Universities battle to keep Gaza protests under control

The past week has seen a ratcheting up of pro-Palestinian campus protests and encampments in the United States and Canada, particularly in the wake of events during the night of 30 April and and early hours of 1 May when police in full riot gear were called to university campuses at opposite ends of the United States to restore law and order.

The number of protesters arrested since 18 April on almost 50 US university campuses – from New York to Los Angeles – sits at more than 2,300, not all of them students.

The protesters are demanding that their university end financial ties with entities linked to Israel.

The first mass arrests occurred at Columbia University in upper Manhattan in the early hours of 1 May when New York Police Department (NYPD) used an elevated walkway to enter Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall which had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters.

Violent clashes were triggered at the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by the intervention of counter protesters.

At 4.03 am Pacific Time, Teresa Watanabe, the LA Times higher education reporter, posted a video of pro-Israeli counter-protesters tearing down the pro-Palestinian encampment barriers at UCLA.

She reported hearing shouts of “Second Nakba!” – Nakba, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’, being the word used to refer to the victory by the Israelis in the 1948 war, following which as many as 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were expelled from what had been the British mandated territory of Palestine.

Forty-five minutes later, the LAPD posted on X: “At the request of UCLA, due to multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on their campus, the LAPD is responding to assist UCLA PD, and other law enforcement agencies, to restore order and maintain public safety”.

Video filmed by RMG News, a Los Angeles-based company that provides news footage to America’s major television networks, and aired on CNN, showed exploding fireworks and one unmasked counter-protester yelling towards the pro-Palestinian encampment: “You gonna block Jewish kids? Let’s see. We’re fighting back, b…!” – an apparent reference to two incidents when pro-Palestinian protesters prevented two Jewish students from entering the library that was posted on X yesterday.

According to the New York Times the LAPD waited at least an hour before intervening in the donnybrook, in which counter-protesters could be seen pushing, shoving and punching protesters.

Video shows firecrackers being thrown as well as counter protesters using sticks and other implements to beat the protesters – and protesters using gates to push back the counter protesters.

According to Steve Futterman, a correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News (CBC) based in Los Angeles, there were no arrests while clearing the campus of the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups.

The LAPD officers in full riot gear had their batons pulled. But, said Futterman: “They never really used them”. Instead, they “basically push[ed] the protesters in the direction of the exit [from campus] … They never really issued a complete warning; they didn’t have to because the protesters just moved when they were being pushed away”.

Police clear the encampment at UCLA

Early on Thursday, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block called for the police to dismantle the encampment that pro-Palestinian protesters had re-established on Royce Quad. Approximately 200 people were arrested.

In a statement released several hours after police cleared the campus, Block said, “We are reeling from days of violence and division. And we hope with all our hearts that we can return to a place where our students, faculty and staff feel safe and, one day, connected again.

“Our approach to the encampment that was established on Royce Quad last week has been guided by several equally important principles: the need to support the safety and wellbeing of Bruins, the need to support the free expression rights of our community, and the need to minimise disruption to our teaching and learning mission.

Block further told the UCLA community that in the final analysis, the encampment was not only illegal it violated the university’s code of conduct, that conditions there were unsafe and compromised the university’s ability to fulfill its educational mission.

“Over the past several days, we communicated with and made a formal request to meet with demonstration leaders to discuss options for a peaceful and voluntary disbanding of the encampment,” continued Block. “Unfortunately, that meeting did not lead to an agreement.

“To preserve campus safety and the continuity of our mission, early this morning, we made the decision to direct UCPD and outside law enforcement officers to enter and clear the encampment. Officers followed a plan that had been carefully developed to protect the safety of protesters at the site. Those who remained encamped last night were given several warnings and were offered the opportunity to leave peacefully with their belongings before officers entered the area. Ultimately, about 300 protesters voluntarily left, while more than 200 resisted orders to disperse and were arrested.”

Meanwhile in New York, on Tuesday evening, in Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, which houses both the deans’ offices and classrooms, the police had used flash-bang grenades, which emit a bright light and deafening sound, which is disorienting, CNN reported. One post on X appeared to show police entering the building through a second-storey window behind the protection of their shields with their guns drawn.

The building had been occupied shortly after midnight that day by protesters belonging to the umbrella group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) which had established a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” almost two weeks ago on the campus to demand that the Ivy League university divest from companies doing business with Israel.

CUAD, which includes two groups – Students for Justice for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace – were banned from Columbia in early November through to the end of last semester for violating university policies and for using threatening rhetoric and intimidation during the ongoing protest action sparked by Israel’s war on Gaza which followed the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas.

Despite the dramatic police footage from Columbia, John Miller, a former NYPD deputy commission for intelligence and counterterrorism and, since September 2022 CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, noted that the NYPD officers were not carrying “large SWAT type weapons” such as automatic rifles.

Five hours after the NYPD entered Columbia’s campus, John Chell, chief of patrol at the NYPD, posted on X that Hamilton Hall had been cleared and the encampment dismantled.

“It’s 2 am. We are finished for the night. To all of the NYPD tonight, simply put, great job! The aerial photos included in the posting showed that the encampment had been dismantled.

The NYPD reported arresting 112 people in Hamilton Hall, 32 of whom were not affiliated with Columbia.

While the NYPD were clearing Hamilton Hall and dismantling the encampment near it, they were also dismantling an encampment at City College, the flagship institution of the City University of New York, 12 blocks away. One hundred and seventy people were arrested there, of which 60% were not affiliated with the college.

There were no reports of injuries requiring hospitalisation at either Columbia nor City College.

The large number of arrests of people not connected to either institution or at New York University (NYU) or the New School (NS), both of which are in Manhattan, led New York’s mayor, Eric Adams to denounce the presence of “outside agitators” at the protests.

He further said, “There is a movement to radicalise young people, and I'm not going to wait until it's done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it.

“This is a global problem that young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalising our children, and I'm not going to allow that to happen as the mayor of the City of New York.”

Earlier that day – on Tuesday morning – Columbia University announced the immediate closure of the University’s Morningside campus in a statement. Only students who resided in on-campus residences and employees providing “essential services to campus buildings, labs and residential student life” would be permitted onto the campus, it said.

The campus closure follows by three days the closure of California Polytechnic University (Cal Poly) in rural Humbolt, California (about a five-hour drive from San Francisco) by its President Tom Jackson Jr after two buildings had been taken over by pro-Palestinian groups.

The groups demanded that the small school divest from companies doing business with Israel, cut all ties with Israeli universities, drop charges against students who had been arrested, call for a ceasefire in Palestine and for the institution to either amend or remove from its policy language that allows the administration “to call the police on students for organising in ways that they deem inappropriate.”

Encampments across the US

Since the first encampment was established at Columbia on 17 April, similar encampments have been established by various groups in more than half of America’s 50 states and Washington DC.

According to The New York Times, as of 9 am Eastern Time on 30 April, police had moved onto at least 24 campuses in at least 18 states, arresting approximately 1,000 people.

The same day the NYPD evicted protesters from Hamilton Hall, police had evicted protesters occupying the buildings at Cal Poly, and arrested 25 people, including students and professors.

At Tulane University in New Orleans, mounted police entered the university’s main campus to break up protest and the university had closed several campus buildings.

On Monday 29 April, at the University of Texas, Austin, police in full riot gear broke up an encampment and arrested 79 people. The police action included the use of pepper spray and a flash bang grenade. A video on X shows a student in pain, apparently hit by pepper spray, having his eyes washed out by other students using water bottles.

Other videos show police dragging students to the ground, using zip ties to bind their wrists.

Nine students were arrested at the University of Florida (UF), in Gainesville, Florida, where the UF Divest coalition had established an encampment to support the protesting students at Columbia.

Earlier in the day, UF spokesperson Steve Orlando issued a statement that said in part: “This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a day care, and we do not treat protesters like children – they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face consequences. For many days we have patiently told protesters – many of whom are outside agitators – that they were able to exercise their right to free speech and assembly.

“And we told them that clearly prohibited activities would result in a trespassing order from the UPD [UF Police Department] [barring them from the campus for three years] and an interim suspension from the university.”

Calls for a crackdown

In New York, political leaders of all stripes commented on the occupation of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall. Adams poured cold water over the idea voiced by many on X and some Republican politicians to call in the National Guard.

According to The New York Times, on 30 April, that is before Columbia asked for police involvement, the mayor said: “We don’t need the National Guard. The NYPD is doing an amazing job.”

Since Columbia must ask for the city’s police to be deployed, Adams further said: “We’re going to respect their [Columbia’s] right to determine when they want police involvement, and when they ask us.”

If called upon, the police would act, with “a minimum amount of force, to not in any way harm faculty, students, or the law enforcement personnel”, said the mayor, himself a former transit police officer.

The White House criticised the takeover of Hamilton Hall. According to Jack Kirby, White House national security communications advisor, President Joe Biden “believes that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach; that is not an example of peaceful protests”.

Kirby also said: “You can’t be disrupting the educational pursuit of your fellow students. They have a right to go to school and they have a right to do so safely. They have a right to get an education.”

Republicans by contrast called for a crackdown on the protesters.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, the country’s highest elected Republican, who has called for Columbia’s president to resign, said: “We call for the police to come in and take care of it,” according to the online newspaper The National. “If they’re unable, then we need the National Guard. We have to have control of campuses,” he stated.

Since it is generally believed that many of the Muslim students at the protests are on student visas, Republican firebrand Jim Jordan sent formal letters in his role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to the administration inquiring about whether the government would move to expel foreign citizens involved in the protests.

Jordan asked three questions: 1) “[H]ow many students on a visa have engaged in the radical activity we've seen now, day after day, on college campuses?” 2) “If you know that number, have you asked the State Department to revoke their visas?” And 3) "If you've done that, if you know that answer, have you started removal proceedings?”

Jewish students fear for safety

Critics of the pro-Palestinian protests have pointed out the increasing antisemitic rhetoric and, in some cases, actions. The chant: “Kill the Jews”, heard at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), and the ubiquitous “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free”, which most North American Jews see as antisemitic, and similar chants such as “We don’t want two states, we want all of it” frighten many Jewish students.

At the University of Washington, a Jewish student told a television news reporter that she did not feel safe on campus and that she had heard her fellow students chant: “Go back to the gas chambers.”

Jewish faculty and students also feel threatened by signs, such as the one at George Washington University (Washington, DC) that had a swastika, SS thunderbolts and the hammer and sickle, and called Jews “circumcised demons”.

Some Jewish students have been prevented from accessing their campus or campus facilities. On 29 April, masked protesters, some using the Palestinian keffiyeh as a mask, prevented Eli Tsives a Jewish student at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from entering the campus, even after he produced his student card which legally afforded him access.

Another student at UCLA was prevented by masked protesters from entering the library after being asked “Are you a Zionist” and answering: “Of course I’m a Zionist.” When blocked by a protester he said: “So, I’m not allowed to enter the library, while paying tuition here?”

Antisemitism ‘has no place’

Meanwhile, political and university leaders across the United States have decried ongoing reports of antisemitic rhetoric on university campuses and have condemned the threats the protests represent to Jewish students.

While enumerating Columbia’s values, President Minouche Shafik said in her statement: “Our values – as well as our duties under civil rights laws – compel us to condemn hate and to protect every member of our community from harassment and discrimination. Antisemitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply abhorrent.

“I know that many of our Jewish students, and other students as well, have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks. Many have left campus, and that is a tragedy. To those students and their families, I want to say to you clearly: You are a valued part of the Columbia community. This is your campus too. We are committed to making Columbia safe for everyone, and to ensuring that you feel welcome and valued.”

Referring to antisemitic symbols such as swastikas that have been seen at some protests, and hate speech, Kirby said that they “have no place in this country”.

Hamilton Hall has protest history

Before it the police clearing operation, in a press release explaining why it had seized Hamilton Hall, CUAD stated in bold letters that if the university brought soldiers and police officers with weapons onto the campus: “Students’ blood will be on your hands”.

Hamilton Hall is steeped in student protest history. In both 1968 and 1972 it was occupied by students protesting the Vietnam War. In 1985 protests demanding Columbia divest from companies doing business with apartheid South Africa padlocked the building named after Alexander Hamilton, a Revolutionary War hero and the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. Columbia divested from South Africa several months later.

According to Mayor Adams, 119 people were arrested at Columbia on 30 April and 173 at City College.

The move to occupy Hamilton Hall followed a number of deadlines set by the administration for the dismantling of the encampment that came and went, and the breakdown of negotiations with the protesters over the past few days.

In its press release, CUAD announced that after “206 days of genocide and over 34,000 Palestinian martyrs [the number of people killed in Gaza as reported by the Gazan Health Authority], Columbia community members took back Hamilton Hall” and renamed it “Hind’s Hall” – in honour of Hind Rajab, “a Gazan martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six years old”.

The release continued: “Protesters have voiced their intention to remain in Hind’s Hall until Columbia concedes to CUAD’s three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty [for the students arrested when the NYPD dismantled the first encampment].”

CUAD accused Columbia of “instituting a police state with military-style checkpoints, repressing and isolating students on campus [and] calling armed riot cops for the largest mass arrest since 1968”.

A refusal to disinvest

Several hours before CUAD moved to occupy Hamilton Hall, Shafik had issued a statement appealing for calm.

“Just as everyone at Columbia has the right to express their views, they also must respect the rights of others to do the same. As a result, protests must comply with time, place, and manner restrictions which, for example, prevent loud protests at night when other students are trying to sleep or prepare for exams. One group’s rights to express their views cannot come at the expense of another group’s right to speak, teach, and learn,” she said in a statement.

“We’ve worked hard to balance these principles. To that end, since Wednesday, a small group of academic leaders has been in constructive dialogue with student organisers to find a path that would result in the dismantling of the encampment and adherence to university policies going forward.

“The university’s goal for the talks was a collaborative resolution with the protesters that would result in the orderly removal of the encampment from the lawn. The students also were asked to commit going forward to following the university’s rules, including those on the time, place, and manner for demonstrations and events,” she stated.

On the protesters’ key demand, Shafik declared that “the university will not divest from Israel”, before offering the development of “an expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters.

The university also offered to publish a process for students to access a list of Columbia’s direct investment holdings, and to increase the frequency of updates to that list of holdings.

“The university also offered to make investments in health and education in Gaza, including supporting early childhood development and support for displaced scholars. There are important ideas that emerged from this dialogue, and we plan to explore pursuing them in the future,” Shafik said.

“As the past seven months have shown, our campus is roiled by divisions over the war in Gaza. All year, we have sought to facilitate opportunities for our students and faculty to engage in constructive dialogue, and we have provided ample space for protests and vigils to take place peacefully and without disruptions to academic life,” she stated.

On the morning of Tuesday 30 April, those opportunities ran out. Columbia emailed its students telling them to leave the encampment by 2 pm or face disciplinary action.

At 5 pm, Ben Chang, the university’s vice-president for communications, announced that suspensions had begun. Suspended students will not be able to finish the semester (classes ended on Monday 29 April) and will be barred from entering the campus and academic buildings. The students who leave the encampment are required to sign a form pledging to abide by the university’s regulations through 30 June 2025 or their graduation, whichever comes first.

According to Chang, students who refuse to sign the form will not be allowed to graduate this semester or participate in academic or extracurricular activities.

According to online newspaper Axios the notice also stated: “Sanctions include probation, access restriction, suspension for a term or more and expulsion” from Columbia.

Agreements with protesters

On Wednesday 1 May, both Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) and Northwestern University (Illinois) announced agreements with pro-Palestinian protesters that had established Gaza Solidarity Encampments. Brown’s is the first by an Ivy League university.

While Brown’s agreement did not include dropping charges against the 41 students who were arrested for trespassing last December, it was reported that Brown’s President Christina H Paxton agreed that the dismantling of the encampment by 5 pm on 1 May would be “viewed favourably in the disciplinary proceedings against other students”.

Paxton pledged to invite five students to meet with a group of the Corporation of Brown University, Brown’s governing body, to make the case for “‘divestment from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory’, which is their core demand”.

Additionally, Paxton agreed to ask the Advisory Committee on University Resource Management to provide “a recommendation on the matter of divestment by 30 September 2024, and this would be brought to the corporation for a vote at the October 2024 Corporation meeting”.

Paxton said: “I feel strongly that a vote in October, either for or against divestment, will bring clarity to an issue that is of longstanding interest to many members of the community.”

Northwestern’s agreement allows daily protests – but not an encampment – to be held until 1 June. The university also agreed to re-establish the Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility, the members of which will include students, faculty and staff. Northwestern will answer questions from any internal stakeholder (for example, students) about specific holdings, held currently or in the last quarter.

Further, Northwestern will support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk, funding two faculty per year for two years, and provide full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers.

University of California, Riverside and the University of Minnesota have also struck agreements with protesters to end their encampments.

Wesleyan University of Connecticut has made an agreement under which the encampment, even though it violates the university’s regulations, is being allowed to continue.

In a statement to the university community, President Michael S Roth said: “This morning [1 May], you can find pro-Palestinian protesters camped out behind North College. The students there know that they are in violation of university rules and seem willing to accept the consequences.

“The protest has been nonviolent and has not disrupted normal campus operations. As long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.”

Protests further afield

Protests in support of the original encampment at Columbia by pro-Palestinian students have also sprung up at the University of Melbourne (Sydney, Australia), at the Sorbonne in Paris, at Leeds and Warwick universities and the University of London, Sapienza University in Rome and in several other countries including, Japan.

In Canada, there are small encampments at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto. A larger encampment at McGill University in Montreal includes students from Concordia University, which is also in Montreal. The protesters, who repeat many of the same slogans heard on American campuses, such as “Free, Free Palestine”, are demanding that McGill divest from companies that deal with Israel.

Three days ago, Anthony Housefather, a member of the governing Liberal Party, called for the removal of the encampment. On X he said: “Having peaceful demonstrations is a protected Charter right in Canada and under the Bill of Rights in the United States. But setting up encampments on college campuses is a violation of pretty much every code of conduct, including that of McGill University, Section Seven. And today, an encampment was set up at McGill.”

On Tuesday, according to The Montreal Gazette, Deep Saini, McGill’s president and vice-chancellor wrote an email to the university community saying: “We informed participants that this encampment was not authorised and gave them time to gather their belongings and leave the premises. However, the encampments remain. As we worked through the steps, we also engaged in dialogue with representatives of McGill students.”

Since the university and students were unable to reach a resolution, McGill has requested police assistance.

“Police representatives, who have expertise in skilfully resolving situations such as these, are beginning their own process. We continue to work with them to resolve the matter,” McGill said in a statement.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, McGill shared a video with the news division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which the university claims shows “unequivocal antisemitic behaviour”.

The video, which CBC posted on its website but which has since been blocked, includes the text that, according to CBC, reads, “20 Jihadists against one Jewish Israeli student being told to go back to Europe.” The video apparently also shows participants in the encampment chanting: “All the Zionists are racist, all the Zionists are the terrorists” and “go back to Europe”, according to the CBC.

The video is one of the pieces of evidence contained in a request for an injunction against the encampment that two McGill students, Gabriel Medvedovsky (who is Jewish) and Raihaana Adira (who is Muslim), filed with the Quebec Superior Court.

On 1 May, Judge Chantal Masse declined to grant the injunction, saying, in part, that "the court is of the opinion that the balance of inconveniences leans to the side of the protesters, whose freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly would be seriously affected" and that the students had failed to prove that they were personally harmed by the protest, reported The Canadian Press.

Although the court did not find that signs or chants, such as “From the sea to the river, Palestine will be free,” created a threatening environment, the judge invited the protesters “to review the words they use during protests and dispense with using those that are susceptible to being perceived, rightly or wrongly, as calls to violence or as antisemitic statements”.

Anti-Zionism ‘is not antisemitism’

Mara Thompson, an undergraduate Jewish student at McGill, a member of Independent Jewish Voices and a participant in the encampment, told CBC the camp had a strict code of conduct for participating protesters with rules banning hateful speech and discrimination. “We take this [hate speech] very seriously and make sure not to perpetuate antisemitism and Islamophobia," she is reported as saying.

“Antisemitism is a real and threatening issue in the world, but conflating it with anti-Zionism, I think, confuses people and risks actually making it harder to recognise antisemitism when it does happen,” she added.

CBC also interviewed English professor Alanna Thain, who said that the protests did not prevent access to buildings. She called on the administration to speak directly with the students. “It’s really threatening to call the cops on an encampment that’s about conversation, that’s about peaceful, non-violent forms of protest,” she said.

This story was updated on 4 May, 2024.