NEW YORK – Pro-Palestinian protesters who were blocked by police from entering a camp on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through remaining fences there, armed themselves with weapons and surrounded tents as Columbia University held its university-wide commencement ceremony in canceled pro-Palestinian protests in the next weeks.
Sam Ihns, an MIT graduate student studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group has been within the camp for 2 weeks and has called for an end to the killing of 1000’s of individuals in Gaza.
“Specifically, our camp protests MIT’s direct research relationships with the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” he said.
Protesters also sat in the midst of Massachusetts Avenue, blocking the road during rush hour within the Boston area.
The demonstrations at Columbia have rocked the campus, and officials said Monday that while the most important ceremony is not going to happen, students will give you the chance to have fun at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.
The decision comes as universities across the country battle over the best way to handle freshmen for college students whose highschool graduations in 2020 were derailed by COVID-19. Another campus rocked by protests, Emory University, announced Monday that it could move its commencement program from its Atlanta campus to a suburban arena. Others, including the University of Michigan, Indiana University and Northeastern, have held the ceremonies without much disruption.
Colombia's decision to cancel its most important ceremonies scheduled for May 15 spares its President Minouche Shafik the necessity to offer a commencement speech in the identical a part of campus where police broke up a protest camp last week. The Ivy League school in Upper Manhattan said it made the choice after discussions with students.
“Our students emphasized that these smaller school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families,” officials said.
Most ceremonies planned for the south lawn of the most important campus, where encampments were demolished last week, might be held about 5 miles (8 kilometers) north on the Columbia Sports Complex, officials said.
Speakers at a few of Columbia's upcoming graduation ceremonies include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames and Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Director of the National Institutes of Health.
Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. In recent weeks, greater than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested camping on Columbia's green spaces or occupying an instructional constructing.
Similar camps emerged elsewhere as universities struggled to attract the road between allowing free expression and maintaining protected and inclusive campuses.
The University of Southern California previously canceled its most important graduation ceremony. Students left their camp at USC on Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest.
Other universities have held graduation ceremonies under increased security. The University of Michigan ceremony was punctuated by several chants on Saturday. In Boston, some students waved small Palestinian or Israeli flags at Northeastern University's graduation ceremony in Fenway Park on Sunday.
Emory's ceremonies, scheduled for May 13, might be held on the GasSouth Arena and Convocation Center in Duluth, nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of the university's Atlanta campus, President Gregory Fenves said in an open letter.
“Please know that this decision was not made lightly,” Fenves wrote. “It was created in close consultation with the Emory Police Department, security consultants and other authorities – each of whom advised against holding commencement events on our campus.”
The 16,000-student university is one in every of many who has seen repeated protests stemming from the conflict that began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians took around 250 hostages. Student protesters are calling on their schools to divest from firms that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort.
Promising to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive within the Gaza Strip that killed greater than 34,500 Palestinians within the Hamas-controlled area, about two-thirds of them women and youngsters, in response to the Health Ministry. Israeli attacks have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its residents.
Hamas announced on Monday that it was accepting an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, but Israel said the deal didn’t meet its “core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an attack on the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
“Ceasefires are temporary,” said Selina Al-Shihabi, a sophomore at Georgetown University who attended a protest in George Washington. “There may be a ceasefire, but the US government will continue to arm the Israeli military. We plan to stay here until the university splits up or until they drag us out of here.”
At the University of California, San Diego, police cleared an encampment and arrested greater than 64 people, including 40 students.
Due to ongoing disruption following the dismantling of a warehouse last week, the University of California, Los Angeles has moved all classes online all week. University police reported 44 arrests but didn’t provide specific details, UCLA spokesman Eddie North-Hager said in an email to The Associated Press.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago said in a Facebook post Sunday that it had offered protesters “amnesty from academic sanctions and trespassing charges” in the event that they moved.
“Many protesters left the premises of their own accord after police informed them they were trespassing and threatened arrest,” the college said. “Those who remained were arrested after multiple requests to leave, including some we recognized as SAIC students.”
A bunch of school and staff on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called on the administration to grant amnesty to all students arrested and suspended during recent protests. The UNC Justice in Palestine faculty and staff said in a media release that they might deliver a letter on behalf of greater than 500 faculty supporting the coed activists.
Other universities took a unique approach.
Harvard University Interim President Alan Garber warned students that those that attend a pro-Palestinian camp in Harvard Yard could face “involuntary furlough.” That means they won't be allowed on campus, could lose their student housing and should not give you the chance to take exams, Garber said.
LeBlanc reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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