There are deadlines and the risk of arrest for pro-Palestinian protesters

Relocating the Student Final Exams: Students, Students, and Protesters Against Student Encampment and Law Enforcement at Emerson and Harvard

Faculty members gathered at a rally and called on the school’s president to step down after he praised the school for using restraint against protesters, according to KUT.

At the University of Southern California, 93 people were arrested Wednesday for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense. The department did not say what the weapon was, but one person was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. There were no reported injuries, said the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than 100 people were arrested at Emerson College in Boston early Thursday morning after police tore down an encampment there. The school subsequently added Boylston Place Alley, where the encampment was located, to its list of campus locations where demonstrations are not allowed.

At Emory University in Atlanta, protesters — including students from other Atlanta universities and area activists — clashed with state, city and university law enforcement on campus. Videos on social media show officers arresting protesters with tear gas, tasers, and handcuffs.

She said there were no threats to your safety at this time. We are concerned with you as our primary concern. To protect your safety and the integrity of our academic program we are relocating student final exams.”

In a video message on Thursday, the dean of the law school said that they are trying to move the final exams to quiet places because of the protests.

After 10PM, Shafik said there would be a midnight deadline to reach agreement with students on clearing the West Lawn. Amid negotiations with student representatives from Columbia University Apartheid Divest — the group behind the encampment — Shafik threatened to call both the National Guard and the NYPD, the student group said in a statement. According to the Daily Spectator, the few hundred students who were on the lawn began to prepare for their arrest. The police and the National Guard weren’t called at all due to the extension of the deadline.

While George Washington University in D.C. is having a second day of protesters, they don’t have a deadline to clear the camp.

The End of the Las Vegas Campus: Students, Students, and the USC Campus Life During the First Day of the Israel-Hamas War

The main graduation ceremony at the USC in Los Angeles was canceled on Thursday due to the need for additional security. It had already canceled its valedictorian’s speech because of safety concerns stemming from the backlash she received over her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war.

“I am deeply sensitive to the fact that graduating seniors spent their first year attending Columbia remotely,” she said. “We all very much want these students to celebrate their well-deserved graduation with family and friends.”

If discussions do not go well, the school may have to consider other options, such as clearing the West Lawn, because students can’t complete the term.

The most tense hours I have seen were during the university’s media hours of 2 to 4PM. Reporters mill about looking for undergrads to talk to, student volunteers scramble to organize interviews, and right-wing pagnts try to get undergrads to give them inflammatory quotes during the brief media window. By 5:30 or 6PM, once the camera crews are mostly gone and the media frenzy has died down, campus life — the encampment included — regains a sense of normalcy.

Protesters agreed to take certain actions, including removing a large number of tents, limiting the protest to Columbia students only, complying with fire department requirements, and prohibiting discrimination or harassing language.

The administration extended the deadline multiple times because of what it described as constructive dialogue, but originally set a deadline of midnight Tuesday to dismantle the setup.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack killed 1,200 Israelis and resulted in another roughly 240 being taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities, while Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s military response has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children.

Still, student activists nationwide appear determined to show their support for people in Gaza and push their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or who otherwise profit from its war with Hamas.

Police arrested more than 100 students who had occupied Columbia’s south lawn to demand that the university divest its $13 billion endowment from companies that support Israel. The officers ripped down the tents and trampled on the signs that proclaimed the campsite a liberated zone, an echo of the anti-war protests that raged on college campuses in 1968. Less than a day later, the tents were back, with hundreds of new students taking the place of their classmates who had been arrested and barred from campus.

The troubles at Columbia University started over six months ago. There was a pro-Palestine protest at the university near the box truck covered in screens showing the names and photos of dozens of students. The students were called the “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” by the truck paid for by Accuracy in Media.

For the student who did not want her last name used, the university’s willingness to allow the arrest of their own students in the first place seemed to suggest that the safety concerns that have been raised are largely rhetorical. The arrests, she told me on Monday, are “in and of themselves a doxxing event, because all of that becomes public record.” After the first wave of arrests on April 18th, some publications, including the New York Post, published the full names and other identifying information of some students.

On Thursday, the lawmaker made her own visit. Omar’s daughter was one of the students suspended when the encampment was cleared last week. Shafik’s early Friday deadline was swiftly approaching. That night, Shafik said there would be no arrests. There is a rumor that the NYPD has been invited to campus this evening, she wrote in an email to students. “This rumor is false.”

The student who was masked when we spoke was one of the few people that didn’t go to the camp. Students covered their faces with surgical masks, sunglasses, and kaffiyehs, both to prevent spreading covid-19 in close quarters and to shield themselves from the prying eyes of outsiders who they feared would target them over their involvement in the encampment.

In the enclosed environs of a college campus, a student’s first and last name is not exactly top secret sensitive information. But when placed into a certain context and disseminated through certain media streams outside the confines of the university, a name becomes a liability — and for bad-faith actors, a weapon that can be wielded against students.

Avila Chevalier, who graduated from Columbia in 2016, was among the first students to be featured on Canary Mission, a database that describes itself as dedicated to exposing antisemitism. The Canary Mission has included antisemitic hate speech in its database in an effort to bring it into line with pro-Palestinian activism. The Israeli government has used Canary Mission to bar political activists from entering the country, Haaretz reported in 2018. The Canary Mission doxed protesters since October 7th.

The encampment, all things considered, is extremely chill. When I walked around on Monday, I saw students lounging in their tents, doing homework, and generally hanging out. Pro-Palestine signs made with pieces of cardboard and cloth that read ” Anti-imperialism is feminist” and “End the blockade” could be found at the craft corner. In the middle of the quad, students had set up a snack table — complete with a “nut zone” to accommodate their peers with allergies — that also had sunscreen, water bottles, and ibuprofen available.

“It’s basically just a bunch of nerds,” Jared told me on Wednesday. I went to home and checked the news and heard that the pro-HAMASS mob had taken over Columbia. There’s a huge disparity between what’s going on here and how it’s been portrayed by the media.”

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference on the edge of Morningside Park, Marianne Hirsch, a literature professor who specializes in Holocaust studies, said the university had fostered “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in which some people are afraid to tell you their names.”

By Wednesday, the circus was in full swing. After speaking with the two members of the campsite who had sunglasses on and scarves on, a man came up to them and asked if they were in class. I noticed that the man was provocateur and the founder of the Proud Boys. A few hours later, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a press conference on the other side of the quad. “This is dangerous. This is not a clause in the First Amendment. Johnson said that this was not free expression and that there were boos and chants of “Mike, you suck”. He urged the president to call for the National Guard.