Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests: Graduation ceremonies moved off campus

Student protests in support of Palestinians during Israel’s Gaza war disrupted or altered several college graduations this weekend, including commencements that were moved entirely from the campuses of Pomona College east of Los Angeles and Columbia University in New York City.

On Saturday, the University of California, Berkeley’s graduation ceremony saw pro-Palestinian protests at the school’s football stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Videos posted by a KQED reporter and others on social media showed people in caps and gowns leading chants and holding keffiyehs and Palestinian flags to the sun at the flagship university’s California Memorial Stadium. The campus-wide opening of UC Berkeley — long a hotbed of American protests and free speech in the 1960s — began Saturday morning.

“Without protest, this wouldn’t be Berkeley,” said Sydney Roberts, president of the Associated Students of the University of California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thousands of students and other protesters have been arrested since April 18 when police raided an encampment at Columbia University, sparking a wave of campus activism. Students are protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza and demanding that their universities cut financial and academic ties with Israel. At some schools, including Brown University and the University of California, Riverside, school officials have reached agreements with students to peacefully end the encampments.

Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians since Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage, according to officials in Gaza.

LATEST WAR UPDATES:Angry Israeli ambassador tears up UN charter during debate on Palestine’s membership

The latest arrests occurred early Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania and late Thursday at the University of Arizona. Police in riot gear arrested dozens of people.

Schools postpone graduations due to pro-Palestinian protests

Pomona College in Southern California announced Friday that it had moved its graduation Sunday to an auditorium in Los Angeles amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Across the United States this weekend, Columbia University moved graduation events from its main campus in New York City in light of protests. She had previously canceled her large university-wide celebration planned for May 15th.

Pomona College — part of Claremont’s elite colleges, about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles — had a student camp near the graduation ceremony earlier this week. Pomona’s ceremony is now scheduled to take place at the Shrine Auditorium, directly across the street from the University of Southern California, which also changed its own graduation, in Los Angeles.

Images posted by student organizing group Pomona Divest from Apartheid showed the stage draped in Palestinian flags and a banner calling on the school to “separate now.” The students also set up tents on the site. On Monday, protesters set up their second camp on Pomona’s Graduation Lawn. The action followed police arrests of several students in campus raids, including those who staged a sit-in at Pomona College’s Presidential Building in April.

Other campuses have moved to postpone or cancel ceremonies in light of the protests. In Los Angeles, USC canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech and graduation ceremony on the school’s main stage at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, citing security concerns stemming from the controversy surrounding her pro-Palestinian views. During a smaller ceremony for the Viterbi School of Engineering, the Los Angeles Times reported that Tabassum, a biomedical engineering graduate, received a standing ovation as she walked across the stage.

Other current developments:

∎ Rhode Island School of Design students ended a four-day occupation of a campus building after the school’s president threatened them with expulsion Thursday, the Providence Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The students were also ordered to undergo a “restorative justice” process, which includes hearing from those affected by the occupation and restoring the building.

∎ Southern California schools Pomona College and Occidental College are facing civil rights complaints filed Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law alleging “severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish students.” had allowed student protests since October 7th.

∎ A professor at the University of Texas at Austin was arrested and fired this week over a confrontation with state troopers during a pro-Palestinian protest on campus April 29, the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. Richard Heyman was charged with interfering with public functions and accused of shouting profanities, attempting to “break through” a police barricade and damaging a police bicycle bell. Heyman’s lawyer, Gerry Morris, said Heyman was pushed by a police officer and grabbed the bike to prevent him from falling.

Weeks after the protests, arrests are still being made

About 33 people were arrested at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday, according to the campus public safety department. According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, Philadelphia officers dismantled tents and threw belongings into a garbage truck during the raid around 6 a.m. According to the student newspaper, the camp at Penn had been in existence for 16 days.

Another 10 people were arrested on the MIT campus early this morning as police cleared an encampment that had been on campus since April 21, university President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement, calling the action a “last resort.” after talks between university officials and protest organizers failed. The arrested people were escorted off the lawn “peacefully,” she said, but added that tensions on campus fueled by the protest were not moving in a peaceful direction.

“I had no choice but to eliminate such a high-risk hotspot in the middle of our campus,” Kornbluth said.

In Tucson, police fired tear gas canisters into a crowd of protesters and demolished the University of Arizona camp, the Associated Press reported. The school said in a statement that a structure “made of wooden pallets and other debris” violated campus policy, but did not say whether anyone was arrested.

There were also protests in other countries. Police used so-called “non-lethal ammunition” against protesters at a camp at the University of Calgary in western Canada on Thursday. The city said it would release the number of arrests on Friday.

EXCLUSIVE:Campus protests in Gaza divide Democrats and unite Republicans over fears of violence

Schools plan graduation ceremony amid demonstrations on campus

Some universities are preparing alternative plans or canceling speakers in light of the protests on campus.

At Xavier University in Louisiana, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s scheduled commencement address for Saturday was canceled after students expressed outrage over her stance on the war, the Associated Press reported. It is at least the second scheduled speech by Thomas-Greenfield to be canceled due to student protests; She was also expelled from the University of Vermont’s admissions program.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead also announced that he would no longer give a speech at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on May 18, calling the university’s decision to use police against student protesters “a shameful act “. Police arrested more than 130 people at the school and cleared an encampment earlier this week.

REPEATING STORY:College graduation canceled due to anti-war protests? It’s happened before.

The University of Southern California, which sparked outrage last month when it canceled a commencement speech and later announced it was also canceling its main stage graduation ceremony, hosted an alternative party for graduates and their family members at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Thursday evening.

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