“We have a responsibility to the entire MIT community, and it is not safe to sustain this level of activity,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “We are open to further discussions about ending the tent camp. But this particular form of expression must soon end.”
Indiana University police officers and state police arrested 23 people Saturday at an encampment on campus in Bloomington. The tents and canopies that were erected Friday violate school rules, university police said in a statement.
Protesters were detained after refusing to remove the structures and various charges were brought against them.
Arizona State University (ASU) announced Saturday morning that 69 people were arrested on suspicion of trespassing in connection with an unauthorized encampment on the campus in Tempe. Protesters were given the chance to leave, and those who refused were arrested.
“While the university will continue to be an environment that respects free speech, ASU’s top priority is to create a safe environment that supports teaching and learning,” the university said in a statement.
Nationwide protests at universities have started as a reaction to Israel’s offensive in Gaza. More than 700 students have been arrested since the April 18 arrests at Columbia University, where one of the first clashes broke out between police and tent campus protesters. AP reports that the real number of people arrested during all the protests is even more than 900.
After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took approximately 250 hostages, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza with the aim of eliminating Hamas.
During the ensuing and still active hostilities, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of them women and children, according to the local health ministry.
Israel and its supporters have called the university protests anti-Semitic, while Israel’s critics say such claims are used to silence opponents.
Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic remarks or threatening violence, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
