Reactions to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses

Reactions to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses
Part of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses and the Gaza war protests
Top to bottom: Officers arresting a pro-Palestinian protester at the Ohio State University Gaza Solidarity Encampment, April 25, 2024 State troopers occupy parts of UT Austin campus to confront protesters, April 2024
Date	April 17, 2024 (2024-04-17) – present (1 year, 5 months and 2 weeks)
Location	Global; primarily in Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States

Pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses escalated in April 2024, spreading in the United States and other countries, as part of wider Gaza war protests. With over 3,100 protesters arrested in the U.S., universities suspended and expelled student protesters, in some cases evicting them from campus housing, and relied on police to forcibly disband occupations.

Most universities in the spring attempted to negotiate a disbandment of the encampments, often threatening police sweeps to force an agreement. Many universities initiated disciplinary proceedings against protesters, accusing them of breaking student codes of conduct, before employing police sweeps. Police departments in the U.S. employed a range of tactics, including dispersing crowds using horses and police in riot gear, deploying pepper balls, using tasers, mass arrests, tear gas, clearing unauthorized encampments, and beating both students and professors. Police also assaulted, arrested and restricted access for some journalists. The police response to the protests was criticized by some Democrats and human rights organizations. By fall 2024, many universities had strengthened their restrictions on protests, including more than 100 colleges and universities, and several schools had banned camping on their grounds among other restrictions.

Over 200 groups expressed support for the protests, as well as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, various members of Congress, several labor unions, hundreds of university staff in the United Kingdom, and Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Protests were otherwise condemned by leaders including President Joe Biden, Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; as well as concern raised from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Most universities that faced encampment protests in the spring attempted to negotiate a settlement and disbandment of the encampments with student leaders, often threatening police sweeps to force an agreement. In some cases, the end of the school year allowed administrators to reverse course on agreements they had negotiated, such as at the University of Oregon, Northwestern, and Rutgers New Brunswick.^[1] Many universities initially initiated disciplinary proceedings against protesters, accusing them of breaking student codes of conduct.^[2]

Students at New York University (NYU) were required to write "coerced confessions of wrongdoing" in order to have disciplinary charges against them dropped.^[3] Graduate student Dan Zeno was among more than 20 students Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suspended for participating in the protests. He was evicted from campus housing along with his wife and daughter. Some students who faced suspensions were banned from campus and were unable to take their final exams.^[4] UC Santa Cruz officials issued two-week campus bans to many of the 110 protesters arrested during a campus demonstration in May, leaving them without housing and access to campus resources.^[5] The City College of New York shut down its community food pantry in response to protests.^[6][7] In Greece, nine protesters from European countries were arrested at the Athens University Law School and faced deportation in May.^[8]

As students returned to campus in fall 2024 after a wave of protests in the spring, many universities strengthened their restrictions on student protests and political activities, including limits on where and when protests could occur, and prohibitions on student encampments.^[9] More than 100 colleges and university systems tightened their rules about protests on their property.^[1] Several schools banned camping on their grounds, required protesters to register with the administration in advance of any demonstrations, and banned the wearing of masks.^[10]

Cornell professor Risa Lieberwitz called the nationwide trend toward increased restrictions on campus protests "a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven't seen since the late 1960s".^[11] Case Western Reserve University limited permitted demonstrations to two hours during the daytime in a single location.^[12] The Middle East Studies Association said that although it was not compelled by a subpoena to do so, the University of Pennsylvania had turned over the CVs and syllabi of two professors to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and may also have given the committee access to their email and course communications.^[13]

Harvard updated its policy to prohibit overnight camping, chalk, and unapproved signs or displays.^[14] Indiana University (IU) updated its policies on August 1, prohibiting all "expressive activity" between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The American Civil Liberties Union sued IU over this policy, calling it "overly broad".^[15] NYU updated its nondiscrimination policy to prohibit criticism of Zionism, classifying it as a protected category.^[16] Columbia classified the use of the term "Zionist" to refer to Israelis or Jews as a form of harassment.^[17] At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, students who used bullhorns during their protest faced expulsion from the university due to a new policy against "loud chanting".^[18]

In August 2024, Carnegie Mellon University updated its policy to require protests, rallies, and other expressive events of more than 25 people to register the participants' names with the university in advance.^[19] Columbia suspended its due-process procedures for student discipline, notifying several dozen students charged with disciplinary infractions that scheduled interviews related to their cases were to be skipped and they would be fast-tracked into conduct hearings. This came after renewed congressional pressure and a subpoena on university records related to the protests.^[20] University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) introduced new regulations on campus protests that restrict "public expression activities" to areas around Bruinwalk and outside Murphy Hall. The new restrictions also banned tents and camping equipment, food distribution, amplified sound, and chalk, and require people on campus to identify themselves when asked to do so by a university official.^[21] Ahead of the fall semester, the University of California and California State University systems instituted broad new policies prohibiting encampments, barricades, overnight encampments, disguises, disruptions and restrictions on free movement.^[22]

In September 2024, the University of Vermont's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine sued the school after an interim suspension of the group continued into its fifth month.^[23] At Cornell, a graduate student with U.K. citizenship was suspended without due process and threatened with deportation for participating in a demonstration outside Statler Hotel, where a job fair that included recruiters from weapons manufacturing companies was being held.^[24] Maura Finkelstein became the first tenured Muhlenberg College professor to be fired over pro-Palestinian speech (tenured professor Sami Al-Arian had been fired in 2003, and scholar Steven Salaita in 2014). Finkelstein, who is Jewish, shared an Instagram post by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters with "Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. .. Don't normalize Zionism. Don't normalize Zionists taking up space." The college determined that she had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies.^[25][26]

In October 2024, The University of Michigan's governing board coordinated with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to file charges against pro-Palestinian protesters after local prosecutors proved unwilling to crack down. Campaign contributions and business relationships between Nessel and University of Michigan regents raised concerns over conflicts of interest in the prosecutions, as did contributions by pro-Israel lobbyists to Nessel's election campaigns.^[27] The university paid over $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to undercover investigators to surveil and intimidate pro-Palestinian campus groups.^[28]

The Hillel Foundation announced a partnership at over 50 campuses with the Secure Community Network called Operation Secure our Campuses, offering "full-time intelligence analysts [to] monitor campus developments and provide information and real-time support."^[14] At the University of Toronto, patrol teams with Magen Herut Canada monitored a pro-Palestinian protest.^[29] At Yale College, the Women's Center was notified that it would be required to adopt a policy of "broad neutrality" after the center was forced to indefinitely postpone an event titled "Pinkwashing and Feminism(s) in Gaza" due to fear of administrative disciplinary action.^[30] At UC Berkeley, law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote an opinion piece comparing antiwar protesters to the KKK. The board of the Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy condemned Chemerinsky's comparison, calling it "careless and intentionally inflammatory".^[31]

Police departments in the U.S. employed a range of tactics, including dispersing crowds using horses and police in riot gear, deploying pepper balls,^[32] using tasers,^[33][34] mass arrests,^[35][36] tear gas,^[34] clearing unauthorized encampments,^[33] and beating both students and professors.^[37] According to student newspaper The Lantern, state troopers with "long-range firearms" were also deployed at Ohio State University.^[38] Over 3,100 protesters were arrested in the U.S.^[39]

Police assaulted, arrested and restricted access for some journalists while they were covering the protests.^[40] Police used force when arresting faculty who were taking part in or observing the protests, including the former chair of Dartmouth College's Jewish studies department, who was slammed to the ground while "in a line of women faculty in their 60s to 80s trying to protect our students", and two members of the faculty at Emory University, one of whom was charged with battery after being "violently arrested" on video.^[41][42]

On June 10, UCLA police severely wounded a student with a non-lethal projectile, giving him a heart contusion and a bruised lung. In September, UCLA police sought approval to double their stockpile of pepper balls and sponge rounds and obtain eight new projectile launchers and three drones.^[43] In October, Penn Police raided the off-campus home of pro-Palestinian student protesters, saying they were executing a search warrant related to vandalism. Student organizers said rifles and handguns were pointed at them during the raid, and that police refused to tell them their badge numbers or show their warrant.^[44]

According to Erik Baker, the most severe crackdowns on campus protests took place at "wealthy schools ... that have been in long-running and occasionally violent conflict with the working-class communities of color that border them", such as the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, The University of Southern California, and Columbia.^[6]

A report by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that police interventions at U.S. student protests linked to conflict issues surged fourfold in April. Authorities notably increased arrests and forcible dispersals, especially at protests where there were counter-demonstrators. Nonetheless, at events where student protesters were unchallenged, the police were more likely to act against pro-Palestine rallies, doing so over four times more often than against pro-Israel ones.^[45][46] Police repression of protesters, particularly in the U.S., has been characterized as unusually harsh.^[47][48]

The New York Times reported that though more than 3,000 student protesters were arrested across the U.S., most charges were dropped,^[49] and the vast majority of charges were misdemeanors or lower offenses.^[50] Prosecutors usually either decided to prioritize other cases or calculated that jurors would be receptive to First Amendment arguments.^[49][50] Students who had charges dropped often faced significant academic consequences, such as suspension or withheld diplomas.^[49] Schools with hundreds of arrests often had students waiting for cases to resolve.^[50]

A number of influential business leaders, including Daniel Lubetzky, Daniel Loeb, Len Blavatnik, Joseph Sitt, Howard Schultz, Michael Dell, Bill Ackman, Joshua Kushner, Ted Deutch and Yakir Gabay coordinated an effort in a WhatsApp group chat to urge Mayor Adams to crack down on the encampment at Columbia. They offered to pay for private investigators to assist police, and made donations to Adams's 2025 campaign.^[51]

The Group of Eight, of which the universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, Monash and ANU are part, has sought legal advice on using terms such as "intifada" and "from the river to the sea", and has said it would ban those phrases if given definitive legal advice that they are unlawful. It said such phrases are "deeply offensive to many in the Jewish community". It sent a letter to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus asking for legal advice on whether these phrases violate Commonwealth law.^[52] Dreyfus wrote back that he does not give legal advice, noting the universities were taking external legal advice. He added that Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 "makes it a civil offence to do a public act that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origins. A person aggrieved by an alleged act of racial discrimination can make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission". Sydney and Monash urged students not to use the phrases, but stopped short of banning them.^[53]

Jewish staff and students at the University of Queensland created an alternative Camp Shalom in the Great Court. which ran from 29 April to 10 May.^[54]

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton has raised concerns that protests could become violent, like they have in the US. He said he is meeting with university security. He said the police do not want the "existing tension" and that universities must consider "how much more risk they're accepting by allowing these encampments to continue".^[55] Deputy Commissioner Neil Paterson wrote to the vice chancellors of the University of Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, Deakin and La Trobe, asking them to "carefully consider the risks" of allowing the encampments to continue. Organizers downplayed the risk of violence or escalation, saying the campuses are safe and that the encampments are a peaceful protest for the Palestinian people.^[56] Universities have resisted the calls for the police to end to the protests, with the Group of Eight saying the encampments are held on public land and that police are free to enter at any time, with the universities having acted appropriately to breaches of the law, saying they are "in the business of de-escalation" and not wanting to see violence erupt, as it has in the US.^[56] Police are being called "daily" to protests, with incidents of harassment and violence being investigated at Monash and Deakin.^[57]

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has taken a neutral stance on the protests, saying he is worried about social cohesion. Albanese has criticized usage of the phrase "from the river to the sea", calling it "provocative" and agreeing when asked whether it is a "very violent statement".^[58][59] Education Minister Jason Clare has expressed concern about students feeling unsafe, saying, "I want more people to go to university, not less". He said that whilst there will always be protests in a democracy, there is no place for bigotry, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.^[60]

The Greens have expressed support for the protests. On May 2, The Greens NSW issued a statement expressing solidarity with the encampment at the University of Sydney calling for the government to increase pressure on Israel to achieve a permanent ceasefire and calling for universities to cut ties with Israeli universities and weapons manufacturers supplying Israel.^[61] After the first attack on the Monash camp, the Victorian Greens issued a statement that universities and police must better protect protesters.^[62] Greens MPs have attended pro-Palestine protests since the start of the war.^[63]

Liberal/National Coalition leader Peter Dutton has been sharply critical of the protests, calling universities that are allowing them to continue "weak". He said Prime Minister Albanese "needs to stand up and show some backbone here and call for an end to these nonsense protests".^[64] Other Coalition members have been similarly critical, with education spokesperson Sarah Henderson and senior frontbencher Michael Sukkar saying the protests should be forcibly broken up. Henderson said universities should be fined if they do not do so. She has called for a Senate enquiry into antisemitism at universities.^[65][66] On May 9, Dutton compared the protesters chants of "from the river to the sea" to "what Hitler chanted in the '30s", in response to Education Minister Jason Clare saying the chants of "from the river to the sea" and "intifada" mean "different things to different people". A Jewish group formed after the start of the war, the Jewish Council of Australia, set up in opposition to other peak Jewish bodies in Australia such as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry with regards to support of Israel and the weaponization of antisemitism, said Dutton's interpretations were "a very bad-faith reading" of the chants.^[67][68]

With encampments taking place at institutions and concern over what the president of the Union of Jewish Students described as rising antisemitism on campuses, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a meeting with vice chancellors of higher education institutions.^[82] In response, academics accused Sunak of "scaremongering". According to The Guardian, "Vice-chancellors insist they have no desire to quell challenge or stop difficult discussions on their campuses, arguing that this is part of the core purpose of a university". Vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England Steve West said there "was no evidence" that UK protests were "getting out of hand" and called on the government to avoid inflaming the situation.^[83] The president of advocacy group Universities UK, Dame Sally Mapstone, said universities "may need to take action" but that there "should be no presumption universities would clear protest encampments".^[84] The New York Times reported that authorities took a more "permissive approach" to protests on campuses, with an emphasis on facilitating free speech, and that British polling indicates that a majority supports a ceasefire.^[85]

Many academics have supported students' demands and expressed solidarity with the protests. Hundreds of university employees, including 300 at Cambridge University^[85] and staff at Oxford and Edinburgh universities, signed open letters in support of the encampments and accusing their institutions of complicity in the Israeli attacks.^[83] At Durham University, over 200 university staff signed an open letter in support of the protest there on Palace Green and called on the university to negotiate with the protestors.^[86] At Leeds University, members of the Universities and Colleges Union that represents academic and professional staff called for "teach outs" to be held at the encampment.^[83] Twelve Jewish staff members at Oxford wrote an open letter disputing the university's claim that the encampment was intimidating to Jewish staff and students and saying that the university had ignored Jewish people who supported the encampment.^[87]

Durham University was accused of failing to support free speech after a debate at the Durham Union on the topic "This house believes that the Palestinian leadership is the biggest barrier to peace" was postponed on police advice of a threat to public safety, with pro-Palestinian protesters blocking the entrance to the building. One of the scheduled speakers in favor of the motion said the university had refused to give police permission to take action against the protesters, while another said the university had "cav[ed] in to a fascist mob".^[88] The Durham student paper Palatinate noted that "even this protest remained remarkably peaceful".^[89]

After protesters set up an encampment at Birmingham University, the university ordered them to leave the premises on May 14, describing the occupation as trespassing.^[90] According to The Telegraph, this was the first time one of the 20 student encampments in the UK had been ordered to disperse.^[91] Protesters said they were "threatened with police action".^[90] Birmingham University began legal action to remove the encampment on June 11.^[92] The encampment within the Marshall Building at the London School of Economics was evicted on June 17 following a court order on June 14, making it the first UK encampment to be removed following legal action.^[93][94] Queen Mary University of London also began court action against its encampment.^[95] Elsewhere, encampments disbanded voluntarily at Swansea in early June, citing "significant wins" including divestment from Barclays Bank,^[95] at Imperial College on June 20,^[96] and at Durham on June 21.^[97] On June 23, Oxford University erected a fence around the encampment outside the Pitt Rivers Museum (one of two camps at the university), leading the protesters to abandon the camp on June 25, with some saying they had been denied access to toilets and bathrooms. The university dismantled the camp shortly afterwards.^[98]

On July 7, The Guardian reported that "Of the 36 encampments in England, Wales and Scotland at the end of May, around a dozen are still active", with the others having dispersed due to hostility from their institutions and waning enthusiasm following the end of the academic year. Those remaining included encampments at Birmingham, Bristol, QMUL and SOAS in London, Nottingham, Newcastle, Oxford, and Reading, with many of these facing legal action or the threat of legal action.^[99] On July 8, Oxford Action for Palestine announced that the second encampment, outside the Radcliffe Camera, had been disbanded following threats of legal action from the university.^[100] On July 10, the universities of Birmingham and Nottingham won separate legal cases resulting in summary possession orders against the encampments established on their campuses.^[101] The camp at QMUL was also removed following a court order on July 10.^[102] The Reading encampment closed voluntarily on May 31 after being asked to leave by the university but without legal action being taken.^[103] The Bristol encampment ended in mid-July after winning the first stage of a legal case brought by the university but unable to afford the legal fees necessary to continue their defense.^[104] University College London was awarded a summary possession order on August 6 against the campus established in the quad of the UCL Main Building on May 2.^[105]

Rebecca Karl, a professor at NYU, said that historically, "there have been a number of confrontations that have been dealt with by universities in ways that stress that we are not a violent institution... I'm personally very concerned".^[106] Wadie Said, a professor at the University of Colorado, said, "The First Amendment is the hallmark of freedom.. You see that being curtailed based on viewpoint discrimination, which is something not supposed to be allowed under the First Amendment".^[107] Jeremi Suri, a UT Austin professor, said, "I witnessed the police—the state police, the campus police, the city police—an army of police... stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students".^[108]

Jody Armour, a professor at USC, said, "We need to stop allowing people to weaponise anti-Semitism against real, valid protests."^[109] In reference to protesters, John McWhorter, a Columbia professor, said, "I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic", adding that there is "a fine line between questioning Israel's right to exist and questioning Jewish people's right to exist" but that "some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it".^[110] Randall Kuhn, a UCLA professor, said, "I find it repugnant to sit by while Palestinian professors are being killed, while academic buildings are being bombed relentlessly."^[111]

In September 2024, the Council of UC Faculty Associations filed an official complaint against the University of California system, saying faculty were being targeted if they spoke out against the war in Gaza.^[112] In October 2024, 25 professors at Harvard University held a silent "study-in" protest at Widener Library, leading to a two-week suspension from the library.^[113]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Afaf Nasher criticized the use of police force to break up the protests, saying it undermined academic freedom. Civil rights advocates such as the