Columbia University protesters have begun occupying a building

The Columbia University Campus Encampment on the Morningside Campus During a March 1 Reaction against Protesters in the Post-Coronavirus Pandemic

Columbia had already suspended about 50 students for their involvement in the original encampment on a neighboring lawn. But that measure did not deter a wider group of protesters from setting up the current encampment.

The students in Hamilton Hall started moving furniture to a balcony after protesters climbed into windows at John Jay Hall, according to the university radio station.

The university officials were not available for comment. The public safety department was responding. In a statement, it urged people to avoid coming to the Morningside campus on Tuesday if they could.

The New York Police Department said at about 2:15 a.m. that it had officers stationed outside the university, but not on school grounds, in case the situation escalated. It did not specify the number of officers in the area.

Columbia set several deadlines to get an agreement with protesters, as it said the camp is a danger to campus safety, and a mess to Jewish students trying to study and sleep.

Columbia President Minouche Shafik said that academic leaders and student organizers put forward robust and thoughtful offers to reach common ground in the discussions. “We thank them all for their diligent work, long hours, and careful effort and wish they had reached a different outcome.”

Demonstrators are protesting in support of Palestinians amid the war between Israel and Hamas, and they are calling for Columbia to sever its investments and business dealings with Israeli companies.

Columbia said Monday it would not do that, but it did say the school’s Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing will start reviewing new proposals from students. It is also pledging to make a list of its investments available to students, as well as provide resources toward health and education in Gaza.

However, the parties did agree that protests will be paused until after reading day, exams and commencement, as Shafik urged the Columbia community to consider that the class of 2024 did not get to have their high school commencement ceremonies in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.

After that, students will need to submit an application at least two days before having a protest, which will be held in designated areas, Shafik said.

Students, faculty and the campus environment: Protecting the civil rights of students and the UT-Austin University from the April 18 protests

She said the camp was causing an “unwelcoming environment” for Jewish students and that it is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

She said antisemitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply unacceptable. “I know that many of our Jewish students, and other students as well, have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks. The departure of many people from the campus is a tragedy. To those students and their families, I want to say to you clearly: You are a valued part of the Columbia community. This is your campus too.”

Shafik, who has been under fire for her handling of the protests, said she is committed to keeping community members physically safe and shielding them from harassment and discrimination, while allowing them to freely speak, which must mean respecting others’ right to do so as well.

For the second time in a week, police arrested dozens of demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin protesting Israel’s war against Hamas. Protesters shouted “We are peaceful and you are violent” as they demanded the police to leave.

The scene at UT-Austin grew tense as campus police and state troopers deployed a chemical irritant to control the crowd. Some students dispersed but others were blocking the vans and resisting arrest. University officials said in a statement that the university took swift action to preserve a safe learning environment.

Some universities took a more hands off approach. MIT’s president has called for an end to the demos, though police are watching them, and the demonstrations have been peaceful.

The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of Columbia administrators led to more than 100 student arrests and attracted a wave of angry protests outside the school’s gates, some of which included blatantly antisemitic rhetoric.

Faculty members are now standing up for students’ academic freedom and against university leadership who they feel have been involved in it.

Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, says responses vary in part because individual colleges decide how to regulate speech on campus. They provide a description of where students can post flyers or when the protests need to end. Those rules are allowed, as long as they apply to any student group, regardless of the cause, Morey says.

If I was a college administrator, I’d tell you that there wasn’t a reason to remove the camp and that it was just causing disruption. “They have the right to remove it if they so choose,” she says.

At the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, assistant vice chancellor Dan Mogulof says they don’t want police involvement unless it’s absolutely necessary.

There are times when a reaction is antithetical to what your goals are. Law enforcement is an important resource, but it can also have unintended consequences,” he says.

The University of California, Los Angeles and Northwest University are “Excessive and Punitive” in protesting free speech and stifling the University’s functions

Mogulof says the Berkeley’s protests have been peaceful so far. He says that the school is committed to free speech and to the safety of the campus.

He says that there could be a tension between those objectives. The right to freely express your perspective, but also the right to pursue your academic interests are inherent tensions and the trick is to manage them.

At Northwestern University, officials negotiated an agreement with protesters, making a plan on where students can continue to protest while not breaking the university’s rules.

Washington University in St. Louis told NPR in a statement that the university protects free speech, but that right doesn’t include activities that disrupt the functions of the university. On Saturday, university officials made the call to arrest 100 people it said “did not have good intentions” and were mostly unaffiliated with the school, according to a statement.

On Sunday, demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles breached a barrier set up to separate pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters, resulting in “physical altercations,” according to a university spokesperson. The two groups were separated by police.

The professors at Northeastern University sent a letter to the university leaders, requesting that the charges against the protesters be dropped and a public apology be issued. At least 144 Vanderbilt University professors signed a letter expressing support for student protesters and criticizing its “excessive and punitive” response.

In their letter, the Chancellor and the Provost said that all of these factors left them with no choice but to act. Northeastern faced an “untenable dilemma” over the weekend.

Pro-Palestinian protesters say that they’ve been dozed off and harassed at other universities. And they also say universities are stifling free speech.

He says schools could face pressure from donors to respond harshly. The alumni of Columbia demanded that the university discipline students for threatening and hate speech and to remove all illegal campsites.

Toward the end of its semester, Columbia University switched to hybrid classes. The University of Michigan and the University of Southern California have both announced that they will not be running their main graduation ceremonies in May.

Only the students who remained after the 2 p.m. Monday deadline would face suspension, not hundreds of others who came to protect it and show their support.

Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday that they had called on N.Y.P.D. to clear an encampment once. Bringing back the N. Y.P.D. would be counter- productive and would inflame what is happening on the campus.

In Manhattan, the takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia began shortly after midnight, as protesters marched around campus to chants of “free Palestine.” Protesters seized Hamilton within 20 minutes, the oldest building at the center of campus protests dating to the 1960s. A spokesman for Columbia wasn’t immediately available.

Palestine will live forever. You should go away. “Free, free Palestine.” “Free, free, free Palestine.” Shut it down. Palestine will be free. “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”

The Portland Pro-Palestinian Encampment: Student protests on Monday night in the neoclassical building at Columbia University

Outside the neoclassical building, protesters, many wearing helmets, safety glasses, gloves and masks, barricaded the entrance. There are chairs and tables at the entrance. A protester smashed the glass part of a door with a hammer. The protesters appeared to have free rein of the building.

Tuesday promises to be another tense day at the Columbia campus in Manhattan, with students bracing for possible further action against the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and administrators waiting to see if their decision to suspend demonstrators who remained at the site would blunt the protest.

In Portland demonstrators on Monday seized control of the library at Portland State University, where some had spray-painted words such as “Free Gaza,” a sign declared “Glory to Our Martyrs,” and activists called for the university to cut all ties with Boeing, which has supplied weaponry to Israel’s military.

Bob Day, the chief of the Portland Police Bureau, estimated on Monday night that perhaps 50 to 75 protesters were inside the building. Officials urged protesters to leave the area and warned that those involved could face criminal charges.

Students and their supporters gathered around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. But with no sign of police action, most of the protesters had begun to disperse by the end of the afternoon, leaving what appeared to be several dozen students and about 80 tents inside the encampment.

A group of faculty in safety vests stayed behind, and several said that they planned to stay overnight to make sure their students’s right to protest was respected.

Ben Chang said that the university has begun suspending students as part of the next phase of their efforts to make the campus safe.

“We’ve been asked to disperse, but it is against the will of the students to disperse,” she said. “We do not abide by university pressures. We act based on the will of the students.”

Elga Castro, 47, an adjunct professor in the Spanish department at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school, was among the faculty and staff members guarding access to the tents. “I have my opinions on Gaza and Palestine, but I am mainly here to protect my students,” she said.

What I’ve Learned About a University Student Protest, What I Mean When I’m Not Using It,” says Phillips, an Anthropologist at Indiana University

“If you’re not upholding it when it’s needed, then it means nothing,” she says. “The first thing is going to have to be a rebuilding of trust. It takes a long time to build and repair that trust.

She said most schools already have mechanisms where faculty and administrators can discuss what is happening and how to respond. But at many schools, she says, administrations are currently ignoring that structure.

The principle of shared governance — which the AAUP defines as the “joint responsibility of faculty, administrations, and governing boards to govern colleges and universities” — is key to helping campuses move forward, Mulvey says.

At some schools, faculty members have issued statements of no confidence in their president over the response to the protests.

The use of policing, penalization and retribution to avoid protest or dialogue is not a good example of an educational institution.

The professors of Indiana strongly dissented from the anti-democratic acts they were charged with teaching their students.

I am protecting the students at this time of my life and protecting academic freedom. She said she could do that better than they could. “Faculty all over are wanting to protect the students and call out the administrations that are putting the students at risk, and I think that’s what we’re seeing with them.”

History professors at USC and media school professors at Indiana University are examples of people speaking up based on their subject matter expertise.

“As a faculty member who cares about freedom of speech — who sees freedom of speech as the bedrock of democracy and really as the foundation for a public education — I see it as my responsibility to speak up when I see harm being done to students and their rights being violated,” Phillips said. “And if my voice isn’t enough, then I’m going to have to speak up, so to say, for them in other ways.”

When Phillips, an anthropology professor at IU, arrived at the site of the campus protest she recognized some of her students, “completely peaceful,” standing face-to-face with what she described as heavily armed riot police. Reflexively, she started walking toward them.

“My instincts just kicked in,” she told NPR on Monday. “And a few moments later, I found myself on the ground, handcuffed and being marched with some students and other faculty to a bus that was ready to take us away to the local jail.”

A group of students were protesting at an assembly area designated since 1969 and the site of a campsite that was banned in the last minute by the school administration.

33 people were arrested on Thursday by Indiana state and university police when they tried to break up the crowd. Protesters quickly regrouped, and Phillips was alarmed to hear on Saturday that armed police were once again gathering at the park.

Hundreds of students have been arrested at campus protests within the last week. There is no exact tally of how many professors have been arrested, according to the AAUP, but news stories and social media reports suggest the numbers are steadily mounting.

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

The Student Student Protests: Faculty, Students, and No-Confidence Votes. How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Demonstrators at Indiana, as in many other states, are calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to both university investment in Israeli-affiliated companies and its partnership with a nearby U.S. Navy installation.

Most of the people arrested on Saturday, including Phillips, were hit with the misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass. All were also handed slips of paper by university police banning them from school property for one year (with the exception of one organizer who was banned for five years).

The administration later said that students and faculty who were arrested can appeal their trespass warnings with university police, and will be allowed on campus to finish the semester while that process is underway.

Phillips plans to do so. But, she says, this last week of classes is especially important for professors in terms of meeting with students and administering finals — and that experience has already been disrupted. On Monday, her students presented their final projects on Zoom rather than in their classroom.

She said that they were aware that their consequences could escalate and be worse than they are currently, so they were very careful not to violate the terms of the ban.

The university’s president and provost are being called for to step down by protesters. An open letter signed by over 800 current and former faculty members from the school has called for their resignation.

Faculty members in orange vests formed a human wall at the entrance to students’ camp at Columbia University when police arrived to break it up on Monday. Professors at Emory University staged a campus walkout that same day, chanting “hands off our students.”

“I feel like faculty are just waiting for the right time to start working,” said Mulvey, president of the AAUP. “They’re helping the students, putting their bodies on the line … they’re dealing with the administration with no-confidence votes, but also trying to deal with the administration directly to get them to back off and do the right thing.”

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Campus protests against professors in St. Louis: Professor Carole Fohlin is not a protester at Emory University

Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, was among the protesters arrested at a campus demonstration on Saturday at Washington University in St. Louis, with video showing several officers slamming him to the ground.

In a statement read by a student on Tuesday, Tamari said he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County Police officers and then dragged across campus by the police,” and remains hospitalized with broken ribs and a broken hand.

Two professors were among the 28 people arrested at Emory University on Thursday, after the administration called in city and state police to disperse a protest. Both high-profile arrests were captured on bystander videos.

In the other picture, professor Fohlin is talking to police officers as they wrestle a protester to the ground and tell them to get away. As she approaches, one officer grabs her by the wrist and flips her onto the sidewalk. Another comes over to help zip-tie her hands behind her back, as she protests: “I am a professor!”

Fohlin was arrested and charged with battery against a cop. Her lawyer, Gregory Clement, later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the arrest was misguided.

“Caroline Fohlin was not a protester at Emory on April 25,” Clement said. “She emerged from her office, concerned only about the treatment of students on the quad.”

In order to alert the philosophy department of her arrest, which happened as she was being escorted away in handcuffs, the professor was captured on video.

McAfee later told 11Alive News that she was passing through the area of the protest when she came across cops “pummeling” a young protester, and stood nearby asking them to stop. She was charged with disorderly conduct after refusing to leave when police told her to.

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Campus Protests: Faculty Arrests Letters “No Confidence Votes”: How Some Faculty Members Are defending Student Protesters, in Action and in Words

Steven Thrasher, chair of social justice in reporting at the Medill School of Journalism, has been helping to organize the student protests on the Illinois campus.

He and other members of the group Educators For Justice in Palestine went to the extent of getting faculty members on site for bail, university negotiations and physically defending the student protesters.

“We’re making sure that there’s always four of us who are there, that the students know that we’re there,” Thrasher told NPR on Friday. “But … we did not expect to be in a human barricade position in the first 10 minutes, which is what happened [Thursday] morning.”

At protests, Thrasher identifies himself as someone who is willing to be arrested. He hopes that doesn’t happen, but says he feels “quite committed to, if there’s violence that can happen between the students and the administration or cops, that I’m going to put my body in that space when I’m there.”

If I saw students who disagreed with me, that would be something… I would also intervene” on their behalf, he said. I am very proud of them, and I’m Supporting them in something that I believe is very righteous.

Faculty members have spoken out about losing their jobs or being reprimanded for speaking out, in speeches and social media posts.

Mulvey, of the AAUP, says it’s riskier for non-tenured professors to take a stand — and the long-term decline in tenure at American universities means that most do not have it. She said those dynamics are damaging not only to higher education institutions but democracy itself.

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

What has happened in the encampment of protests? “What have we learnt about our university and what have we learned?” says Ph.D. Thrasher

Thrasher, who has reported on various Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protests over the years, says these sorts of encampments are “really amazing pedagogical spaces” where lots of valuable learning can happen, from interfaith prayers to lending libraries.

Like Thrasher, she says the best thing to come out of this turmoil is the deepening of solidarities within the community — she says she’s spent time with colleagues in ways she hasn’t in her more than two decades at the university, and seeing many newly emboldened to stand up for their beliefs.

She says there is no more business as usual. “We have come together in a way that has shown how vital the community is, but also how fragile it can be.”

“My feeling is that the vast majority of faculty will bend over backwards to fulfill their academic obligations to the students … whether it means a written final instead of an in-class final, whether it means extensions on projects, whether it means additional office hours,” she said.