Twenty-five people were arrested Saturday for trespassing at the University of Virginia after police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to remove tents from the campus, and protesters at the University of Michigan chanted anti-war messages and waved flags during graduation ceremonies.
In Virginia, student protesters began their protest on the lawn outside the school chapel on Tuesday. On Saturday, video from WVAW-TV showed police officers wearing heavy equipment and holding shields lined up on campus in Charlottesville. Protesters chanted “Free Palestine” and university police said on social platform X that an “illegal gathering” had been declared in the area.
As police advanced, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by the arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has been helping student protesters, told The Washington Post.
“Our concern from the beginning has been the safety of our students. Students are not safe right now,” Goldblatt said.
The university administration said in a statement that protesters were informed that the tents and awnings they erected were prohibited by school policy and were asked to remove them. The Virginia State Police were asked to assist with enforcement, the university said.
It was the latest clash in several tense and sometimes violent weeks at colleges and universities across the country, which saw dozens of protests and hundreds of arrests in demonstrations over the war between Israel and Hamas.
Tent camps of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or with companies that say they support the war in Gaza have spread to campuses across the country in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools reached agreements with protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disruption to final exams and graduations.
The Associated Press has recorded at least 61 incidents since April 18 in which arrests were made during protests, with more than 2,400 people detained across 47 campuses. The numbers are based on AP reports and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
Many camps were dismantled.
Michigan was among the schools preparing for protests during graduation this weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston. Many more are scheduled for the coming weeks.
In Ann Arbor, the protest took place at the start of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many of them wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyehs along with their graduation caps, marched down the main hallway toward the graduation stage.
They shouted “Regents, regents, you cannot hide! You are financing genocide!” while holding signs, including one that said: “There are no universities left in Gaza.”
Above, the planes displayed banners with competing messages. “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”
Authorities said no one was arrested and the protest did not seriously disrupt the nearly two-hour event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people, some waving Israeli flags.
State police blocked protesters from reaching the stage, and university spokeswoman Colleen Mastony said public safety personnel escorted protesters to the rear of the stadium, where they remained until the end of the event.
“Peaceful protests like this have occurred at UM graduation ceremonies for decades,” she added.
The university allowed protesters to set up a camp on campus, but police helped disperse a large gathering at a graduation-related event on Friday night, and one person was arrested.
In Indiana, protesters asked supporters to wear their kaffiyehs and leave during Speaker Pamela Whitten’s remarks Saturday night. The Bloomington campus designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, the ceremony’s arena.
At Princeton, New Jersey, 18 students launched a hunger strike in an effort to pressure the university to divest from companies linked to Israel.
One of them, senior David Chmielewski, said in an email that the strike began Friday morning with participants consuming only water and will continue until administrators meet with students about demands, including amnesty from criminal and disciplinary charges. for the protesters.
Other protesters are participating in 24-hour “solidarity fasts,” Chmielewski said.
Princeton students set up a protest camp and some held a sit-in at an administrative building this week, resulting in about 15 arrests.
Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes earlier this year, before the most recent wave of encampments.
Meanwhile, in Medford, Massachusetts, Tufts University students peacefully took down their camp without police intervention on Friday night.
School officials said they were pleased with the development, which was not the result of any agreement. Protest organizers said in a statement they were “deeply angered and disappointed” by the failure of negotiations with the university.
The protests stem from the conflict that began on October 7, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking around 250 hostages.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli attacks devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
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Marcelo reported from New York. Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit, Nick Perry in Boston and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.
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