Gaza solidarity protests on university campuses escalated in April 2024, spreading in the United States and other countries, as part of wider protests against the war and genocide in Gaza. With over 3,100 protesters arrested in the U.S., universities suspended and expelled student protesters, in some cases evicting them from campus housing, and relied on police to forcibly disband occupations.
Most universities in the spring attempted to negotiate a disbandment of the encampments, often threatening police sweeps to force an agreement. Many universities initiated disciplinary proceedings against protesters, accusing them of breaking student codes of conduct, before employing police sweeps. Police departments in the U.S. employed a range of tactics, including dispersing crowds using horses and police in riot gear, deploying pepper balls, using tasers, mass arrests, tear gas, clearing unauthorized encampments, and beating both students and professors. Police also assaulted, arrested and restricted access for some journalists. The police response to the protests was criticized by some Democrats and human rights organizations. By fall 2024, many universities had strengthened their restrictions on protests, including more than 100 colleges and universities, and several schools had banned camping on their grounds among other restrictions.
Over 200 groups expressed support for the protests, as well as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, various members of Congress, several labor unions, hundreds of university staff in the United Kingdom, and Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Protests were otherwise condemned by leaders including President Joe Biden, Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; as well as concern raised from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Background
Administrative response Most universities that faced encampment protests in the spring attempted to negotiate a settlement and disbandment of the encampments with student leaders, often threatening police sweeps to force an agreement. In some cases, the end of the school year allowed administrators to reverse course on agreements they had negotiated, such as at the University of Oregon, Northwestern, and Rutgers New Brunswick. Many universities initially initiated disciplinary proceedings against protesters, accusing them of breaking student codes of conduct.
Students at New York University (NYU) were required to write "coerced confessions of wrongdoing" in order to have disciplinary charges against them dropped. Graduate student Dan Zeno was among more than 20 students Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suspended for participating in the protests. He was evicted from campus housing along with his wife and daughter. Some students who faced suspensions were banned from campus and were unable to take their final exams. UC Santa Cruz officials issued two-week campus bans to many of the 110 protesters arrested during a campus demonstration in May, leaving them without housing and access to campus resources. The City College of New York shut down its community food pantry in response to protests. In Greece, nine protesters from European countries were arrested at the Athens University Law School and faced deportation in May.
As students returned to campus in fall 2024 after a wave of protests in the spring, many universities strengthened their restrictions on student protests and political activities, including limits on where and when protests could occur, and prohibitions on student encampments. More than 100 colleges and university systems tightened their rules about protests on their property. Several schools banned camping on their grounds, required protesters to register with the administration in advance of any demonstrations, and banned the wearing of masks.
Cornell professor Risa Lieberwitz called the nationwide trend toward increased restrictions on campus protests "a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven't seen since the late 1960s". Case Western Reserve University limited permitted demonstrations to two hours during the daytime in a single location. The Middle East Studies Association said that although it was not compelled by a subpoena to do so, the University of Pennsylvania had turned over the CVs and syllabi of two professors to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and may also have given the committee access to their email and course communications.
Harvard updated its policy to prohibit overnight camping, chalk, and unapproved signs or displays. Indiana University (IU) updated its policies on August 1, prohibiting all "expressive activity" between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The American Civil Liberties Union sued IU over this policy, calling it "overly broad". NYU updated its nondiscrimination policy to prohibit criticism of Zionism, classifying it as a protected category. Columbia classified the use of the term "Zionist" to refer to Israelis or Jews as a form of harassment. At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, students who used bullhorns during their protest faced expulsion from the university due to a new policy against "loud chanting".
In August 2024, Carnegie Mellon University updated its policy to require protests, rallies, and other expressive events of more than 25 people to register the participants' names with the university in advance. Columbia suspended its due-process procedures for student discipline, notifying several dozen students charged with disciplinary infractions that scheduled interviews related to their cases were to be skipped and they would be fast-tracked into conduct hearings. This came after renewed congressional pressure and a subpoena on university records related to the protests. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) introduced new regulations on campus protests that restrict "public expression activities" to areas around Bruinwalk and outside Murphy Hall. The new restrictions also banned tents and camping equipment, food distribution, amplified sound, and chalk, and require people on campus to identify themselves when asked to do so by a university official. Ahead of the fall semester, the University of California and California State University systems instituted broad new policies prohibiting encampments, barricades, overnight encampments, disguises, disruptions and restrictions on free movement.
In September 2024, the University of Vermont's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine sued the school after an interim suspension of the group continued into its fifth month. At Cornell, a graduate student with U.K. citizenship was suspended without due process and threatened with deportation for participating in a demonstration outside Statler Hotel, where a job fair that included recruiters from weapons manufacturing companies was being held. Maura Finkelstein became the first tenured Muhlenberg College professor to be fired over pro-Palestinian speech (tenured professor Sami Al-Arian had been fired in 2003, and scholar Steven Salaita in 2014). Finkelstein, who is Jewish, shared an Instagram post by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters with "Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. .. Don't normalize Zionism. Don't normalize Zionists taking up space." The college determined that she had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies.
In October 2024, The University of Michigan's governing board coordinated with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to file charges against pro-Palestinian protesters after local prosecutors proved unwilling to crack down. Campaign contributions and business relationships between Nessel and University of Michigan regents raised concerns over conflicts of interest in the prosecutions, as did contributions by pro-Israel lobbyists to Nessel's election campaigns. The university paid over $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to undercover investigators to surveil and intimidate pro-Palestinian campus groups.
The Hillel Foundation announced a partnership at over 50 campuses with the Secure Community Network called Operation Secure our Campuses, offering "full-time intelligence analysts [to] monitor campus developments and provide information and real-time support." At the University of Toronto, patrol teams with Magen Herut Canada monitored a pro-Palestinian protest. At Yale College, the Women's Center was notified that it would be required to adopt a policy of "broad neutrality" after the center was forced to indefinitely postpone an event titled "Pinkwashing and Feminism(s) in Gaza" due to fear of administrative disciplinary action. At UC Berkeley, law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote an opinion piece comparing antiwar protesters to the KKK. The board of the Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy condemned Chemerinsky's comparison, calling it "careless and intentionally inflammatory".
Police response
Police departments in the U.S. employed a range of tactics, including dispersing crowds using horses and police in riot gear, deploying pepper balls, using tasers, mass arrests, tear gas, clearing unauthorized encampments, and beating both students and professors. According to student newspaper The Lantern, state troopers with "long-range firearms" were also deployed at Ohio State University. Over 3,100 protesters were arrested in the U.S.
Police assaulted, arrested and restricted access for some journalists while they were covering the protests. Police used force when arresting faculty who were taking part in or observing the protests, including the former chair of Dartmouth College's Jewish studies department, who was slammed to the ground while "in a line of women faculty in their 60s to 80s trying to protect our students", and two members of the faculty at Emory University, one of whom was charged with battery after being "violently arrested" on video.
On June 10, UCLA police severely wounded a student with a non-lethal projectile, giving him a heart contusion and a bruised lung. In September, UCLA police sought approval to double their stockpile of pepper balls and sponge rounds and obtain eight new projectile launchers and three drones. In October, Penn Police raided the off-campus home of pro-Palestinian student protesters, saying they were executing a search warrant related to vandalism. Student organizers said rifles and handguns were pointed at them during the raid, and that police refused to tell them their badge numbers or show their warrant.
According to Erik Baker, the most severe crackdowns on campus protests took place at "wealthy schools ... that have been in long-running and occasionally violent conflict with the working-class communities of color that border them", such as the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, The University of Southern California, and Columbia.
A report by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that police interventions at U.S. student protests linked to conflict issues surged fourfold in April. Authorities notably increased arrests and forcible dispersals, especially at protests where there were counter-demonstrators. Nonetheless, at events where student protesters were unchallenged, the police were more likely to act against pro-Palestine rallies, doing so over four times more often than against pro-Israel ones. Police repression of protesters, particularly in the U.S., has been characterized as unusually harsh.