Two US colleges crack down on anti-Israel protestors

Swarthmore College has police arrest masked demonstrators, while NYU Law bans 31 protestors from campus.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Two U.S. colleges cracked down on anti-Israel protestors on Saturday, saying their actions were against university rules.

In Swarthmore College, a small, four-day-old encampment set up by a suspended chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, was taken down and nine people were arrested.

The participants had first been warned several times to disband as they were violating school policy by having their protest tents on the lawn.

Not only did they refuse to obey, they continued calling on social media for more people to join them.

On Thursday, staff members of the Pennsylvania school found that portions of the campus were vandalized. They gave all those in the encampment trespass notices, saying that if they did not leave by 1 a.m. on Saturday, they would be arrested.

While some left, others remained. Several among them also refused to take off their masks and identify themselves to school personnel when asked, which was another violation and “posed a safety risk,” said President Val Smith.

“With rising concerns about safety and security on campus, a continued and growing presence of individuals unaffiliated with the College, warnings from outside law enforcement agencies, and no signs that protestors were willing to engage in conversation that would bring the encampment to an end, I felt we had no choice but to seek outside assistance from local law enforcement,” Smith said in a statement.

Of the nine eventually arrested, only one was a current student.

Two others were handed interim suspension notices, and their actions will be investigated internally to see what further action would be taken against them.

In another part of the tri-state area, New York University School of Law banned 31 pro-Palestinian students from its campus over their participation in two sit-ins.

The first was in March, in support of a group of students who were suspended in December for occupying the university president’s office to demand that the school divest from Israel.

As a result, 28 students’ ID cards were disabled, making access to many university buildings and services very difficult.

The second took place last week to protest this punitive action, and three more were added to the original group, with all of them subsequently receiving an email labeling them “persona non grata” (PNG).

The PNG would only be removed if the students signed a “Use of Space Agreement” promising not to “participate in any protest activity or disruptive activity on Law School property,” the school said.

The email noted that the group was under investigation “for failing to comply with directives from public safety, including to leave the areas of their sit-ins, and of disruptive conduct,” according to a report in The Intercept.

The timing of this move is key, as exam week begins today (Monday).

Several students and faculty members protested the school’s actions, telling The Intercept that they were discriminatory, as sit-ins were officially permitted on campus.

When they occurred on subjects other than the Israel-Hamas war, such as a staged “die-in” connected to the Black Lives Matter movement, or when calling for NYU to divest from fossil fuels, there were no repercussions against participants, they said.

“The truth is,” said one student who received a PNG notice, “that no site or forum is acceptable to the university when it comes to pro-Palestine speech.”