At least 900 protesters have been arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses in the last 10 days, the largest police response to campus activism in years and one that experts say poses myriad potential challenges for law enforcement agencies, the Washington Post reports. Mass demonstrations on campuses ranged from peaceful sit-ins on sun-soaked grassy malls to vitriolic confrontations with counterprotesters. To remove protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and universities to divest from Israeli financial interests, some administrators turned to police, citing reports of hate, antisemitic speech and violence that marred some demonstrations.
On some campuses, law enforcement offered repeated warnings and conducted cordial, orderly arrests. On others, police and demonstrators engaged in physical confrontations, with officers employing the tools and tactics used to quell riots and demonstrations four years ago, when thousands marched after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. At Emory University last week, Atlanta officers used “chemical irritants” to clear an encampment, and a Georgia State Patrol officer was captured on video using a stun gun to subdue a man on the ground. In Boston, the Northeastern University police cleared an encampment Saturday after a shout of “Kill the Jews” was heard. A witness posted on social media that the shout came from a pro-Israel counterprotester. School officials said the demonstration had been “infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern.” Phillip Atiba Solomon, a Yale professor of psychology and African American studies, and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, attributed the swift interdiction in part to the mounting political pressure on university presidents to avoid appearing to appease anti-Israel demonstrators. Those presidents watched the careers of former Harvard president Claudine Gay and former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill unravel after both were accused of antisemitism for comments on how to deal with protesters, Solomon said, and want to avoid a similar fate. “Presidents are trying to figure out how to deal with what seems like a fracturing on the political left, tons of pressure on the political right, some reasonable arguments — students say they don’t feel safe,” Solomon said. “And commencement is coming up. So they call the police.”