Dozens arrested at Penn, MIT in latest U.S. crackdowns on Gaza protests
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[May 11, 2024]
By Julia Harte and Brendan O'Brien
(Reuters) -Police dismantled protest camps and arrested dozens of
pro-Palestinian activists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
the University of Pennsylvania on Friday, in the latest crackdowns on
demonstrations roiling U.S. campuses.
Philadelphia officers in riot gear pushed reporters away from the
encampment at the University of Pennsylvania before tearing down tents
and tossing the belongings of protesters in a trash truck, the student
newspaper reported. About 33 people were arrested on the Ivy League
campus, Penn's public safety department said.
A similar scene unfolded simultaneously at MIT near Boston, where
student journalists reported that riot police arrested at least 10
student protesters before flattening the encampment and discarding their
belongings.
The dawn raids were the latest efforts by school and local authorities
to end such demonstrations at dozens of universities around the country.
Many university leaders have called the encampments safety hazards and
sought to end them ahead of May commencement ceremonies, which draw
large crowds of outside visitors to campuses.
Officials at Harvard University on Friday began issuing suspensions to
students who were involved in an encampment on the Ivy League school's
Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus, according to an Instagram post by the
school's Palestine Solidarity Committee.
On Monday, Interim Harvard President Alan Garber said the encampment was
disrupting the educational environment as students were taking final
exams and preparing for commencement. He said participants faced
suspension, restricting them from campus and possibly barring them from
taking exams and residing in university housing.
"Disciplinary procedures and administrative referrals for placing
protesters on involuntary leave continue to move forward," a school
spokesperson said in a statement on Friday, without specifying the
number of students suspended.
'INCREASINGLY UNTENABLE'
The protesting students are demanding a cease-fire in Israel's incursion
into Gaza and have demanded their schools divest from companies with
ties to Israel.
One New York City school affiliated with Columbia University - where
protests inspired the nationwide wave of demonstrations - said on
Thursday that its board of trustees had endorsed students' divestment
calls.
The Union Theological Seminary said in a statement it had decided "to
withdraw support from companies profiting from the war" after months of
research into its investment portfolio. It added that "our investments
in the war in Palestine are small because our previous, strong
anti-armament screens are robust."
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Police detain pro-Palestinian protesters as they block the entrance
to the Stata Center parking garage at MIT while demanding the
university divest from Israel, among other demands, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, U.S. May 9, 2024. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi
A similar step was taken by Evergreen State College in Washington
state earlier this week, after officials agreed that a college
committee would start proposing strategies for "divestment from
companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the
occupation of Palestinian territories."
The agreement was signed by Evergreen representatives and students
on Tuesday, and protesters cleared the encampment themselves on
Wednesday, according to local news reports.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that the 10 individuals arrested
on Friday peacefully had submitted to police, but that the arrests
came after escalating clashes between pro-Palestinian and
pro-Israeli protesters.
"It was not heading in a direction anyone could call peaceful," she
said in a statement, adding that "the cost and disruption for the
community overall made the situation increasingly untenable."
Penn Interim President J. Larry Jameson said earlier this week that
"every day the encampment exists, the campus is less safe," citing
reports of harassing and threatening speech, the defacement of
campus landmarks, and a video of a student being denied entry to the
encampment.
Since the first mass arrests at Columbia on April 18, at least 2,600
demonstrators have been detained at more than 100 protests in 39
states and Washington, D.C., according to The Appeal, a nonprofit
news organization. Some policing experts say such sweeping
detentions can be counter-productive, fueling protests rather than
deterring them.
Similar protests have sprung up at campuses in other countries. In
western Canada, police removed protesters from an encampment at the
University of Calgary on Thursday, using "non-lethal munitions,"
according to a statement from the city, which said the number of
arrests would be made public on Friday.
(Reporting by Julia Harte in New York and Brendan O'Brien in
Chicago; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles;
Editing by Frank McGurty, Rosalba O'Brien and Bill Berkrot)
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