Erum Salam
Thu, May 9, 2024
Faculty at the New School occupy the school's lobby as they set up a pro-Palestinian encampment on Wednesday in New York City.Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
The first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment protest in the US was established on Wednesday night at New York’s New School campus.
Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers at the New York City college pitched tents and unrolled sleeping bags in the lobby of an academic building located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan in support of their students, and against Israel’s attack on Gaza and their university’s financial ties to Israel.
The move comes after New York police raided the student encampment protest at the college on 3 May, which led to the arrests of more than 40 students. Arrested students were also subsequently suspended from school.
Related: Why have student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza gone global?
Despite the incident, dissent continues to grow on the urban campus.
Sunil, a New School faculty member in protest who only gave his first name, told the local news station Spectrum News NY1: “Faculty knew that we had to step up – not just to make sure that this could not happen again, but the students’ demands that they fought so hard for, risked their lives and their careers and futures, that was not in vain.
“I’m seeing dead children on my screen every day. I’m seeing bodies pile up in the streets. I’m seeing mass starvation. So what are you seeing and how is that acceptable?” Sunil said.
Among the demands from student and faculty protesters is for the New School to disclose interests in Israel and to divest from these interests as the country continues its military assault on the Gaza Strip, a small but densely populated Palestinian territory.
In a statement on Thursday, the New School said it would not pursue criminal charges against the student protesters who were arrested on 3 May. “We have contacted and written a letter to the District Attorney requesting that all charges be dropped,” the statement said.
It added that it would also be looking at its investments and reactivating a college committee to examine the issue of divestment. “[We] will soon be announcing a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.”
Since the attack on Israel by Hamas fighters on 7 October, which killed nearly 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages, Israel has launched bombing and ground campaigns on the territory, killing more than 30,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children and other civilians.
Though staunchly backed by the US, the military assault has angered many other countries across the world and horrified NGO groups and United Nations bodies. The head of the United Nations World Food Program has said northern Gaza has entered a “full-blown famine” as a result of the Israeli attack and its restrictions on humanitarian aid.
This latest Gaza solidarity encampment protest is one of many across the world, the first of which began at nearby Columbia University in April. Since then, university administrations at Columbia, NYU, UCLA, the University of Texas at Austin, Emory, George Washington University and others have asked for local police forces to break up the largely peaceful protests, igniting a fierce nationwide debate on the limits of free speech and questions over police brutality.
More than 2,000 arrests have been made on US campuses in recent weeks.
Encampment protests have now also spread beyond the US to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico and others.
As the semester draws to a close, some faculty protesters at the New School have refused to submit grades until their demands are met.
One arrested after police disband pro-Palestine encampment at University of Kansas
Andrea Klick
Wed, May 8, 2024
Campus police arrested one person after disbanding a pro-Palestine protest Tuesday at the University of Kansas.
KU Student Affairs interacted with protesters multiple times in the past week, warning them police would get involved if they didn’t voluntarily remove tents from the KU Palestine Solidarity Encampment, said Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, the university’s director for news and media relations.
Tuesday, campus police took down the tents and arrested one protester who refused to leave his tent, according to a news release from the KU Palestine Solidarity Encampment. The protester has since been released, but has not been publicly identified.
Protesters believe their action falls within the university’s camping policy, which prohibits on-campus camping, except under certain circumstances. The policy allows for students, faculty or staff to put up “temporary hammocks or other sleeping or lounging devices used while engaging in recreation or studying activities outdoors between sunrise and sundown.”
Members of the KU Palestine Solidarity Encampment said they were studying for final exams while participating in the encampment.
Barcomb-Peterson said the arrested person was not a KU student. She didn’t immediately respond to a question of whether the protester would be charged.
Protesters first created the encampment outside Fraser Hall last Wednesday, and have demanded the university divest from financial ties to Israel and provide transparency on its financial ties.
The group joined a movement of college students and protesters across the country demanding action from universities amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
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