First faculty-led Gaza protest encampment set up in NY
Faculty members of The New School, a private university in New York, on Wednesday set up a pro-Palestine encampment in the lobby of the campus building near Union Square in what’s reportedly the first faculty-led protest in the United States. The New School Free Press reported that protesting staff are calling for measures such as divestment from weapons manufacturing companies, dismissal of charges against student protesters and the removal of New York police on campus. About 20 professors occupied the lobby with tents and banners reading "Faculty Against Genocide."  The staff at The New School named their encampment after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet and professor, who was killed in an airstrike in December 2023. This comes almost a week after after police cleared an earlier encampment and arrested around 40 students who were subsequently suspended from the New School. Tensions have ratcheted up in standoffs with protesters on campuses across the United States, with more than 2,500 people arrested. Some colleges cracked down immediately, while others have tolerated the demonstrations. Some have begun to lose patience and call in the police over concerns about disruptions to campus life and safety. In Boston, police detained several people on Thursday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after demonstrators blocked a parking garage in their ongoing protest movement connected to the Israel-Hamas war. Protesters have been asking administrators to end all research contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which they estimate total US$11 million since 2015. On Thursday, the school issued an alert just before 2 pm local time, saying protesters were blocking the entrance to a campus parking garage and spilling onto a nearby street. About two hours later, authorities split protesters up and pushed them away from the garage. At least three people were detained. Protesters walked away continuing to chant “free Palestine.”  MIT officials said later Thursday that fewer than 10 people were arrested by MIT police during the incident and the Stata Garage and Vassar Street were reopened. Hannah Didehbani, an MIT student and one of the leaders of the protest, said the decision to block the garage was part of a larger effort to bring attention to what she described as MIT’s complicity with the Israeli military. Didehbani said she has been issued a suspension and an eviction notice by the school but said MIT cannot suspend the larger student movement. “They’d much rather do those things than cut ties to a state that is currently enacting a genocide,” she said. (Xinhua, AP)