Campus Watch May 22, 2024

47 Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested After UC Irvine Removes Encampment

Forty-seven pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on May 15 after UC Irvine cleared the encampment had been established on campus for the past couple weeks.

The university announced that 26 of the arrested protesters were students and two were employees, while the remaining 19 were unaffiliated with the university, The Orange County Register reported. Most of the arrested protesters were on charges of failure to disperse, and some were charged with trespassing. Chancellor Howard Gillman called it a “sad day” for the university and was “brokenhearted,” per The OC Register.

“I was prepared to allow a peaceful encampment to exist on the campus without resorting to police intervention, even though the encampment violated our policies and the existence of the encampment was a matter of great distress to other members of our community,” Gillman said in a statement. “I communicated that if there were violations of our rules we would address them through the normal administrative policies of the university and not through police action.”

Pro-Palestinian student group leaders were quoted in The OC Register expressing anger with the university’s actions and declared that they will continue to fight for their cause.

UC Berkeley, Pro-Palestinian Encampment Reach Agreement

The pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Berkeley’s campus has been peacefully taken down after the university and the encampment reached an agreement.

According to NBC News, Chancellor Carol Christ agreed to “examine whether UC Berkeley’s investments continue to align with our values or should be modified in order to do so” and to look into reports of anti-Palestinian discrimination on campus. Jewish Insider (JI) reported that Christ vowed to issue a statement urging “an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Such support for the plight of Palestinians, including protest, should not be conflated with hatred or antisemitism.”

JI further reported that a subsequent meeting was held between Christ and Jewish students, faculty members and community leaders that did not go well. JI quoted an attendee of that meeting claiming that Christ “started the meeting by saying our primary objective was trying to not disrupt the semester, to make sure people continue to study and take their finals. But what about the Jewish students whose lives had been upended by this? It felt like we were slighted. And then the public statements that she’s made, and the way that we were engaged, was just really a lack of respect.” Assistant Vice Chancellor for Communications Dan Mogulof told JI that “that there were individuals in the encampment who engaged in antisemitic expression, and that some of the signs that went up were antisemitic expression” but choosing not to negotiate with the encampment would have been tantamount to “collective punishment.”

12 Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested for Occupying UC Berkeley Building

On May 16, 12 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested for occupying the Anna Head complex building at UC Berkeley.

The Jewish News of Northern California (The J) reported that the university had sent an alert the day before warning that protesters “had broken windows, cut fences and spray-painted walls. Images on social media showed antisemitic and anti-Zionist messages, including swastikas and language equating Zionism with Nazism.” Assistant Vice Chancellor for Communications Dan Mogulof told The J that there were “confrontations” between the protesters and police following a dispersal order and that one of the 12 people arrested was a student. Mogulof also told The J that the leaders of the pro-Palestinian encampment “did not initiate” the occupation of the building.

Reed College Jewish Student Hit in Head With Rock

A Jewish student at Reed College, a private liberal arts college in Portland, was hit in the head with a rock on May 7, the Williamette Week reported.

Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Director of Community Relations Bob Horenstein told the outlet that the rock was thrown through the student’s window; the incident happened after the student heard pro-Palestinian protesters outside her dormitory room and recorded them on May 5. The student alleged that the protesters then started pounding on doors in her building and that her mezuzah was subsequently found “smashed and the scroll inside torn up,” Horenstein told the Williamette Week. The student is no longer on campus.

“We take incidents of antisemitism or any bias-motivated incident very seriously,” a Reed spokesperson told the Williamette Week. “Such behavior has no place at Reed College or anywhere. These are challenging times, and our responsibilities to all of our students have our full and sustained attention.”

The college’s Students Justice for Palestine (SJP) chapter also posted a statement on Instagram expressing their “sincerest condolences to any community members harmed by these acts, including the student directly affected, and other Jewish students on campus who feel unsafe in the aftermath of these events,” per the Williamette Week.