After MIT police actions early Friday, Harvard now has the only student protest camp left in Greater Boston’s college movement against Israeli actions in Gaza. While the MIT protesters vow to return, Harvard’s are calling for a rally.
Ten MIT students were taken into custody by campus police early Friday and to Cambridge Police Department headquarters. Hearings were planned the same day at Cambridge District Court in Medford, according to the school and National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts, which said it would have a legal team on hand to represent them.
Those arrested were a mix of graduate and undergraduate students who “did not resist arrest and were peacefully escorted” off MIT grounds, said Sarah McDonnell, deputy director of the school’s media relations. They were taken from a tent camp set up April 21 on the Kresge Oval to protest violence in the Middle East.
“You cannot suspend the movement. We will be back,” said the school’s Coalition Against Apartheid on social media.
Harvard’s tent camp – inside the locked gates of Harvard Yard – serves as the final physical manifestation of protester goals that schools stop investing in businesses that work with Israel or contribute to Israeli violence within Palestinian territories. In general, protesters also want a cease-fire in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks carried out by the terrorist group Hamas in Israel, while other groups decry what they see as a surge in antisemitism around the protests and note that Hamas still holds Israeli hostages.
Another 10 people were arrested Thursday at a different protest at MIT and were released from booking that night, getting court dates next week, according to the National Lawyers Guild. That makes a total 20 arrests at the school.
“We did not take this step suddenly. We offered warnings. We telegraphed clearly what was coming. At each point, the students made their own choices. And finally, choosing among several bad options, we chose the path we followed this morning – where each student again had a choice. I do not expect everyone to agree with our reasoning or our decision, but I hope it helps to see how we got there,” Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a message to the school community.
Police, some in riot gear, began massing around the camp at around 4 a.m. Friday and gave people inside the camp a 15-minute warning to leave. All but 10 did, according to The Tech, the school’s student newspaper, while a protest went on nearby. Access to campus buildings was limited electronically, a step that follows the issuing of student suspensions Wednesday. Kornbluth did not specify how many suspensions were issued, and the school has declined to give specifics. McDonnell said Friday only that “dozens of interim suspensions and referrals to the Committee on Discipline have been issued.”
Police began taking apart the empty camp at around 5:10 a.m., and it was cleared away entirely by 8:40 a.m., The Tech reported.
A rally was planned for 2:30 p.m. Friday at Harvard’s camp – called the Liberated Zone – by the Harvard Out of Palestine organization. The school began sending students suspension notices Friday, saying it was taking “disciplinary procedures and administrative referrals for placing protesters on involuntary leave.”
Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber told the students Wednesday they could avoid suspensions by leaving the camp – which uses space that would be used for commencement exercise – but has declined to consider divesting, according to reporting in The Harvard Crimson student newspaper.
“Forty thousand people dead, Harvard suspends students instead,” the Harvard Out of Palestine group said on social media in its call for an afternoon rally.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
Shame on the administrations, CPD, and other local and state police.
Slaw: The fault lies squarely with the MIT Corporation.
https://corporation.mit.edu/
The MIT Police officers were placed in an impossible situation. Their professional duties as police officers were in direct odds with orders from their bosses, Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg. City and State police officers were obligated to be in a supporting role, under mutual aid agreements.
That’s a conflict-of-interest no one should ever be placed in.
It would take a miracle to figure out the right course of action when the phone call for the 4am action comes in. What would you have done? All police officers had their normal discretionary powers subverted by the Corporation.
The question we need to keep asking: How did a group of powerful, corrupt individuals gain state police powers to use against their opponents?
And as a community, how do we claw that back?
I would not have been a cop in the first place because those “conflicts-of-interest,” as you put it, are inherent to the profession.
We need to shrink the size of policing. When you have a massive repressive force at your disposal it is obvious you will use it when challenged.
Starting with the private police forces like these ones at universities seems like it could be a good place to start.
The fact that the city is mandated to follow the orders of a private police force is genuinely insane though.