University students continue pro-Palestine campus protests despite crackdown

well student L protests and encampments against the war in Gaza are continuing for a second week in the US that demanding their universities drop Financial ties to Israel well we have a team of correspondents covering this story for us in the US in a moment We'll Be Live to New York with John hendin but first let's go to Ellen Fischer who's at the George Washington University in Washington DC where students from at least eight universities have joined the fourth day of protests and Ellen I know it's Sunday there I imagine it's usually relatively quiet on campus can you just explain what is happening there now well let me give you an idea of what it looks like here you've seen the pictures over the last three or four days and you've seen the hundreds of students that come here to protest that things have slightly changed and Sunday morning is maybe the best time to give you an idea of what this looks like if you look out into the college yard when this protest started on Thursday that was entirely covered by people who came here to voice their support over night on Saturday Friday into Saturday they put up the metal barrier to split the yach and to contain the protests now if you move further around with the camera you will see that there are still tents in the yard there's probably about 20 students who are there a number of them have left over the last 72 hours or so when they were told that there was the possibility they could lose their University Housing they could possibly not graduate they might lose credits for for the the term that's just uh happened and so so a number of them decided at that point they were going to leave now the university asked the Metropolitan Police which is the main Police Service here in Washington DC to help clear the yard on Friday but the Metropolitan Police decided that they weren't going to do that the protests were very peaceful and they didn't think the Optics of forcibly removing people who were protesting peacefully would play well not just here in Washington DC but around the world but what has happened is there's now almost like a second protest in the street which has been sealed off by the police and you can see the camps and the tents that have been set up here people have been spending the night sleeping in those tents in support of those inside and the demands really do remain the same although each of the eight or so universities that are represented here have their own individual items that they want to see addressed by their institution generally speaking they all agree on a number of things they want to make sure that every uh asset that is possibly linked to Israel is divested that there are no continuing academic links between the us at these universities and Israel as well they want to make sure that those who organize the protest will face an amnesty that they will not be uh face any sort of uh disciplinary action as well and they want to make sure that Pro Palestinian speech on these campuses will not be penalized in any way that'll be allowed because there have been a number of complaints that as soon as you talk in prop Palestinian terms you're immediately described as being anti-semitic and they want to make sure that that is taken care of by the authorities now a couple of the administrators from George Washington have been in in the square in in the last couple of hours they've spoken to some of the people in the courtyard but those that are here say what they said way back on Thursday until their demands are met they're not moving okay thanks so much Ellen we really appreciate that Ellen Fischer for us there at George Washington University well this is day four of protest the City University of New York on day one campus police tried to shut it down and protesters pushed them back let's bring in John hendren who is at the City University now and John these protest site this protest site specifically remains under constant threat of being shut down can you just explain exactly why that is that's right here on the first day on Thursday when they set up this Camp campus police came in and tried to shut it down tried to tear down the tents students pushed them back and these are the most Fearless protesters of all of the campuses we've been at uh and there is good reason for that uh this is City University of New York unlike Elite institutions like those alen was talking about where tuition can be 60 70,000 a year and students are worried about losing their the education they've dreamed of and tens of thousands of dollars tuition here is at a more democratic level small D at about six ,000 um and so most of the students we see here unlike at Princeton where we were yesterday where students were masking their faces and and trying to abide by all the University's rules here they're not doing that when the security came in just the other day uh there was a security guard here uh on Friday and he was just trying to enter this space and students blocked him off from doing so and you can see there's a constant police presence here that is a light stand which police have set up presumably if they want to clear this place out at night to light it up and if you look across the street you can see those are campus police uh positioned there so there's a constant presence here but unlike at other campuses where students are very concerned about whether they're going to be kicked out and whether they're going to lose their status at the University here they're they're pretty much Fearless these students by and large don't wear masks they push back on security when they come and they're intent on staying here you can see these uh these tents are in defiance of University policy but they're remaining in place so here at City University of New York uh you have a very aggressive and confident protest presence uh and they're not going to allow uh security to come in here now if the New York Police Department comes in that's a whole different story and that could happen here unlike other campuses because it's run by the city of New York so mayor Eric Adams if he decided to could override it any concerns by the university and send police in here to shut this place down and uh 200 people have been arrested over the past 24 hours at Washington University in St Louis Northeastern University in Boston so that's a constant threat everywhere but here it's a particular threat because the city itself could decide to shut this place down so far protesters have resisted all attempts okay thank you so much for all of that that is John hendin for us there in New York well we're going to stay with this story and Melanie KT is a professor of international Affairs at Harvard University she joins us from New York thank you very much for being with us on Al jazer now we heard our correspondents there talking about the pressure that has been uh placed on the protesters on these students that have speaking out but how has the government especially Congress been putting pressure on the universities themselves during these protests and and what impact is that having yeah first of all thank you so much for having me um yeah there's a larger game going on here in which Congress members of Congress are weaponizing this fight to try to control University life and uh and are threatening uh sanctions such as taxing University endowments or withholding Federal funding for research uh which could have a very serious impact on universities so beyond the relationship between protesters and University administrations we have a second level playing out between Congress the US government and University administrations as well are those just idle threats or is that a serious concern for these universities these are very serious concerns uh regardless of how you feel about the protest and University reactions uh these are extremely serious concerns because there's a large amount of federal funding that supports research across campuses uh in the United States and endowment play an extremely important role in funding the operations of universities so these are serious threats that University administrators are very concerned about and so the actions of Congress are not just you know political efforts to to uh exert uh congress's control over academic freedom or Free Speech but they also potentially may be serious threats with material implications we've seen a range of uh tactics used by different University administrations around the United States when it comes to trying to break up these protests I mean what do you think has worked so far and how do you think that University should be handling them yeah so I think it's pretty clear that repression doesn't work in this case and we actually know this from political science research that under many conditions uh Pro repressing protests and mobilization actually backfires and causes active to double down on their efforts and that seems to be playing out here on University campuses you can just look to the example of Colombia where the president uh cracked down and now we've just seen waves of waves of additional protesters coming out so I think you know the choice of Hardcore repression often backfires there's some variation state to state because some places have actually some US states have actually criminalized BDS and adopted the H ra definition of anti-semitism which equates any uh criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and this puts uh activists and protesters in a different set of situations as well something a little bit more subtle now I mean how much disinformation is happening around these protests because there are very different narratives aren't there yeah absolutely and of course we're living in the era of disinformation on social media and people's algorithms tailor their social media feeds to their preference but it's quite evident that there's a fair amount of disinformation based on reporting not just by people posting on social media but by journalists that by and large these protests are entirely peaceful we even see sort of Multicultural communities breaking out on campuses where you have Jewish students who are an important component of the protests as well sharing Passover saders with Muslim Students who've never been to that before so by and large these are very pre peaceful protests and most of the slogans are not meant to be provocative although you know there are some examples where uh people have taken exception with some of the slogans um including in some of the reporting right and just very briefly before we've got to let you go how do you think that this is going to play out do you think that uh there's still momentum Behind These protests and that they could escalate further yes I think there's definitely a real possibility for further escalation I don't think this is going anywhere and sure many of these protests will be shut down at some point with brute force and arrests or perhaps some negotiations between Pro protesters and University Administration that may play out well I think that's probably the best scenario to have a kind of negotiated solution it remains to be seen whether there can be some meeting point of Administrators and student demands okay we'll have to leave it there but we really do appreciate your time and your insight into all of this that's Melanie Kemet professor of international Affairs at Harvard University thanks so much thank you make sure to subscribe to our channel to get the latest news from Al jazer

Channel: Al Jazeera English

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Keywords: Anti war student demonstrations, Columbia university, Gaza solidarity encampment, Harvard, Israel, Israel-Palestine conflict, NYU, New York pro Palestine rally, Palestine, Princeton university, Texas, University of Texas at Austin, University of southern California, brown university, campus protests, gaza genocide, jewish voice for peace, new York university, pro Palestine soilidarity protests, universities against war, us college protests, us university protests, yale university

Id: B5o18bzlfQ4

Length: 11min 44sec (704 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024