Twenty-five people were arrested on Saturday for trespassing at the University of Virginia after police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to remove tents from campus, while demonstrators at the University of Michigan chanted anti-war messages and waved flags during commencement ceremonies.
In Virginia, student demonstrators began their protest on a lawn outside the school chapel on Tuesday. On Saturday, footage from WVAW-TV showed police wearing heavy gear and holding shields lined up on the campus in Charlottesville.
Protesters chanted: “Free Palestine,” and university police wrote on X that an “unlawful assembly” had been declared in the area.
Photo: AP
As police moved in, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by their arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has been helping student demonstrators, told the Washington Post.
“Our concern since this began has been the safety of our students. Students are not safe right now,” Goldblatt said.
It was the latest clash in several tense and sometimes violent weeks at colleges and universities around the country that have seen dozens of protests and hundreds of arrests at demonstrations over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools have reached agreements with protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disrupting final exams and commencements.
The Associated Press has recorded at least 61 incidents since April 18 in which arrests were made at protests, with more than 2,400 people being arrested on 47 campuses.
Michigan was among the schools bracing for protests during commencements over the weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston. Many more are slated in the coming weeks.
In Ann Arbor, the protest happened at the beginning of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many wearing traditional kaffiyeh scarves along with their graduation caps, marched up the main aisle toward the graduation stage.
They chanted: “Regents, regents, you can’t hide. You are funding genocide,” while holding signs, including one that read: “No universities left in Gaza.”
Overhead, planes flew banners with competing messages: “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”
Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest did not seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people, some of them waving Israeli flags.
At Indiana, protesters were urging supporters to wear kaffiyehs and walk out during remarks by university president Pamela Whitten on Saturday evening. The Bloomington campus designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, the arena for the ceremony.
At Princeton, in New Jersey, 18 students launched a hunger strike in an effort to push the university to divest from companies tied to Israel.
One of them, senior David Chmielewski wrote in an e-mail that the strike started on Friday morning with participants consuming water only, and that it would continue until administrators meet with students about demands including amnesty from criminal and disciplinary charges for protesters.
Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes earlier this year before the more recent wave of encampments.
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