss planning and policy for Maryland’s public universities, most of which fall under the broader USM — including the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). The USM is governed by a group of 21 “Regents” appointed by the Maryland state government — and it is the Board of Regents who have the final say on whether the USM can divest university endowments from weapons manufacturers.
This year, the Board of Regents scheduled their arrival and dinner on the late afternoon of Oct. 7, 2026 — three years from the day Israel began its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“The Board of Butchers will initiate their annual retreat at the College Park Marriott Hotel to carry on their agenda with fine dining. Bring your kuffiyehs, signs, and noisemakers and don’t let them have this dinner in peace,” the USM Divestment Coalition’s Instagram reads.
Main events of the retreat are scheduled to take place tomorrow, Oct. 8, 2026. According to the retreat’s public agenda, divestment is not listed as a main topic of discussion. Al-Hikmah is reaching out to the USM for comment and clarification.
“University leadership knows October 7 is a deeply sensitive and personal day for everyone impacted by the genocide. Yet, in the display of astonishing tone deafness, they hold their annual retreat today,” said Julian Livingston, a member of College Park Mutual Aid (CPMA), in a speech at the rally. “The fact that they could not or would not schedule a more considerate date reflects a total disconnect from the grief that’s hanging over our campus.”
Aside from the date of the arrival for the Board of Regents retreat, students expressed outrage over the lack of action the USM has taken on continuous demands for divestment. At UMD alone, student activists have worked for almost a decade only to pass a student government bill on divestment.
Zyad Khan, an organizer from the USM Divestment Coalition, a group of students from various USM schools pushing for divestment from weapons manufacturers, cited all the ways student organizers across the USM have advocated for divestment — from passing student government resolutions, to demonstrations and rallies on campus, to official divestment inquiries, to the passage of the University System of Maryland Student Council divestment resolution which was presented directly to the board as the will of the students in the USM. In the spring of 2025, more than 3,200 UMD students voted in a student government referendum for the USM to divest. These votes haven’t led to any action or accountability for the USM, Khan said in his speech, but students shouldn’t be discouraged.
“Every single day of these three years, the Board of Regents has made the same choice: complicity … For the last three years, every resolution that we’ve done, every channel we’ve pulled and pulled to use, we’ve done it, and they’ve ignored it,” Khan said. “They thought we would give up … They thought that if they were silent long enough, the genocide would become background noise. They were wrong.”
That sentiment was met with rallying cries from the dozens of students sitting on the grass outside the Marriott, who ended every one of the speeches with chants for the USM to divest.
Speakers also called for the USM and UMD in particular to sever ties with defense contractors. Students affiliated with the coalition of anti-imperialist clubs on campus, known as the Anti-Imperalist Movement (AIM) protested the STEM career fair last Thursday due to the presence of weapons manufacturers. At the rally today, Julian Hurst, a speaker from TerpCHRP, the Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, said the USM manipulates students into these careers.
“When Israel bombs a hospital, the bomb is made by Lockheed Martin, and the aircraft is supplied by Boeing. When when a suicide drone strikes an apartment and kills a child, the drone was made by Aeronvironment, and the target by surveillance technologies of L3Harris and other companies at our career fairs,” Hurst said. “The USM Board of Butchers facilitates and funnels students into these careers.”
He emphasized that despite budget slashes to our university and university system, including 84 staff being fired from budget cuts, UMD now breaks ground on expensive Department of Defense partnerships such as the $65 million quantum research facility in the Discovery District.
Rio G., a speaker from Anakbayan College Park, an organization that advocates for human rights and for cutting U.S. involvement in the Philippines, spoke at length about Pax Silica — a project which several companies present at last week’s career fair, including Microsoft, are directly tied to.
According to an analysis of Pax Silica by Mondoweiss and other publications, Israel plans to use the Gaza Strip to develop an energy hub for Pax Silica in a project that the U.S. government calls the GREAT Plan. The actions of this university by continuing to host companies working in projects such as Pax Silica and by refusing to divest, she said, show that “our campus continues to stand with those that commit genocide, [and] they encourage students struggling to survive to be pipelines to war and plunder.”
As students approached the Marriott, standing carefully on what organizers told Al-Hikmah they determined to be public property, several University of Maryland Police Department (UMPD) and Maryland State Police officers gathered and repeatedly approached student organizers, telling students to stay off the road and warning that private property was nearby. An officer told an Al-Hikmah photographer not to take a photo of him as he stood on public property. Police officers spoke with management from the Marriott and staff members from the USM, watching the rally from a distance as people entered the hotel. When an Al-Hikmah reporter approached the USM staff member as a journalist, they were directed to the police. A tank sat behind a row of orange cones, around a hundred feet from the rally and in plain sight. When the rally was over and students walked back to campus, several police officers trailed behind, following and watching students.
Several of the student speakers brought up that UMD and the USM deploy police officers as a way to intimidate students. Mohammad Abukhdeir, a member of UMD SJP, brought up in his opening speech that in fall of 2025, student protesters and Al-Hikmah journalists were detained by UMPD outside an event with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who had fought in Gaza during the genocide.
Sam Husseini, one of the speakers at the protest and a journalist who publicly confronted Chuck Schumer about his support of Israel in July, brought up specifically how speaking about Palestine has led to increased attacks on people’s First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.
“Israel’s genocide has become such an assault on the First Amendment against real independent journalists who are trying to do tough work, and students who are trying to raise their voices in protest are getting stifled at university after university in ways brazen and in ways subtle,” Husseini said. “Don’t let it shut you down. Find ways around it. You can do this. I’m trying to do it as a journalist, and I’m trying to take it to the next level.”
Husseini is running as a U.S. representative for Maryland’s fourth congressional district, which College Park and most of Prince George’s County falls under. Husseini is running against incumbent Glenn Ivey, who alone has received well over $7 million from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — more than all other AIPAC-receiving representatives and senators in Maryland combined, according to Track AIPAC.
Other speakers, including an alumnus from UMD SJP and a current member of the DMV Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) said the American perception of Palestine is shifting irreversibly.
“The Zionists are losing, and we must remind ourselves of this in every moment as they are trying to desperately hide this fact,” she said. “To push our struggle forward, we must keep fighting through our campaigns and through actions to make sure that the blood of our martyrs were not spilled in vain.
“And you students all have a special role in the movement. Kwame Ture said that it is the students who spark the struggle, and they spark the revolution. The encampment shook the world and caused a crisis in the ruling class. Divestment resolutions have been passed across universities, and we must ensure that our university representatives and our board follow through and represent the will of the students.”
After the speeches were over and the clock struck 6 p.m., students had a sustained chant with three points: “We are the students, we won’t stop fighting, we want divestment.”
Students marched back to campus together to attend the vigil for Palestinian people killed by Israel from Oct. 7, 2023 hosted by UMD’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) in McKeldin Mall.
Al-Hikmah is reaching out to UMD for comment on divestment.
This story will be updated.
Image credits: Cover photo by Riona Sheikh for Al-Hikmah.
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