Photos From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across Universities
Sanya Mansoor
·3-min read
Students occupy the grounds of Columbia University in support of Palestinian rights, on April 18, 2024. Credit - Nina Berman—Redux
Pro-Palestinian encampments have started on more than a dozen American college campuses, including New York University (NYU), Yale University and Columbia University. Dozens of students have been arrested or suspended for participating in these protests.
On Monday night, the NYPD arrested more than 100 protesters at NYU, including faculty—who formed a human chain around the encampment to protect students. Law enforcement charged students with trespassing after they set up the encampment outside the Stern School of Business.
“It was extremely violent; (police) started to throw lawn furniture,” says an NYU graduate student, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from the university. The student says encampments have “spread like wildfire” after Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, invited cops onto campus. “Definitely, Columbia was the precedent,” the student adds. The NYU encampment has since been cleared by law enforcement.
Others are ongoing. Antiwar protesters have started encampments at UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Michigan, The New School, MIT, Emerson College, Tufts University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester, the University of Minnesota and the University of Maryland.
Some Jewish students have said they feel unsafe on college campuses with encampments. A few have staged counter-protests, although they have been much smaller. Other Jewish students are part of the protest movement. Student organizers have denied antisemitism allegations. Protesters’ primary demand is that their universities divest from companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation. The cost of waiting is too high, they say.
Covid is long since over, but the protesters still wear face masks: the ignorant, entitled little delinquents running riot in so many of the world’s greatest universities are truly an embarrassment. The product of a catastrophic social experiment, of years of brainwashing and coddling, they embody all of the Western world’s most debilitating pathologies.
Another night of violence has unfolded in Georgia as police have fired tear gas and stun grenades at protesters opposing a so-called "Russian law". The "foreign agents" bill would require organisations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence. Georgian critics say the bill is inspired by laws used to suppress dissent in Russia.
A leading private school in Scotland had parents investigated by social workers after they fought teachers’ attempts to “affirm” their daughter’s transgender identity.
Student protests against Israel have entered their second week in France. A town hall event Thursday at the prestigious Sciences Po school in Paris ended with the administration refusing to create a working group to investigate ties with Israeli universities, which students across France want to see cut over the war in Gaza. It is just one demand of many that are motivating students across France and beyond to keep protesting. The provisional administrator of prestigious Sciences Po school in Pa
Colorado congress member Lauren Boebert was heckled by students at George Washington University in Washington, DC on Wednesday, May 1, during a visit to the school’s pro-Palestine encampment.Footage recorded by @SatireAP shows a group of Republican congress members including Boebert arriving on the campus.Protesters can be heard singing the Imperial March from Star Wars as the politicians walk past.Some can also be heard calling out “Beetlejuice” in reference to an incident in which Boebert was kicked out of a musical theater performance of the show while on a date.The politicians were visiting the campus in support of Jewish students, who they told reporters had expressed that they didn’t “feel safe” with the encampments on campus. Credit: @SatireAP via Storyful
So far, violent scenes seen at universities across the US have not been repeated in Australia where multiple Gaza solidarity demonstrations have emerged on campus.
STORY: It was the second time in as many weeks that the administration had called on police to control the protests over Israel's war in Gaza. Students have been suspended, and threatened with expulsion. Police are now stationed around-the-clock on campus."The police were aggressive," said investigative journalism student Oishika Neogi. "There was a point at which we were standing at the sundial on campus and everywhere we looked, we could see police marching in. And it was just a very eerie, surreal... moment where just everywhere you looked, there's police. I don't think there were as many students inside on campus as there were police."Adversaries of pro-Palestinian protesters accuse them of antisemitism, a claim Columbia student protesters and their faculty advocates strongly deny.Pro-Palestinian protests demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from companies linked to Israel have spread across U.S. universities in the two weeks since Columbia administrators called in police to dismantle the encampment. "You saw people being dragged backwards with their hands tied behind their backs," said investigative journalism student Nandhini Srinivasan, referring to April 18, when over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at Columbia after university president Minouche Shafik asked New York police to clear the encampment. "Some of them still had masks. A lot of them, quite a few of them, didn't even have the time to tell legal observers their names and you could see people next to me screaming, 'Tell us your name! Tell us your name, because you're going with the NYPD. We need to be able to get you out.' There were times when they wouldn't even have a chance to tell their names. It was just a very intense experience."
An alleged shooter was stopped by police before entering Mount Horeb Middle School in Dane County, Wisconsin, on Wednesday morning, May 1, according to local authorities.The Mount Horeb Area School District said the suspect “did not breach the entryway” and said no one was harmed, “with the exception of the alleged assailant.”In a since-edited post, the school district said the suspect had been “neutralized” outside the school’s gates.This footage from local news outlet Madison365 shows police vehicles and an ambulance arriving outside the school.Wisconsin’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr Jill Underly, who oversees education, said her office was aware of the incident and said the “children, staff, and families are in our hearts.” Credit: Madison365 via Storyful
The House voted on Wednesday to pass the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, a vote that comes amid heightened concerns over antisemitism with Israel at war with Hamas and as pro-Palestinian protests have sprung up on college campuses across the country.