Students, Staff and Faculty Build Palestine Solidarity Encampments Nationwide (List)

Campus protests are growing across the US, with arrests this week at Yale and New York universities.

Mother Jones has put together a list of universities where students have set up encampments to protest and demand universities divest from companies that are closely linked to Israel’s military operations.

They include:

• New York University, where NYPD arrested a number of people on Monday night. NYU professors wrote an open letter signed by the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at the university denying that any NYU-affiliated protesters had engaged in antisemitism or intimidation of others via the demonstration, and decrying heavy-handed tactics by the police. The letter said NYU leadership’s decision to call the New York police department was “capricious” and noted that many protesters were people of color and that the NYPD had a history of brutality against this demographic.
• The New School in New York, where students reportedly set up camp on Sunday during an event for new students. The New School called the encampment “unauthorized” in a statement.
• Yale University, where at least 47 protesters were arrested on Monday evening. Several hundred people had been protesting at Yale, including hunger strikers. Craig Birckhead-Morton, 21, who participated in the encampment protest at Yale’s Beinecke Plaza, told the Guardian of his arrest: “We were very surprised. We had built a very peaceful, safe community space where students could engage in discourse with each other, where New Haven and Connecticut community members could come onto the campus and engage with us.” He said the university is still in possession of his belongings from the encampment.
• Emerson College, MIT, and Tufts University in Boston. “We were definitely inspired by what’s going on at Columbia,” Owen Buxton, an Emerson College student, told the Boston Globe. “They put out the call for universities across the country, and we answered.”
• The University of Michigan, where about 40 students set up an encampment, according to the student-run newspaper The Michigan Daily.
• University of California, Berkeley, where students set up a protest camp on Monday, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. About 40 tents were set up by midday on Tuesday. Palestinian flags hung on the tents at Upper Sproul Plaza, which has historically hosted protests on campus. A large sign hung on the building reads: “Gaza Solidarity Encampment Until UC Divests.” “We are demanding a direct acknowledgment and condemnation of this genocide,” Matt Kovac, a member of the UC Berkeley Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, told the Guardian. “We take inspiration and we stand in solidarity with our colleagues, our fellow students and workers, at Columbia and Yale.”