Brown University investigating anti-Israel students, groups over conduct protesting vote against BDS

The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the Corporation’s trustees from the area and shouted expletives at them.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Brown University has launched investigations of anti-Israel groups and individual students following their riotous conduct during a protest of the Brown Corporation that was held on Friday.

Staged outside the Warren Alpert Medical School to inveigh against the Corporation’s recent rejection of a proposal to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — the demonstration saw the Ivy League students engage in harassment and intimidation, according to a community notice first shared by the Brown Daily Herald and later obtained by The Algemeiner.

The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the Corporation’s trustees from the area, shouted expletives at them, and even lodged a “a racial epithet … toward a person of color.”

Other trustees were stalked to their destinations while some were obstructed from entering their bus, according to the missive by Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and executive vice president of planning and policy.

The official added that the students — many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has links to terrorist organizations, and its spin-off, Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) — harmed not only the trustees but also the university as an institution of higher learning.

“No member of the Brown community would want or expect to be treated in the manner some of our members experienced on Friday, and it was troubling to read in media reports the express intent of some organizers to provoke discomfort that ultimately targeted individuals,” Carey wrote. “Disciplinary sanctions will be imposed where violations of conduct codes are found.”

He added, “As we continue to navigate challenging times on campus and in the nation, our resolve and our principles as a compassionate learning community will continue to be tested. I am hopeful that members of the Brown community will engage in discussion with each other about these challenges and commit to treat each other with respect and dignity.”

Speaking to the Herald, anti-Israel activists denied any wrongdoing and accused Carey of inciting an “attempt to attack and defame student protesters holding the Corporation accountable to their decision to continue to invest in companies enabling genocide and apartheid.”

Framing themselves as victims, the students added that the Brown Corporation should be “deeply ashamed.”

As The Algemeiner previously reported, Brown University earlier this month voted down a proposal — muscled onto the agenda of its annual meeting by an anti-Zionist group which attempted to hold the university hostage with threats of illegal demonstrations and other misconduct — to divest from 10 companies linked to Israel.

“The Corporation also discussed the broader issue of whether taking a stance on a geopolitical issue through divestment is consistent with Brown’s mission of education and scholarship. The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts,” university president Christina Paxson and Brown Corporation chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a letter commenting on the vote.

“Whether you support, oppose, or have no opinion on the decision of the Corporation, we hope you will do so with a commitment to sustaining, nurturing, and strengthening the principles that have long been at the core of our teaching and learning community.”

Pro-Hamas students continue to act on their vow to escalate unruly behavior on college campuses across the country, drawing reprisals from administrators determined to avoid a repeat of the events of last academic year, when the “activists” commandeered administrative buildings and illegally occupied campus property.

Last week, Pomona College in Claremont, California levied severe disciplinary sanctions, ranging from expulsion to banishment, against 12 students who participated in illegally occupying and vandalizing the Carnegie Hall administrative building on the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The news was first reported by an Instagram accounted operated by Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA), the group which led the assault on the building.

PDfA acknowledged that “property crimes” were perpetrated but maintained that the college lacked evidence to identify the offenders.

Noting that PDfA members concealed their identities with masks, it charged that Pomona president G. Gabrielle Starr has resorted to “indiscriminately” punishing minority students, as well as depriving them of housing and food, for the sake of upholding fascism.

Starr, who is an African American woman, told a different story, however, accusing the group of “violation of our collective life on campus” in a statement which noted that the pro-Hamas student group was aided by non-student adults who managed to gain access to the campus.

“The destruction in Carnegie Hall was extensive, and the harm done to individuals and our mission was so great,” Starr wrote.

“Starting this week, disciplinary letters are going out to students from Pomona and other Claremont Colleges who have been identified as taking part in the takeover of Carnegie Hall. Student groups affiliated with this incident are also under investigation.”

Other potential Islamist-inspired crimes perpetrated by students at Harvard University and Princeton University to mark the one year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught have not yet led to disciplinary charges.

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