Um So about a few minutes before that happened, I've been coming down here to observe in hopes that the president had not called in Atlanta police that it was just Emory police observing a peaceful protest. And then as soon as I got here, I saw the state troopers coming in and the colleague pointed out that the A PD was here when you saw that there was another agency besides Emory Police. What were your concerns that this would escalate? This would become um bedlam and mayhem and it did immediately. So immediately I think some students were, I wasn't sure I was, I was standing kind of right by the fight pole. And um and it seemed that I was stashed over there and I walked towards the flagpole because I saw something going on with a bunch of police had attacked a young person and threw them on the ground and we were just pummeling them, just pummeling and pummeling. And I, the mother in me said, stop, stop. And I just, and I made sure to stand 4 ft away from them. And I was standing still in a non confrontational way. I said, stop and the one of the cops stood up and got right in front of me and said, ma'am, you need to step back, you need to step back. And I was watching them pummeled somebody. I said no, and they arrested me. So that, that little viral thing happened when, um, I was being pulled off and somebody had asked me like, who are you, what's going on? Can I help? I mean, you've become the face sort of in the last 24 hours of that clash that I'm folded after all of this. How does that feel? Well, I think there's one misconception. So I've gotten really mostly 99.9% positive loving things from all over the world. Um And the misconception is that they say thank you for standing up for Gaza. I have my own complicated sets of views about the conflict and I think that what is happening is horrific, the conflict. At the same time, I was here standing up for students and their freedom of expression. And I wanted to have an opportunity for a peaceful expression of their views and peaceful dissent. That was, that was my concern. So what I'm happy to be able to raise, to raise awareness that universities across the country. It's not, this is not an issue of Israel or Gaza. This is an issue of higher education administrators clamping down on free expression and de and delegitimizing any kind of dissent in the one way of delegitimizing. It happened last year when they said, oh, they're a bunch of antis which was false. Another way to delegitimize it is to say, oh, there were outside agitators and that's false. There were perhaps some students here from other universities but the students that I've spoken with who are organizing it are Emory students that I've known for years. You said it was the mother and you weren't part of the protest as it started. It was the mother and you that came out here that said this isn't right. Well, it was the professor and me that came out to make sure that our students were protected. But when I saw that young person being pummeled, it was horrific. I mean, it felt like it went on forever punching and rolling and knocking and punching and this child was just, their head was like this and trying to protect themselves. I don't know how long it went on, but that was just a human being saying stop it. And when they said, ma you need to step away. No human being is going to step away. Yeah. Tell me about what happened in those moments after you were taken away. So they, they handcuffed me and they took me over down behind this building on the left that was like a little road and they had all the people they were arresting, gathered over there and all these police Emory police Atlanta police and they were dividing up the group between the ones who were, um, Emory people, the ones who are outsider people and deciding to charge the Emory people with disorderly conduct and the others with criminal trespassing. So, um, what did you face, uh, disorderly conduct? So I got written up and I have a court date coming up next month and then I, they put me in the van, they pp me and had me sit in there where there was five other people in the van, who else was in the van. Um Actually there were eight, so four females on the one side and the males on the other side, four on each side. Did you? Yeah. Um II, I met people, I met another faculty member who I believe has stayed there overnight. Uh And her story was that she didn't even know what this protest was. She was walking by and then saw somebody being attacked and tried to protect that person. To what? Yeah, you can you tell me about how the officers treated you. You were being taken off. You were being a man. What was your interaction with? Like it was very hostile. Um Like demeaning. Well, you didn't obey you disregarded them. She that if just to even question the police power was a violation. My disorderly conduct was that I stood there, I stood on my campus, I stood to prevent somebody being beaten to death. So that was disorderly conduct. So the police can construe whatever they want to be as disorderly. They have all the power to do that. Construed this other faculty member as assaulting a police officer when she was trying to protect the student. So I find that awful, I mean, police do that. But what's really bad here is that the president of the university or his office did this? The police will do their thing but the president of the university called them. So, so the larger issue is it's not about the police because police will be police but about a university administration that called the police on our campus. If it was just the Emory police here, this would not have happened. It was when they called Atlanta police, the state troopers knowing that they would use excessive force, brutal force to clear the campus and from what I understand it happened, I was gone on the way but the moment that we were all taken off, they just cleared away the campus. Yeah. Do you feel like it in higher ups had not called a PD? This wouldn't have transpired if, yeah, if they, if they had not called them, it's not none of this would have happened. I mean, the students would be demonstrating, they might still be here. There might be an annoyance, they might be violating a rule about private property or something. But I mean, this is a moment in the world because of world history that students are occupying campuses to call for attention to this, what they find to be an egregious horrific issue. So, I mean, students in a way are the conscience of our culture. And if, if, if this is a year, this is a season in which students are doing this, we let them do it. I I think they find if we need to move commitment somewhere else. So, yeah, we were talking about this in the meeting. Um This has been going on at college campuses throughout the country. We've seen some faculty members in, involved in the protest. Um But do you think that it's more so these faculty members are protecting their communities, are protecting their students and that's what we're seeing more often with this. Yes. The most of the faculty, you know, have a pretty nuanced view of the crisis in the Middle East, I mean, nuanced and still condemn things. But, and as, as I was walking over here and, you know, yesterday, I thought, well, this is kind of funny because when I was in my twenties, I would be in that group protesting. But in it at this season of my life, my job is to protect the students and to protect freedom of expression, to exp express, to protect academic freedom, I can do that better than they can do that. So, and I think that's what we're seeing with faculty all over, like um both wanting to protect the students and wanting to call out administrations that are actually putting the students at risk. You know, another thing is that I think we can have better leadership. And when all of this happened, this could have been an opportunity for to help students develop the skills of talking across differences, learning to deliberate with people they disagree with, to kind of create some sort of spaces for um conversation and deliberation instead by calling some students anti Semites, they just heightened, the polarization made it worse. So that, I mean that, so I think what we're seeing the faculty around the country, Colombia here elsewhere is a um and uh deep displeasure with the way university administrations are working. Can you tell me about the the process of when they decided they were gonna charge these people with this charge and this the this group with this charge? Can you explain that a little bit more? Stay exactly where you are? Um But I just heard what they said, my sense is that they could not very well charge me with criminal trespassing because I work here. You can't charge students with that right? Then they can say, oh, this is private property. So they were from your trespassing and that's why you didn't have to hear no it and be detained and sleep at the jail. I think, I don't know exactly, but I'm not sure I'm gonna guess that I'm not sure if disorder leaves a misdemeanor criminal trespassing as a felony. So yeah, um the other professor that we did see in court this morning, can you explain what you've heard about? Uh what happened with her? Uh Well, I heard her tell me that um, she had just been one, this is for second hand. So you confirm with her this was when you were on the bus, right? Yes. When they put off, went over there and she was um asking for a lawyer, she was asking for, you know, general counsel. She and she was saying, you know, my head got smashed on the ground, they smashed my kids. She was saying medical attention can my head has been smashed on the ground. Um And they smashed this other person's head on the ground and I didn't. And so she was totally surprised when, when we're over waiting at the dekalb jail to overhear somebody saying that she assaulted an officer. So I think again, that's such an abuse of police power to just construe a woman trying to protect a child from being head as assaulting an officer. Can you tell me about how many of the individuals you believe were um outsiders and how many were from the Emory campus? I've heard from a, I heard from a colleague that the numbers were 20 Emory of its 27 people were arrested, 20 were Emory affiliated and seven were not when you hear that number and you hear that the administration is putting out statements saying, you know, the majority of these people were outsiders. What's your reaction to that? Yeah. They said outside agitators. Yeah. I think the outside agitators were the Atlanta police and the Georgia state troopers. They were the agitators.
