SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Police approached protesters arm in arm Friday morning at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a day after arrests at a pro-Palestinian encampment on a Detroit campus and a student walkout during homecoming in Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The video showed a line of police armed with batons a few meters from the demonstrators on the California campus. It was not immediately clear whether there were any arrests or injuries. The university held classes remotely on Friday.
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the main entrance to the campus this week.
“We call on these protesters to immediately reopen full access to campus and resume protesting in a manner consistent with both our community values and our student code of conduct.” Denying access to education is not free speech,” university leaders said in a letter to the community on Thursday.
Graduate students continued a strike that began last week over the university system’s treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Protest camps sprung up across the United States and Europe this spring as students demanded that their universities stop doing business with Israel or with companies they say support its war in Gaza. Organizers seek to amplify calls to end the war between Israel and Hamas, which they call a genocide against the Palestinians.
On Thursday, police officers in riot gear removed fencing and dismantled tents erected last week on a green space near the undergraduate library at Wayne State University in Detroit. At least 12 people were arrested.
President Kimberly Andrews Espy cited health and safety concerns and disruptions to campus operations. Staff were encouraged to work remotely this week and in-person summer classes were suspended.
The camp, she said, “created an environment of exclusion – in which some members of our campus community felt unwelcome and unable to fully participate in campus life.”
Another outdoor commencement ceremony was planned for Friday at MIT in Cambridge, near Boston, a day after some graduates walked out, disrupting it for 10 to 15 minutes. They wore keffiyehs, checkered scarves that represent Palestinian solidarity, over their caps and gowns, chanted “Free Palestine, Free” and held signs saying: “All eyes are on Rafah.”
“There will be no status quo as long as MIT conducts research projects with the Israeli Defense Ministry,” said David Berkinsky, 27, who earned a doctorate in chemistry and resigned. “There are no graduates in Gaza. There are no more universities in Gaza because Israel bombed them all. »
Eesha Banerjee, a 20-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama, who earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering and physics and left her job, said she wants to lobby MIT to become a best place.
“As long as I’m still here, I want to use every opportunity I can to push this institute to improve,” she said. “I want MIT to be the institution that it can be, and it can’t be that until it abandons its connections and its complicity.”
Some people at the event insulted the protesters and shouted, “Good riddance to Hamas supporters of terrorism.” A pro-Palestinian encampment at MIT was emptied in early May.
ABC News
