Student protesters remaining at the Gaza solidarity encampment may face ‘mass evictions and interim suspensions’ an protest organizer warned
APR 29, 2024 – The Cradle
Student protesters sit in front of a tent during the Pro-Palestinian protest at the Columbia University campus in New York on Monday. (Photo credit: Stefan Jeremiah/The Associated Press)
Negotiations between pro-Palestine student protesters and administrators at Columbia University have ended without an agreement, a statement from the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, said on 29 April.
Students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza established an encampment on university grounds on 17 April to express their demand that the university’s endowment divest from Israel.
The next day, President Shafik announced that students at the protest camp were trespassing and sent in officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD), who arrested over 100 protesters who refused to leave.
The crackdown inspired students to establish similar encampments in support of Palestinians in Gaza in various universities throughout the country.
Other students remained at the Columbia encampment to press their demands for divestment from Israel. But negotiations ended on Monday.
Shafik stated that a group of “academic leaders” was negotiating with the student protesters to dismantle the encampment. “Regretfully, we were not able to come to an agreement.”
The statement added that the university would not meet the protesters’ demands to divest from Israel and instead urged those in the encampment to “voluntarily disperse.”
The statement concluded by saying the university was exploring “alternative internal options to end this crisis as soon as possible.”
Jon Ben-Menachem, one of the leading student organizers, said on X that the members of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment may now face “mass evictions and interim suspensions.”
President Shafik cut off negotiations shortly after 21 Democratic lawmakers from the US Congress issued a letter to Columbia pressuring the university to take action against the protesters, who they claimed were making the campus unsafe for Jewish students.
The letter expressed the lawmakers’ “disappointment that, despite promises to do so, Columbia University has not yet disbanded the unauthorized and impermissible encampment of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish activists on campus.”
Shafik had already been called to testify to Republican lawmakers, who claimed the protesters were anti-Semitic and called on Columbia to take action against them.
Columbia’s pro-Palestine protesters, which include many Jewish students, have complained of efforts by pro-Israel groups to infiltrate the protests to take actions painting them as anti-Semitic.
The Daily Beast reported on Saturday that 100 peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters at Northeastern University in Boston were arrested following reports of protesters using antisemitic slurs, including yelling “kill the Jews.” However, according to witnesses, the protester who chanted the anti-Semitic slogan was a pro-Israel counter-protester.
- Columbia Gaza protests
- Gaza Solidarity Encampment
- Gaza genocide
- Columbia University
- Israel divestment
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Hundreds of university students arrested, expelled in US over anti-Israel rallies
Sunday, 28 April 2024 5:08 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 28 April 2024 5:19 PM ]
Riot police arrest students at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas on April 24, 2024. (Photo by AP)
Hundreds of students have been arrested and face expulsion in universities across the United States as students continue to hold demonstrations demanding an end to Israel’s genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip.
American media reports said police were out in full force on college campuses on Saturday, some using chemical irritants and Tasers to disperse the students condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza over the past seven months.
In Boston, police detained about 100 people while clearing a protest camp at Northeastern University, with social media posts showing security forces in riot gear and officers loading tents onto the back of a truck.
In Bloomington in the Midwest, the Indiana University Police Department arrested 23 people as they cleared a campus protest camp, according to reports by the Indiana Daily Student newspaper.
The Arizona State University Police Department arrested 69 people for trespassing after the group set up what was claimed to be an “unauthorized encampment” on campus and ignored repeated orders to disperse.
Moreover, at least 80 people were arrested at Washington University in St. Louis, including US presidential candidate Jill Stein and her campaign manager.
Various videos have also emerged from different US states showing hundreds of students – and even faculty members – being forcefully arrested as they demanded amnesty for students and faculty members disciplined or fired for protesting over the past days.
In the past 10 days, hundreds of students have been arrested, suspended, put on probation and, in some cases, expelled from colleges, including Yale University, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota.
US campus protests: Over 100 imams, scholars declare solidarity with students
More than 20 universities in the US and several others in Europe are protesting against the Washington-backed Israeli onslaught, which has killed over 34,000 people since October last year.
The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing the occupying regime’s war on the besieged Palestinian territory.
The United States has been providing Israel with unrestrained military, intelligence, and financial support since October 7, when the regime unleashed the war against the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Washington gives Israel $3.8 billion in military assistance every year, and US President Joe Biden has continued to provide staunch support to the illegal entity amid the Gaza war. On Wednesday, Biden signed into law a massive funding package that will provide an additional $17 billion to the occupying regime.
Washington has also vetoed several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the brutal military aggression.
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