‘Decisions under fire’: US college campuses try a mix of tactics as pro-Palestine protest grow

Boston: Wearing riot helmets and carrying zip ties, Boston police officers moved in one day this past week and surrounded a group of pro-Palestinian protesters on a grassy patch of Northeastern University’s campus. Six police wagons were idling nearby, and an officer had issued a terse warning. Mass arrests looked imminent.

Then, without explanation, the riot police packed up and left.

The sudden end to the standoff produced cheers from the protesters and confusion for those who had been bracing for chaos. In recent days, police officers have rushed in to break up student encampments at the University of Southern California, Arizona State University, Ohio State University and other colleges. At Emory University in Atlanta, officers used pepper balls and wrestled protesters to the ground, ultimately arresting 28 people.

On quads and lawns from coast to coast, colleges are grappling with a groundswell of student activism over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Administrators are having to make controversial decisions over whether to call in the police and are often criticised regardless of the route they take.

“They don’t seem to have a clear strategy,” said Jennie Stephens, a professor at Northeastern who attended the protest there to support the students. “I think there’s this inclination to kind of control what’s happening on campus, but then that’s balanced with the optics — or the violence, or the real harm done to students or faculty or staff or others if there are arrests.”

Hundreds of protesters have been arrested across the country. Police and protesters have reported being injured at some college demonstrations, but in many cases, the arrests have been peaceful, and protesters have often willingly given themselves up when officers move in.

At Northeastern on Thursday, about 100 protesters had linked arms in a circle around a half-dozen tents on a lawn known as the Centennial Common.

The dean of students and the university police had warned protesters that they would be considered trespassers if they did not produce a student ID. The dean then went around the circle asking students for the cards; some showed them, but many did not.

A university spokesperson, Renata Nyul, said in an email that the Boston Police Department had ultimately made the decision for its officers to leave without making arrests.

Then, around dawn Saturday, Massachusetts State Police officers arrived and began to arrest protesters after all, putting them in zip-tie handcuffs and taking several tents down. The state police said that 102 protesters who had refused to leave were arrested and would be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Nyul said Northeastern had made the decision to have the protesters arrested after the demonstration was “infiltrated by professional organizers.” She also said that someone in the protest had said, “Kill the Jews,” the night before. Protesters denied both claims.

A video appeared to show that it was a pro-Israel counterprotester who used the phrase, as part of his criticism of the protesters’ chants. In response to that video, Nyul said that “any suggestion that repulsive, antisemitic comments are sometimes acceptable depending on the context is reprehensible.”

Pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses have swiftly multiplied since Columbia University students launched theirs this month. They have at times drawn ire from students and faculty, who complain about what they see as antisemitic chants and a lack of safety for Jewish students, and off campus, from supporters of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

So far, more than 34,000 Palestinians have died during the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza, a response to an attack led by Hamas on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 250 people were taken hostage.

At Columbia, where the president was already under fire from Republicans in Congress, the administration took an aggressive approach at first, calling in the New York Police Department, which arrested more than 100 people and removed tents. But students quickly returned, pitching new tents and vowing to stay.

This time, rather than calling in the police again, Columbia officials are negotiating with the protesters.

“We called on NYPD to clear an encampment once, but we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community,” Columbia leaders said in a campus message Friday night. “Having said that, we also need to continue to enforce our own rules and ensure that those who violate the norms of our community face consequences.”

But at Emory University, where police arrested students and faculty members Thursday, the university’s president, Gregory Fenves, said flatly afterward that the institution would “not tolerate vandalism, violence or any attempt to disrupt our campus through the construction of encampments.”

Nicholas Dirks, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, said there were few more challenging decisions for a university leader than whether to summon police, in part because outside law enforcement officers may use tactics far different from those of a campus police force.

“University presidents are assumed to have total power and control, so bringing in an external police force, you know the first thing that’s going to happen is you lose control over the situation,” said Dirks, who was a senior administrator at Columbia before he took charge at Berkeley in 2013.

At Berkeley, he said, he had been extremely reluctant to bring in off-campus police officers, except when there appeared to be credible threats of violence.

“You’re in a kind of crisis situation, so you are balancing what is partial, always incomplete information with a kind of time urgency where you really feel you have to make very, very quick decisions, and it’s not the best time to make clear calls,” Dirks said.

“They are decisions under fire,” he added.