In a statement released on Friday morning, University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos announced that the pro-Palestinian encampment installed on the University’s Main Quad “cannot continue.” The message comes after what he calls “systematic disruption of campus.”
UChicago United for Palestine set up the encampment on Monday in a strategy echoing that of students nationwide. The group is demanding that the University cut its financial ties with Israel.
Israel-Hamas war demonstrations across dozens of university campuses have now resulted in more than 2,100 arrests and have led to clashes with law enforcement, most notably at Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
At UChicago, police are being diverted away from neighborhood patrol duty to provide a 24-hour presence at the encampment which has “grown each day,” according to Alivisatos.
“Clear violations of policies have only increased. Our students have issued a torrent of reports of disrupted classroom learning. Other disruptions include repeated destruction of an approved installation of Israeli flags, shouting down speakers they disagree with, vandalism and graffiti on historic buildings, incorporating walkways into the encampment, and co-opting the University flagpole to fly the Palestinian flag,” said Alivisatos.
Earlier this week, senior administrators “met with the group designated by the protesters to listen to their demands and to search for a way to end the encampment grounded in dialogue.” They found no “common ground.”
In a previous statement made hours after the students installed the encampment, Alivisatos remarked, “Given the importance of the expressive rights of our students, we may allow an encampment to remain for a short time despite the obvious violations of policy.
“We only will intervene when what might have been an exercise of free expression blocks the learning or expression of others or that meaningfully disrupts the functioning or safety of the University.”
Now, Alivisatos has declared that “without an agreement to end the encampment, we have reached that point.”
More to follow.
Read President Alivisatos’s statement in full here.
While these protests do indeed represent ethno-religious factions, they mean little in the face of economic interests that are financing the larger Gaza operation which is about property and natural resources, regardless of who may be occupying it (financed in part by the UC Trustee chairman’s hedge fund, Carlyle). It is fascinating that no organized protests materialized over the Global War on Terror (of which Gaza is a part) which since 2001 has claimed trillions in Treasury spending, and thousands of American lives brought home quietly in body bags. As Mr. Hurley of The Thinker noted in major media, the ability to raise the American flag on this same location has been effectively foreclosed. As the NYPD otherwise asserted today in media over protests at Columbia and NYU, “there’s somebody behind this movement.” The Obama Foundation appears to be playing a part, as it does in BLM and election riots, along with senior administrators in the White House.