Schools

Tufts University suspended a pro-Palestinian student group last week after it used images of weapons to advertise a protest rally and called on members of the Tufts community to “join the student intifada.”

According to a university spokesperson and a social network, Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine was placed on interim suspension on October 2nd post from the group itself.

The Tufts spokesman said the group violated several university policies. They quoted an Instagram post The film released by Tufts SJP on September 30, which showed individuals with assault rifles, urged its followers to affix a “student.” Intifadaand that they’re “escalating for Gaza.”

The post was created to advertise a series of demonstrations planned for this week, which the group described as “Week of anger“, marking the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks and the start of the current war.

“This comes as Israel [sic] “Continues to rain bombs on Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Iran,” the group wrote in a web-based post petition for his reinstatement. “Suspension of Büschel SJP [sic] is an attempt to silence all student voices that educate and agitate against genocide. It is perfectly legitimate to protest against research relationships, investments and any ongoing support for genocide. A movement cannot be suspended.”

The Tufts spokesman said Tufts SJP also violated university policies on Sept. 12 when members marched through an instructional constructing, posted signs and blocked the doorway to a different constructing. The group was already facing prosecution for conduct referring to this incident.

Additionally, the spokesperson said Tufts SJP “failed to meet the requirements of previous disciplinary actions related to demonstrations the group led last spring.” The group has already been “put on hold,” meaning a few of its privileges have been suspended.

“The suspension will remain in effect until the case is fully resolved. During this time, SJP must cease all activities, events and meetings. Any attempt to continue operations during this suspension will result in serious disciplinary consequences for both the organization and its leaders,” the Tufts spokesperson said in a press release.

Student protesters appeared to disregard those threats Monday. October 7 marks the anniversary of Hamas' attack on Israel, wherein roughly 1,200 people were killed and greater than 200 were taken hostage.

Instagram posts showed protesters marching through campus, sitting in a School of Engineering constructing, carrying an indication that read “Tufts Investment Office Funding Genocide” and hanging a Palestinian flag inside.

Last 12 months, protesters at Tufts arrange a “Gaza solidarity camp“, reflecting the tactics students at Columbia University and elsewhere are using to draw attention to Israel destruction much of the Gaza Strip and the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population. According to the Israeli military, around 42,000 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, including 17,000 children United Nations.

Prior to the start of the 2024-2025 academic year, Tufts administrators served sketched Rules for protests on campus.

“At the beginning of this academic year, Tufts University emphasized its expectations for student protests and advocacy. We have provided clear guidelines to ensure a disruption-free learning environment while supporting students’ interests in speech and demonstration,” the spokesperson said in a press release. “As stated in our August 22 message: ‘Advocacy and protest must not disrupt university operations, engage in verbal abuse or discrimination, or intimidate or harass others.'”

The Anti-Defamation League of New England praised Tufts for suspending the group.

Thank you very much, @TuftsUniversityfor the fast disbandment of the university's SJP department after they used images of assault rifles/weapons to advertise an event they were hosting to mark the one-year anniversary of 10/7. had planned. The call to affix the “Student Intifada” and “escalate” is a call for toleration…

– ADL New England (@ADL_NewEngland) October 7, 2024

As Israel invades Lebanon and take into consideration do it take revenge against Iran, protests against the country's military actions, its general treatment of Palestinians and U.S. support for Israel's military also proceed outside college campuses in Massachusetts. On Sunday, hundreds of individuals took to Storrow Drive to dam traffic and demand an end to the continuing violence.

Thousands of individuals take to Storrow Drive in Boston and demand that the US end the genocide and stop arming Israel!

One 12 months of genocide and one 12 months of mass mobilizations against Zionism! pic.twitter.com/yzIRTG8byd

— Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston (@JVPBoston) October 6, 2024

In recent weeks, university campuses within the United States were rocked by pro-Palestinian protestswith police being called to arrest protesters and threaten students with expulsion.

But the demonstrators’ tactics are nothing unusual. Acquisition of university buildings And Establishment of tent camps on lawns and courtyards of universities.

These students, whose actions are Years of the organization Led by Students for Justice in Palestine, they’re a part of a protracted history of radical student organizing.

There are echoes of each the protests against the Vietnam War within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies and, more recently, South African apartheid within the Eighties.

In the Eighties, US student activists campaigned for higher education to be “South Africa Free.” They called on universities to commit to divesting all assets held in foundations which can be linked to business relations in or with South Africa.

For the past decade, I even have researched and written about these black-led anti-apartheid movements. with a special deal with student campaigns.

By denouncing the complicity of universities, corporations and the federal government in South Africa's apartheid system, student activists were in a position to show that demands for divestment is usually a concrete and effective type of protest.

A movement that took a long time

Apartheid was a racist and exploitative project which had developed over a long time amongst white South African officials.

Racial segregation laws And Land expropriation policy created a captive, impoverished black population whose exploitation and disenfranchisement ensured the economic prosperity of the ruling white minority.

The idea of ​​promoting the sale of assets of firms doing business in South Africa originally got here from the rules of the South African liberation movementswhich called for a complete economic, cultural and diplomatic boycott of the country's white minority government.

The most significant South African liberation movements were the African National Congressfounded in 1912, and the Pan-African Congressfounded in 1959. The South African government banned each organizations in 1960which forces organizers to construct their movements in exile.

In response, anti-apartheid activists world wide developed creative ways to heed the decision.

In the late Nineteen Sixties, for instance, US students criticized US banks that provided loans to the South African government, calling them “partner[s] in apartheid.”

And the Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee coordinated a sit-in at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City in 1965.

Following the 1976 Soweto Uprisingduring which South African police massacred not less than 150 children, some U.S. employees demanded the cancellation of their pension funds.South Africa Free”, and students at US colleges and universities organized among the first protests They are demanding the sale of their schools’ foundation funds.

The founding of the Committee against bank loans to South Africa made economic disengagement a central a part of the anti-apartheid movement within the United States, which grew stronger each on and off campus over the following decade.

Calls for divestment are growing louder

At its peak in 1985 and 1986 Protests for the whole economic isolation of South Africa appeared at greater than 200 colleges and universities within the USA

Whether enrolled at historically African-American colleges and universities, liberal arts colleges, Ivy League schools, or public universities, students coordinated a national divestment movement and placed the problem of U.S. investment in South Africa at the middle of U.S. mental and social life.

The student organization formed the militant base of the US anti-apartheid movement and contributed to economic, political and cultural isolation the violent and repressive regime of the white minority in South Africa.

Students erected blockades, organized sit-outs, occupied buildings and built “Slums“ – that are modeled on the makeshift housing during which many black South Africans lived during apartheid – at greater than 100 universities.

This Protests in slums marked the culmination of nearly a decade of anti-apartheid organizing on campus. Thousands of scholars on a whole lot of campuses arrange camps to attempt to “No more “business as usual””, as student groups put it.

Persistence pays off

At schools across the countryUniversity administrations ordered the police to clear the slums.

The backlash from universities ultimately only increased support for the movement when the media flooded into the slumswhile faculty, parents and alumni gathered around the scholars.

The students in turn rebuilt their campsThey were joined by supporters from outside the university: musicians, politicians and activists of the New Left and Black Power. The presence of feminist political activists Angela DavisCounterculture activist Mario Saviopoet June Jordanauthor Amiri Baraka and organizer of Pan-Africanism Kwame Ture has helped to further draw the eye of scholars across the country.

The much-noticed determination of the scholars helped change public opinionFounded by black organizers Randall Robinson, Mary Frances Berry, Eleanor Holmes Norton And Walter Fauntroy, the “Free South Africa” movement – in close cooperation with the foreign policy advocacy group TransAfrica – led a whole lot of scholars and peculiar people in a vigil outside the South African Embassy in Washington, DC

Many of the activists and student protesters were arrestedBut by denouncing certain firms doing business in South Africa and popularising those firms' links to violence, oppression and massacres against blacks in another country, the scholars succeeded in investing in those stocks. riskier and fewer attractive.

After two years of sustained militant organizing and demonstrations, the coed anti-apartheid movement claimed to have persuaded colleges and universities to 3.6 billion US dollars – or $10.3 billion in today’s currency – from their foundations.

Revisionist history

In 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela, Chairman of the African National Congress was released from prison.

At that point, South Africa's apartheid system was crumbling. The reinstatement of the liberation movements in 1990, the repeal of racial segregation laws in 1991 and the primary democratic elections in 1994 signalled the official end of apartheid, although discrimination and inequality exists in South Africa to today.

In the collective memory of the United States, the anti-Vietnam and anti-apartheid movements are generally viewed as legitimate struggles that US institutions inevitably supported.

Perhaps this is the reason the administration of the University of California, Berkeley, after Mandela’s death in 2013 claimed to be at the highest of student protests against divestment in South Africa.

That was a revision of history.

Actually, in Berkeley and on many campuses, administrators called the police, threatened to cancel their scholarships, others delivered to court and ordered the caretaker to tear down the huts.

Past as present

Activists, scientist and even former US President Jimmy Carter have Comparisons drawn between South African apartheid and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Many Palestinians discuss with the 708 km long separation wall that Israel built along the Gaza Strip as “Wall of Apartheid.”

Nevertheless, there are some notable differences between the 2 movements.

Divestment is tougher today because financial instruments are more complex than within the Eighties, partly because of the outsourcing of their management to investment firms and hedge funds. The size of many university endowments have also grown exponentially since then.

Nevertheless, I’m convinced that divestment from firms doing business with Israel remains to be possible – and might be an efficient demand. Several university administrations have agreed to think about divestmentincluding Brown University, Northwestern University, Evergreen State College, and the University of Minnesota.

The US anti-apartheid movement of the Eighties helped overthrow the apartheid government of South AfricaAt that point, students within the campus occupations against apartheid were the primary to campaign for a change within the national consensus about US complicity in injustice in South Africa.

Time will tell whether today’s students can do the identical when it comes to Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people.

Police arrested not less than a dozen people Thursday night who occupied an abandoned constructing near the UC Berkeley campus as a part of a protest rally in support of Palestinians through the ongoing war in Gaza.

According to UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof, 12 people had been arrested on the scene as of seven:15 p.m.

Police from multiple agencies arrived on the empty constructing on the corner of Channing Way and Bowditch Street, a couple of block from People's Park, around 6:15 p.m. and gave the order for protesters to disperse.

The aging wood constructing, which belongs to the university, is certainly one of several buildings in the previous Anna Head School complex, which housed a now-closed girls' school. On Wednesday, between 10 and 20 protesters occupied certainly one of the buildings that was badly damaged in a hearth in 2022.

“This is not non-violent civil disobedience. “The suspects entered and vandalized an unsafe, boarded-up and fire-damaged building adjacent to People's Park,” Mogulof said in an email Thursday, echoing Wednesday's comments.

Shortly after 6 p.m., officers from the California Highway Patrol and other agencies began establishing barricades in the world. Police ordered protesters to disperse, saying they might be arrested and that force could be used, possibly including pepper spray and tear gas.

Another evacuation order was just issued, with police telling people to maneuver west and disperse inside quarter-hour. More officers with batons and less-lethal launchers have just moved into the courtyard of the UC Berkeley protest house. “Free Palestine” chants are increasing. “We are all Palestinians.” pic.twitter.com/9RkSEMa1DQ

— The Berkeley Scanner (@BerkeleyScanner) May 17, 2024

At 7:45 p.m., after clearing people from the front yard, police searched the brown wood constructing. Demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine!” and “We are all Palestinians.”

The activists had arrange tents within the front yard of the constructing, hung Palestinian flags and attached a banner to the front of the dilapidated constructing that read “Avenge Al-Shifa,” an apparent reference to Al-Shifa Hospital, a medical complex in Gaza. City that Israeli troops destroyed last month as a part of their invasion of Gaza after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7 that killed greater than 1,100 people.

Israel said Hamas used the hospital as cover and built tunnels underneath.

Officers from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, San Bruno, Pacifica, Colma, Daly City and San Francisco police departments, in addition to law enforcement officials from town of Berkeley and UC Berkeley, were on scene Thursday evening.

This is a developing story.

BERKELEY — A gaggle of pro-Palestinian protesters took over UC Berkeley's Anna Head Alumnae Hall on Wednesday, only a day after a big encampment in Sproul Plaza was demolished following an agreement between administrators and protesters.

“This is an active crime scene,” said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof. “You are destroying an unsafe, fire-damaged building.”

The news that protesters occupied the abandoned, gated constructing on Haste Street near Telegraph Avenue was first shared on the People's Park Berkeley Instagram account.

The constructing sits directly across from the park, which was founded 55 years ago to the day and has been the topic of controversy. While the university has attempted to develop the positioning into student residences, demonstrators argued for the property to be preserved as open space.

The protest on Wednesday also comes on the 76th anniversary of the primary Nakbaan Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” and used to consult with the forced displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was triggered by the creation of Israel.

For months, UC Berkeley students and school have protested against Israel and its military response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7. A camp arrange on April 22 was evacuated on Tuesday and Wednesday after negotiations between a pro-Palestinian coalition and administrators. In the Instagram post, a protester occupying the vacant constructing might be heard calling the university's guarantees “empty.”

“Since the first Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral homes,” one protester might be heard saying within the video. “Palestine continues to face ongoing settler colonial violence from Israeli occupation to this day.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

By PHILIP MARCELO and DENISE LAVOIE (Associated Press)

On Saturday, 25 people were arrested for trespassing on the University of Virginia after police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to remove tents from campus, while demonstrators on the University of Michigan chanted anti-war messages and waved flags Opening ceremonies.

In Virginia, student demonstrators began their protest on Tuesday on a lawn in front of the varsity chapel. On Saturday, video from WVAW-TV showed law enforcement officials in heavy gear and carrying riot shields lined up on the Charlottesville campus. Demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine” and university police said on the social platform X that an “unlawful assembly” had been declared in the realm.

When police moved in, students were pushed to the bottom, dragged by their arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has helped student protesters, told The Washington Post.

“Our concern from the start has been the safety of our students. “Students are not safe right now,” Goldblatt said.

University officials said in a press release that the protesters were told that the tents and canopies they’d erected were prohibited by school rules and were asked to remove them. Virginia State Police have been asked to help with enforcement, the university said.

It was the newest clash in several tense and sometimes violent weeks at colleges and universities across the country which have seen dozens of protests and a whole bunch of arrests in demonstrations against the continued war between Israel and Hamas.

Camp of demonstrators calling on universities to accomplish that Stop doing business with Israel or firms that they are saying support them War in Gaza have spread across campuses across the country in a student movement unlike every other on this century. Some schools have made agreements with demonstrators to finish the demonstrations and reduce the potential for disruption to final exams and freshmen.

The Associated Press has recorded at the least 61 incidents involving arrests during protests since April 18, with greater than 2,400 people arrested on 47 campuses. The numbers are based on AP reports and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.

Many camps were dismantled.

Michigan was amongst the faculties preparing for protests throughout the start of faculty this weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston. Many more are planned in the approaching weeks.

In Ann Arbor, the protest occurred at first of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyehs along with their graduation caps, marched up the foremost aisle to the graduation stage.

They shouted: “Regents, Regents, you cannot hide! They are funding genocide!” while holding signs, including one which read: “No more universities in Gaza.”

Overhead, planes flew banners with competing messages. “Get out of Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel.” Jewish lives matter.”

Officials said nobody was arrested and the protest didn’t seriously disrupt the nearly two-hour event that was attended by tens of 1000’s of individuals, some waving Israeli flags.

State police blocked protesters from reaching the stage, and university spokeswoman Colleen Mastony said public safety personnel escorted protesters to the back of the stadium, where they remained until the top of the event.

“Peaceful protests like this have been taking place at UM commencement ceremonies for decades,” she added.

The university allowed protesters to establish camp on campus, but police helped break up a big gathering at a graduation ceremony Friday evening and one person was arrested.

In Indiana, protesters called on their supporters to wear their kaffiyehs and walk out during President Pamela Whitten's speech Saturday evening. The Bloomington campus has designated a protest zone outside of Memorial Stadium, the world for the ceremony.

In Princeton, New Jersey, 18 students went on a hunger strike in an effort to pressure the university to divest from firms linked to Israel.

One of them, senior David Chmielewski, said in an email that the strike began Friday morning with participants consuming only water and that it can proceed until the administration engages with students over demands equivalent to amnesty of criminal and disciplinary charges for demonstrators.

Other protesters took part in 24-hour “solidarity fasts,” Chmielewski said.

Princeton students arrange a protest camp and a few staged a sit-in outside an administration constructing this week that led to about 15 arrests.

Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, went on similar hunger strikes earlier this 12 months before the newest wave of encampments.

Meanwhile, students at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, dismantled their camp peacefully on Friday evening without police intervention.

School officials said they were pleased with the event, which was not the results of an agreement. Protest organizers said in a press release they were “deeply upset and disappointed” that negotiations with the university had failed.

The protests stem from the conflict that began on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages.

Promising to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive within the Gaza Strip that killed greater than 34,500 Palestinians within the Hamas-controlled area, about two-thirds of them women and youngsters, in response to the Health Ministry. Israeli attacks have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its residents.

___

Marcelo reported from New York. Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit, Nick Perry in Boston and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.

Protest demands

Protest across the country

National News

Amid a dizzying array of clashes with pro-Palestinian demonstrations and campus encampments, schools that cracked down on protesters over the weekend have given different justifications for his or her actions, while others have sent mixed signals with their inaction.

Behind this was a central query facing university leaders across the country: When does an indication cross the road?

Universities cited damage to property, external provocateurs, anti-Semitic statements or just ignoring warnings as reasons for clearing camps and arresting students. Student groups have strongly disputed or questioned lots of these claims.

Northeastern University in Boston, Washington University in St. Louis, Indiana University Bloomington and Arizona State University had law enforcement officials reply to demonstrations on Saturday, leading to greater than 200 arrests. At other schools – including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and Cornell University – tensions were icy on Sunday as leaders warned of possible consequences for protesters but had not yet implemented them.

There were also counter-protests on Sunday, including on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penn and UCLA, where there have been physical confrontations between demonstrators but no major violence was reported.

Calm reigned at Washington University on Sunday, a day after campus law enforcement officials made 100 arrests. Administrators said a gaggle violated university policy by starting to establish camp on the east end of campus. Police officers arrested individuals who refused to depart the country “after repeated requests,” those responsible wrote.

“No one has the right to interfere with the ability of people in our community to learn and work,” they said.

More than 800 people have been arrested since April 18, when New York police cleared a camp in Columbia.

At Northeastern, where 102 protesters were arrested earlier Saturday, a university spokesman said the demonstration was “infiltrated by professional organizers” and that somebody had used “vicious anti-Semitic slurs.” The protesters denied each claims.

Many school leaders have insisted that folks outside their colleges are fueling the confrontations, although there’s little evidence to support their claims. In many cases, the groups of protesters were primarily students and university employees, but there was one notable exception Saturday at Washington University. Of the 100 arrests, only 23 were students and 4 were employees, the university said in a press release on Sunday.

Arizona State officials said 15 students were among the many 72 protesters arrested Friday, even though it was unclear what number of were staff or faculty.

However, at other universities the influence of outsiders was not clear.

About 200 people attended a pro-Israel demonstration in Penn on Sunday, just just a few hundred yards from a pro-Palestinian camp. Noah Rubin, a junior who spoke on the pro-Israel rally, said not all pro-Palestinian protesters were Penn students.

“We have documented a number of individuals who have a history of violence in Philadelphia,” he said, but gave no further details. A spokesman for the camp didn’t reply to a request for comment on Rubin's allegation.

Some schools have tried to limit the influence of outsiders. For example, Harvard has tried to limit access only to those that show a university ID card. At Northeastern, officers had asked protesters for his or her student IDs earlier within the week before Saturday's campus arrests. Some demonstrators showed them, others refused. At Columbia, which closed its doors, protesters on the opposite side added to the sense of chaos, with many shouting anti-Semitic chants and threatening students.

Protesters arrange a camp on the University of Mary Washington in Fredricksburg, Virginia, on Friday, but after the demonstration opened to the general public, university officials, citing safety concerns, asked organizers to take down their tents, which they did earlier within the evening . The peaceful protest continued until Saturday, when “outside influence” pushed to expand the camp again, Troy Paino, the university's president, said in a press release Sunday.

When the tents were put back up on Saturday afternoon, the organizers were asked to depart, in response to the university. Twelve remaining protesters, including nine students, were subsequently arrested.

But while administrators at some schools have tried to point the finger at protesters from outside the community, it has often been their very own students who’ve been arrested. At Emory University in Atlanta, 20 of at the very least 28 people arrested Thursday had ties to the varsity, although officials had insisted early on that nobody involved within the encampment was affiliated with the university.

Emory President Gregory Fenves said in a press release Sunday that a peaceful protest Saturday was disrupted by some people spray-painting “hateful messages” on the outside partitions of a constructing and vandalizing other structures.

“Emory is bridging a divide between individuals who want to express themselves peacefully and those who want to use our campus as a platform to promote discord,” Fenves said, adding that such incidents “must be dismissed and condemned.”

The high-profile conflicts have led to further demonstrations, including on campuses where protests were dispersed earlier this yr.

At Stanford University, where a previous camp was demolished in February, protesters arrange a second camp on Thursday. The administration said in a press release Friday that it had delivered letters to about 60 students warning them that “failure to engage in conduct that violates university policy” could lead to disciplinary motion and even arrest.

But on at the very least one campus with a close-by camp, the University of Pittsburgh, Sunday's graduation ceremony was held as planned with none problems.

Protesters then marched near campus. As they tried to get onto the lawn of the university's Cathedral of Learning constructing, they were stopped by a line of law enforcement officials. According to a university official, greater than 100 protesters remained there for hours and two were arrested by campus police.

PARIS (AP) — Students in Paris inspired by Solidarity camp within the Gaza Strip On campuses across the United States, a campus constructing at a prestigious French university was peacefully evacuated late Friday after days of tension.

The head of the Paris Institute for Political Studies, referred to as Sciences Po, said an agreement had been reached with students on Friday. Sciences Po's many famous graduates include President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

Tensions erupted on campus when pro-Palestinian students attempted to occupy an amphitheater earlier this week.

On Friday, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters faced off in a tense confrontation on the road outside the varsity. The riot police intervened to separate the rival groups.

The students later agreed to go away the premises.

Pro-Palestinian protester and Sciences Po student Wajih, who refused to provide his last name for fear of university disciplinary motion, said: “The occupation has paused for now.” But we’ll proceed to support the Palestinian movement as an entire, we’ll other universities will support, we’ll support all around the world until Palestine is free.”

The university management closed all university buildings on Friday and switched classes to online courses.

The Gaza war There is great division in France, where most Muslims and Jews live in Western Europe. France initially desired to ban it pro-Palestinian demonstrations afterwards Hamas surprise attack on October seventh on Israel, which began the war. Anti-Semitism has increased sharply.

Local News

Police broke up a pro-Palestinian camp at Northeastern University on Saturday morning and arrested about 100 protesters. This is the second instance this week of law enforcement breaking up a student camp in Boston.

“This morning, the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) – in collaboration with local law enforcement partners – began clearing an unauthorized encampment on the university’s Boston campus,” the university said in an announcement around 8 a.m. Saturday morning.

The protesters arrange the encampment on the college's Centennial Common on Thursday, joining students from several Boston-area colleges and dozens of others across the U.S. who’ve arrange tents and staged protests in recent days after about 100 people camped out at an identical encampment had been arrested at Columbia University. The students are demanding that their schools cut ties with Israeli corporations and the military and are calling for a ceasefire within the Israel-Hamas war.

Police arrested about 100 people, Northeastern said. Anyone arrested who was in a position to produce a legitimate Northeastern ID was released, the college said.

“They face disciplinary action within the university, not legal action. Those who refused to reveal their affiliation were arrested,” the university said in an announcement.

Massachusetts State Police said they participated in clearing the encampment after NUPD requested assistance.

“State Police deployed Troop H and Special Emergency Response Team personnel to the university campus. Officers directed protesters to disperse, and MSP members helped remove protesters who refused to leave,” Dave Procopio, director of media communications for the Massachusetts State Police, said in an announcement.

“The State Police is committed to safely protecting the lawful exercise of the right to assemble and freedom of expression and to protecting the safety and property of all involved,” Procopio wrote.

footage posted by sNortheastern's student-run newspaper showed Saturday morning law enforcement officials, some in riot gear, using cable ties to tie up protesters and lead them into a close-by campus constructing, then transporting those arrested in vans.

Early Thursday, police arrested greater than 100 people at an encampment arrange by Emerson College students on a sidewalk next to the college's downtown campus.

The dispersal of the Northeast camp implies that the Boston area currently has pro-Palestinian student camps at Harvard, MIT and Tufts.

Controversy over anti-Semitic language

In an announcement released Saturday morning, Northeastern said outside agitators had joined the protest and pointed to using anti-Semitic language on campus, suggesting it was a consider the choice to disband the encampment.

“What began as a student demonstration two days ago was infiltrated by professional organizers unaffiliated with Northeastern,” the university said in an announcement opinion. “Last night the use of vicious anti-Semitic slurs, including “kill the Jews,” crossed the road. We cannot tolerate this sort of hate on our campus.”

Camp organizers claimed that almost all pro-Palestinian protesters on campus were students and that no camp member had engaged in anti-Semitism, saying on social media that “anti-Semitic statements at Northeastern were shouted by Zionist counter-protesters.”

“The camp organizers responded to the provocation with boos and demanded that the Zionist provocateurs leave,” said the scholar group Huskies for a Free Palestine posted on Instagram. “Northeastern: Take back the slander, release, expose and divest the students and workers you arrested!”

In an announcement to Boston.com Saturday afternoon, a university spokesperson did in a roundabout way address the claim that the anti-Semitic comments got here from counter-protesters.

“The fact that the phrase 'Kill the Jews' was chanted on our campus is undisputed. The Boston Globe, a trusted news organization, reported this as fact. There is also extensive video evidence. Any suggestion that disgusting anti-Semitic comments are sometimes acceptable depending on the context is reprehensible. This language has no place on any university campus,” said Renata Nyul, the college’s vp of communications.

Reporting by the referenced using the phrase “kill the Jews,” but didn’t specify whether the statement got here from a protester or counter-protester.

videos posted on social media on Friday evening appear to indicate a counter-protester holding an Israeli flag directly in front of the camp and chanting “Kill the Jews.” Several protesters responded by booing and shouting, “We’ll let them go.”

This is a video of the incident I discussed, provided by an organizer with Huskies For A Free Palestine/HFP.NEU

The student within the green and blue sweatshirt with the Israeli flag is a counter-demonstrator pic.twitter.com/2KnUuFAkam

— Tori Bedford (@Tori_Bedford) April 27, 2024