UCLA facilities teams were busy throughout the morning and into the afternoon on Thursday taking down structures, removing protestors’ belongings and hauling away mounds of trash following days of pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israeli counter-protests.
Even though the encampment was cleared by Thursday night, the area remained blocked off so crews could remove the graffiti that was sprayed on buildings and the sidewalks.
Images: Officers clear protest encampment at UCLA
Pro-Palestinian protestors made Royce Quad their temporary home for one week, bringing in sleeping bags, chairs, tables, supplies and food while they called for a ceasefire in Gaza and demanded UCLA cut off ties
“I care a lot about the legacy of UCLA and think both efforts to protest and demonstrate as well as efforts to keep the campus pristine reflect the values of UCLA,” said UCLA Political Science major Dane Catom.
Even though Catom supports the group’s right to protest, he was upset to see the damage left behind.
“I don’t agree with the vandalism, some people say it’s a form of protest. Me, personally, I disagree with that. I think it diminishes the arguments and the message that is pushed. And frankly, it upset me. It disappointed me,” said Catom.
Protesters who were arrested at the UCLA campus overnight are not likely to face severe punishments. The I-Team’s Eric Leonard reports.
The buildings surrounding the encampment were both vandalized with graffiti and parts of the scaffolding were ripped from the library, which was undergoing repairs before the protestors moved in. Pieces of plywood from the construction site were also used by the protestors to create a barrier around their camp.
“I don’t think destruction of the property is the first move, but I think if it’s what we need to do to get people’s attention and say this is not ok what’s happening it’s a way to get the public’s attention and a way to show our government we don’t like what’s happening,” said Melanie Meyer.
Meyer lives in Silverlake and drove to UCLA to check out the encampment. She said she was impressed by the protestors and felt their demonstration was an opportunity to join an important conversation.
“For some students, this is an extension of their education right, I think just because they express a strong sentiment doesn’t mean they should be barred from the community, if anything there should be a more open discussion,” said Meyer.
NBC4 reached out to the school’s administration to get the exact numbers on the amount of garbage removed and the cost of the cleanup operation. They have not yet responded.
A joint effort was orchestrated by several law enforcement agencies to tear down protesters’ encampment and barricades at UCLA. NBC Los Angeles’ Kathy Vara reports.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters remained behind barricades on the UCLA campus early Thursday morning despite police orders to leave as officers were poised to move in on their fortified encampment that was ringed by an even larger crowd, including supporters who locked arms and curious onlookers.
Videos began emerging on social media overnight of police in the encampment:
— People’s City Council – Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) May 2, 2024
Later that same group, which calls itself the People’s City Council – Los Angeles, said on X that police were “retreating!!! LAPD is out of the camp! Students held the line! … The whole world is watching and students evicted the cops!”
Numerous posts on X from reporters at the scene also said police had pulled back.
Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia said on X that, “We are at UCLA. There is a large police presence from multiple law enforcement agencies after outside mobs attacked peaceful student protestors last night with no one protecting them. Students now face police. We urge UCLA & City leaders to protect students, not do more harm.”
Pro-Palestinian students stand their ground after police breached their encampment the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) early on May 2, 2024.
ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP via Getty Images
Huge numbers of police began arriving late in the afternoon Wednesday, and empty buses were parked near the University of California, Los Angeles to take away protesters who don’t comply with the order. The tense standoff came one night after violence instigated by counter-protesters erupted in the same place.
A small city sprang up inside the barricaded encampment, full of hundreds of people and tents on the campus quad. Some protesters said Muslim prayers as the sun set over the campus, while others chanted “we’re not leaving” or passed out goggles and surgical masks. They wore helmets and headscarves, and discussed the best ways to handle pepper spray or tear gas as someone sang over a megaphone.
A few constructed homemade shields out of plywood in case they clashed with police forming skirmish lines elsewhere on the campus. “For rubber bullets, who wants a shield?” a protester called out.
Meanwhile, a large crowd of students, alumni and neighbors gathered on campus steps outside the tents, sitting as they listened and applauded various speakers and joined in pro-Palestinian chants. A group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people demonstrated nearby.
The crowd continued to grow as the night wore on as more and more officers poured onto campus.
The law enforcement presence and continued warnings stood in contrast to the scene that unfolded the night before, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, though no arrests were made. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.
Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he came to UCLA on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” perpetrated the previous night’s attack, but he did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.
“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” he said. “It has shaken our campus to its core.”
Block promised a review of the night’s events after California Gov. Gavin Newsom denounced the delays.
The head of the University of California system, Michael Drake, ordered an “independent review of the university’s planning, its actions and the response by law enforcement.”
“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the Los Angeles campus later Wednesday, where some Muslim students detailed the overnight events.
Speakers disputed the university’s account that 15 people were injured and one hospitalized, saying the number of people taken to the hospital was higher. One student described needing to go to the hospital after being hit in the head by an object wielded by counter-protesters.
Several students who spoke during the news conference said they had to rely on each other, not the police, for support as they were attacked, and that many in the pro-Palestinian encampment remained peaceful and did not engage with counter-protesters. UCLA canceled classes Wednesday.
The big picture
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.
An Associated Press tally counted at least 38 times since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools.
In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October – apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.
This is all playing out in an election year in the U.S., raising questions about whether young voters – who are critical for Democrats – will back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.
The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
Other demonstrations
The chaotic scenes at UCLA came just hours after New York police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.
Police in New Hampshire made arrests and took down tents at Dartmouth College and officers in Oregon came onto the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.
In Madison, Wisconsin, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.
Protest encampments elsewhere were cleared by the police, resulting in arrests, or closed up voluntarily at schools across the U.S., including The City College of New York, Fordham University in New York, Portland State in Oregon, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulane University in New Orleans.
John Dickerson reports on the status of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, a strict abortion ban becoming law in Florida, and the impact of another round of student debt relief from the Biden administration.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
After a couple of hours of scuffles between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators at UCLA, police wearing helmets and face shields formed lines and slowly separated the groups. That appeared to quell the violence.
Police have swept through campuses across the U.S. over the last two weeks in response to protests calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza. There have been confrontations and more than 1,000 arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
The clashes at UCLA took place around a tent encampment built by pro-Palestinian protesters, who erected barricades and plywood for protection – while counter-protesters tried to pull them down. Video showed fireworks exploding over and in the encampment. People threw chairs and at one point a group piled on a person who lay on the ground, kicking and beating them with sticks until others pulled them out of the scrum.
Counter protesters attack a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as clashes erupt on May 1, 2024.
ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP via Getty Images
It wasn’t clear how many people might have been injured.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the violence “absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable” in a post on social media platform X and said officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were on the scene. Officers from the California Highway Patrol also appeared to be there. The university said it had requested help.
Security was tightened Tuesday at the campus after officials said there were “physical altercations” between factions of protesters.
Late that same day, New York City officers entered Columbia’s campus after the university requested help, according to a statement released by a spokesperson. A tent encampment on the school’s grounds was cleared, along with Hamilton Hall where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window. Protesters seized the hall at the Ivy League school about 20 hours earlier.
New York Police Department officers enter the Columbia University building and detain pro-Palestinian demonstrators who’d barricaded themselves in iconic Hamilton Hall on April 30, 2024.
Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images
“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” the school said. “The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing. We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”
A few dozen people were arrested at the building after protesters shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon the encampment Monday or be suspended and unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to end demonstrations that were inspired by Columbia.
Just blocks away from Columbia, at The City College of New York, demonstrators were in a standoff with police outside the public college’s main gate. Video posted on social media by reporters on-scene late Tuesday showed officers putting some people to the ground and shoving others as they cleared people from the street and sidewalks. Many detained protesters were driven away on city buses.
After police arrived, officers lowered a Palestinian flag atop the City College flagpole, balled it up and tossed it to the ground before raising an American flag.
Brown University, another member of the Ivy League, reached an agreement Tuesday with protesters on its Rhode Island campus. Demonstrators said they would close their encampment in exchange for administrators taking a vote to consider divestment from Israel in October. The compromise appeared to mark the first time a U.S. college has agreed to vote on divestment in the wake of the protests.
The Arizona Daily Star says officers in riot gear and gas masks fired what they called non-lethal chemical munition weapons as they moved in on demonstrators at the University of Arizona’s Tucson campus. The paper says some arrests were made, as ordered by UA President Robert C. Robbins, and shoving matches broke out between some protesters and advancing officers. “A barrage of items” was thrown in the air toward officers “in the loud, chaotic scene” before protesters retreated and the encampment was broken up.
Columbia’s past something of a prologue
Columbia’s police action happened on the 56th anniversary of a similar move to quash an occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
The police department earlier Tuesday said officers wouldn’t enter the grounds without the college administration’s request or an imminent emergency. Now, law enforcement will be there through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.
In a letter to senior NYPD officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration made the request that police remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”
Shafik also referenced the idea, first put forward by New York City Mayor Eric Adams earlier in the day, that the group that occupied Hamilton was “led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university.”
Neither provided specific evidence to back up that contention, which was disputed by protest organizers and participants.
NYPD officials made similar claims about “outside agitators” during the huge, grassroots demonstrations against racial injustice that erupted across the city after the death of George Floyd in 2020. In some instances, top police officials falsely labeled peaceful marches organized by well-known neighborhood activists as the work of violent extremists.
White House weighs in
Before officers arrived at Columbia, the White House condemned the standoffs there and at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters had occupied two buildings for more than a week until officers with batons intervened early Tuesday and arrested 25 people.
President Biden believes students occupying an academic building is “absolutely the wrong approach,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
Later, former President Donald Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on the Fox News Channel to comment on Columbia’s turmoil as live footage of police clearing Hamilton Hall aired. Trump praised the officers. “But it should never have gotten to this,” he told Hannity.
The nationwide campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.
As cease-fire negotiations appeared to gain steam, it wasn’t clear whether those talks would inspire an easing of protests.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
Northwestern University in Illinois and Brown University in Rhode Island both reached a deal with pro-Palestine protesters this week to end their occupation of campus grounds.
On Monday, Northwestern officials appeared to be the first to reach a deal with antiwar demonstrators, following five days of protests and encampments on Deering Meadow, the Daily Northwestern reported.
As part of a bargain made by NU and the Northwestern Divestment Coalition, a group helping to organize the protests and encampment, the university agreed to permit protests and pro-Palestine gatherings through the final day of spring classes on June 1. The school has also agreed to disclose its investments in businesses with Israeli ties.
In exchange, the NDC has agreed to leave just one aid tent on the lawn. University officials also stressed that students shouldn’t be punished for demonstrating by non-campus actors like employers.
Signs are displayed outside a tent encampment at Northwestern University on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Evanston, Illinois.
″[The university] will advise employers not to rescind job offers for students engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment,” a university statement obtained by the Daily Northwestern said.
In a statement, the Northwestern Divestment Coalition celebrated the victory.
“For the first time, a university administration has committed to full disclosure of its holdings and investments in specific companies, including those whose investments support Israeli apartheid, as well as a clear path to the university’s divestment from those holdings,” the group’s statement said in part.
On Tuesday, another deal was reached between Brown University and the Brown Divest Coalition, a similar pro-Palestine group. Protesters involved with the coalition agreed to remove all tents and end the encampment on campus in exchange for a promise from the university to hold a board vote in October on whether or not to divest from Israel-linked companies.
Brown also agreed to invite five students chosen by the coalition for a meeting next month with school administrators to again discuss a 2020 proposal recommending divestments from companies linked to Israel. BU also said students and faculty who have engaged in demonstrations won’t be punished by the school.
“No member of the Brown community ― including faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, or alumni ― found to have been involved in the encampment or related activity will face retaliation from the University, including termination of employment or reduction in salary,” the agreement from the university said.
In a statement posted to Instagram, Brown Divest Coalition said the “victory is not the end to our work but rather fuel for it.”
“We will continue to pressure Brown to ensure we divest in October and support encampments across the country,” the statement said in part. “We stand with student protesters as they face university oppression and police brutality, and the people of Palestine as they continue to withstand the Israeli occupation.”
Support HuffPost
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Your Loyalty Means The World To Us
At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.
Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.
As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That’s why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.
Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we’ll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can’t find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?
Dear HuffPost Reader
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
NEW YORK — Protesters on Columbia University’s campus occupied Hamilton Hall early Tuesday — a building demonstrators took over during anti-Vietnam War protests in 1968.
Addressing a crowd in front of the building, one protester said, “We demand that Columbia divest all of its finances including the endowment from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine. … We will not stop until every single one of our demands are meant, until every single inch of Palestine is free.”
The New York Police Department said it has officers outside the campus. Sean Herbert, a CBS News producer, said he saw a small contingent of officers at one spot and additional officers at another.
Columbias issued an advisory overnight saying in part, “Early this morning, a group of protestors occupied Hamilton Hall on the Morningside campus. In light of the protest activity on campus, members of the University community who can avoid coming to the Morningside campus today (Tuesday, April 30) should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Please check with your supervisor if you have any questions. Be aware that access to campus and other campus buildings may be restricted.”
The protesters unfurled a large banner from a Hamilton Hall window saying “Free Palestine” — as seen in the image below taken from a video shot by Herbert:
Banner that protesters unfurled outside the occupied Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus early on April 30, 2024.
CBS News
They also unfurled a banner renaming it Hind’s Hall, after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian killed in Gaza three months ago.
Earlier, demonstrators said they’d set up a second encampment on campus.
Jessica Schwalb, a Columbia junior, told CBS News the campus is “lawless. Utter ancarchy.”
She said demonstrators in Hamilton Hall “zip-tied the doorhandles together and then broke the windows, bashed the windows with hammers and put these metal bike locks around the door handles. They put the bike lock on the first set of doors is what I saw and then they were bringing tables, the heavy black metal tables from the eating area that’s right in front of Hamilton Hall, and had a group of people push them up against the door handles as a barricade and then people were also bringing furniture from Hamilton Hall to barricade inside.”
But as day turned into night and Tuesday quickly approached, most of the students that spoke to CBS New York said they weren’t going anywhere.
It was unclear whether the school would will ask the NYPD to clear the encampment. Columbia is private property, so police cannot enter without being requested to by the administration.
After negotiating with protesters for several days, the Columbia administration announced the sides were not able to come to an agreement. Columbia said it will not divest from Israel but did offer to review student proposals and establish more transparency for the school’s investment holdings.
That, however, was not enough for the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
As the deadline came and went, some faculty locked arms to protect the encampment, including Reinhold Martin, an architectural history professor.
“To defend their right to speak politically and peacefully,” Martin said.
All of that happened on the same day some students filed a federal class action lawsuit against Columbia, arguing it has failed to protect them against antisemitism and harassment, violating its own policies.
“If they can enforce their procedures and restore campus to some sense of normalcy, then the lawsuit will go away,” attorney Jay Edelson said.
Students who remain risk not ending semester in good standing
The Columbia administration circulated a letter to students on Monday telling protesters if they had voluntarily left the encampment by 2 p.m. and signed a form committing to abide by university policies, they would be eligible to complete the semester in good standing.
If not, they would be suspended indefinitely, barred from completing this semester, not allowed to graduate if seniors, and banned from campus and residential housing.
“This movement has sparked nationwide international movement, anti-war movement across U.S. colleges and universities, national universities. So we already achieved a lot by just starting this encampment and we will remain here until all U.S. universities, especially Columbia, will divest,” student protest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil said. “The students made it clear they’re willing to stay here as long as needed to achieve their demands.”
“They’re standing up for what is right and I’m standing up for them,” student Michael Ostuno said of his support for the pro-Palestinian cause.
“I am happy Columbia is taking a stance to protect its Jewish and Israeli student body who have been fearful these past few weeks,” one student said.
One student said he came to campus for the last day of classes despite having a virtual option.
“To show I’m not afraid and growing up in Israel a big recurring theme was ‘never again’ and I don’t think Jews should be intimidated,” the student said.
Students at Rutgers University set up an encampment at the New Brunswick campus on Monday after first holding a rally and then marching to the location.
They’re trying to get the attention of the university’s Board of Governors and the Joint Committee on Investments after they felt their request for the school to divest from Israel was ignored at a meeting on Thursday.
Earlier this month, more than 6,000 students voted in favor of a referendum calling on university administrators to withdraw investments in Israel and cancel the school’s partnership with Tel Aviv University. More than 1,500 voted against the idea.
There are 44,000 students enrolled in New Brunswick. Those who spoke to CBS New York at Monday’s rally declined to go on camera.
“I’m here to support our students, all of them, and to see what our students are going with, what they feel passionate about, and also, I believe in the cause, the idea of divesting being an important part to move our university toward a more moral position,” said Kaiser Aslam, Muslim chaplain of the Rutgers Center for Islamic Life.
“I am Jewish and in terms of antisemitism at these rallies, I have never felt as safe anywhere as I do at these rallies. I have never felt as embraced as I do at these rallies,” said Ellen Rosner, a local resident.
Rutgers says the request is under review and that the school’s president, who has no direct role in the investment process, has made clear his personal opposition to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and his support for the relationship with Tel Aviv University.
On Monday’s rally he said, in part, “Our students want to make a difference in a struggle that has cost far too many innocent lives and that threatens so many more. I respect their right to protest in ways that do not interfere with university operations or with the ability of their fellow students to learn.”
Ali Bauman joined CBS2 News as a general assignment reporter in 2016. Ali is a proud millennial who embraces social media for storytelling to bring news to a new generation of viewers.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine feels like a really pivotal moment in this narrative. In the autumn of 2022, energy prices in the UK were skyrocketing, and yet the response of Liz Truss, prime minister at the time, was to double down on oil and gas exploration and refuse to ask people to cut down their energy usage. It was the absolute opposite approach to many European nations facing the same problem.
At the time [the invasion] happened, it was obviously a genuine crisis and I thought climate was going to come down the priority list. But in my technocratic mind, I was also thinking this was going to create the incentive to get off high-carbon fuels—if you want to know what the world looks like with a high carbon price, we’re about to find out.
What I didn’t expect is that the green arguments were too late out of the blocks because the fossil arguments stepped in immediately to say, “This is why we need a domestic fossil fuel supply.” That really important argument, to act on this because fossil fuels are so price-volatile and so expensive, was slightly missed in the political ether at the time, and we jumped to a different narrative of what the country needed to do.
The irony of that whole period is we’re running out of oil and gas. So it’s not going to be a credible strategy in the long run to try and pump prime oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.
A year later, Truss’ successor, Rishi Sunak, made a big speech rolling back key climate policies, most notably pushing back the 2030 deadline banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.
If you look at it purely as a policy speech, there was more pro-climate policy than there was delayed climate policy. It was the one where he talks about accelerating green investment, for example. And the electric vehicle thing [pushing back the 2030 deadline] wasn’t that much of a shift, since we were already allowing hybrids until 2035.
But what did the country hear? They heard, “Don’t worry, now’s not the time to switch to electric vehicles.” It’s hard to tie anything back to a single speech, but if you look at the share of electric vehicles being sold in the UK, it has flatlined since September. I’m sure there are other factors here, but there will be people who thought, “Oh well, maybe I don’t need to get that electric car right now.”
It seems that this government has decided to make appealing to motorists a key campaigning strategy. In July 2023, the Labour Party narrowly lost the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, and a lot of commentators thought that the Conservative candidate won that election because of his opposition to the Ultra Low Emission Zone.
What happened there was interesting. The Labour Party also accepted the narrative that ULEZ was why they didn’t win that constituency. Inevitably, in any election there are a host of issues at play, but if all parties think it’s about environmental policies, it’s no surprise that that becomes one of the dominant themes in politics after that.
MINNEAPOLIS — Several buildings on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus in Minneapolis are closed on Monday due to more pro-Palestinian demonstrations organized by students.
U officials announced early Monday afternoon that 13 buildings were closed at 2 p.m.:
Coffman Memorial Union
Ford Hall
Hasselmo Hall
Johnston Hall
Kolthoff Hall
Morrill Hall
Murphy Hall
Northrup Auditorium
Smith Hall
Tate Lab
Vincent Hall
Walter Library
Weisman Museum
All other East Bank campus buildings will only be accessible to those with U Cards.
Organizers from UMN Divest announced on the rally’s flier, “The time for escalation has come.” They’re calling for U students, faculty and community members to attend Monday’s rally, which started at 2 p.m. outside Coffman Union.
Demonstrators are calling for the U to divest from companies they say are aiding Israel in its “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” including Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell and Lockheed Martin. They also want to ban those companies from recruiting on campus.
U officials released a statement on Monday’s rally and closures, saying in part:
“We recognize that with freedom of expression comes responsibility. Protesters are expected to uphold the safety of others, not interfere with normal campus operations, and adhere to student and employee conduct policies. We urge everyone who engages to remain nonviolent, peaceful, and follow both state laws and University policies, including restrictions prohibiting tents and encampments on campus. Discriminatory vandalism and defacements such as stickers and graffiti—some of which promote violence—are hurtful to many and violate University and Twin Cities campus policies.”
The Council of Graduate Students, an organization representing the U’s grad students, called the short notice ahead of Monday’s closures “unacceptable,” and described it as an “attempt to halt the exercise of free speech and a right to demonstration.”
“Not only are students, staff, and faculty being blocked from sites that they should have access to as members of this community, but additional steps like turning off water fountains and blocking restrooms show a commitmentnot to safety but to escalation against protesters,” the organization said in a statement.
Stephen Swanson is a web producer at WCCO. A 20-year station veteran, Stephen was a floor director for a decade before moving to the newsroom, where he focuses on general assignment reporting.
Students are protesting the war in Gaza, as well as calling on the University of Colorado’s to divest from corporations that operate in Israel.
Tents set up by students on Tivoli Quad at the Auraria Campus in Denver. April 28, 2024.
Paolo Zialcita/CPR News
Students protesting the war in Gaza are still camped out on the Auraria campus Sunday — even after 40 were arrested on Friday and an unexpected weekend snowstorm.
On Sunday morning, over 100 people were gathered around dozens of tents set up on the Auraria Campus’ Tivoli Quad. Since it formed on Thursday, the camp has expanded — campers have laid down tarps and torn-up cardboard to create makeshift paths over the mud brought by Saturday’s rain and snow, and a makeshift bathroom using privacy tents, buckets and cat litter has appeared on the perimeter.
Khalid Hamu, an organizer with the Students for a Democratic Society, said the camp has only grown stronger since Friday.
“We were able to get a lot of support from the campus and the surrounding community, and we’re still going strong,” he told Denverite Sunday. “We have systems in place that are solidifying a little bit. We have a lot more of a solid plan now.”
Spirits were lifted Saturday, when longtime political activist, professor and author Angela Davis, who rose to prominence in the 1960’s for her involvement in civil rights and antiwar movements, visited the camp. Davis was in town for a private event at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
“We were really happy for such a legendary civil rights activist to come and speak and talk about how there’s parallels between what’s happening today and what she did in the past,” Hamu said.
Students said they’re not going to budge until university leaders meet their demands
Following a spring snowstorm, protesters laid cardboard to create paths over a muddy Auraria Campus in Denver. April 28, 2024.Paolo Zialcita/CPR News
The student organizers sent a list of demands to the University of Colorado on Thursday which included: a statement from the CU system “condemning the genocidal actions of Israel,” a meeting with CU Denver Chancellor Michelle Marks, divestment from any corporations operating in Israel, transparency around investments, and an end to University of Colorado study abroad programs in Israel.
The organizers also want CU’s administration to sever ties with and refuse grants from companies that contract with the U.S. military.
According to federal data, the University of Colorado Denver has accepted nearly $3 million in contracts with Israel since 2016.
Student organizers said they haven’t heard from university officials as of Sunday morning. CU system officials have not responded to multiple requests for comment from CPR News and Denverite.
Harriet Falconetti, a CU student protestor who was arrested on Friday, said she’s prepared to camp out for as long as it takes.
“The only way that this is going to end is when CU and the Auraria campus meet our demands,” she said.
In a statement, the Auraria campus said it supported the free speech of students, however campus policy prohibited camping on premises due to health, safety and security considerations.
“While those who gathered at the onset of Thursday’s protest did so peacefully, some participants established an encampment as the demonstration progressed, which violates those policies,” another statement from campus officials said. “Campus administrators spoke with numerous protestors and advised them of our policy, including providing written copies.”
Auraria students are joining a nationwide movement among college campuses
Similar scenes are playing out across the United States, where students at other colleges are camping out to protest the war in Gaza. The camp-style protests first started in New York City’s Columbia University and quickly spread to campuses like the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California.
The Auraria campus — home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver — is so far the only Colorado campus to see students set up camps in protest of the war in Gaza. Hamu called on students at other campuses to start their own.
“I’m not exactly sure of the conditions of the other campuses in the state,” he said . “We’ve been able to see some wins and I just hope we can inspire other campuses to do the same because Columbia made the call nationwide and maybe we can make the call statewide.”
Denverite reporters Kevin Beaty and Rebecca Tauber contributed to this report.
Chef and restaurateur José Andrés was in the house, as was Bill Nye, sipping a martini near the back of the room. I asked him what he’s been up to this weekend. “Networking for the betterment of humankind,” he told me. “We’re talking about how we’re going to use our platforms in media to engage people in the challenge of climate change.” Fair enough. So what’s the best thing he’d seen all night? “My wife,” he said.
L-R: Dr. Anthony Fauci; Kellyanne Conway; Desi Lydic, Jordan Klepper, and Tammy Haddad; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar and John Bessler.
While some events come and go, veteran TV producer Tammy Haddad’s annual garden brunch is, apparently, forever. The event began in Haddad’s backyard 31 years ago and is now held at a Georgetown home owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein, a co-owner of the Washington Commanders—which would explain why someone dressed as the team’s mascot, a six-foot-tall hog named Major Tuddy, was greeting people as they made their way into the main tent, which was particularly packed this year due to intermittent rain. Among the sea of journalists, political figures, and media executives—Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff, NBCUniversal Chairman Cesar Conde, Axios’s VandeHei—were a handful of Baltimore police, whom Haddad was honoring for their work on the collapsed bridge.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci mingled in a black turtleneck, Andrew Ross Sorkin chatted with Melber, and Ben Smith caught up with Klobuchar and Substack’s Hamish McKenzie. “I am always impressed with Amy Klobuchar’s pain tolerance for this stuff,” Smith told me later. On my way to grab a Bloody Mary, I ran into The View co-host and former Trump aide Alyssa FarahGriffin. “I had to come because it might be the last White House Correspondents’ Weekend before Trump is back,” she told me. “I’ve heard people say, listen, if he got re-elected, it might save cable news for another decade, and my thought is like, ok, but what about democracy?”
You could spot Senator John Fetterman from a mile away inside the Politico-CBS reception tent on Saturday night, not only because he is 6’8”, but because he was the only person in sweats. Not one for formality, Fetterman played up his signature style in a tuxedo sweatshirt and black shorts. He was chatting with CBS chief election correspondent Robert Costa, who’d brought his dad as his plus one this year. “This is a very brief break for me,” said Costa, who has been covering Trump’s criminal trial in New York. “I essentially live in lower Manhattan now,” the DC-based journalist joked. “This weekend is nice to celebrate journalism and to get together and socialize for a few hours, but we all need to buckle up,” Costa added. “This will be a rare party this year, a rare moment of respite for this industry. Because we’re covering a convulsive moment in America.”
I found Andrea Mitchell nearby, in a sparkly silver gown. The veteran chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News had spent the morning out in Chevy Chase, playing tennis, working out with a trainer, and packing for an upcoming trip to the Middle East. “I’m traveling with the Secretary of State,” she told me.
During the dinner, Kelly O’Donnell, a senior White House reporter for NBC News and the president of the correspondents’ association, spoke about journalists who have been captured, including Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria nearly 10 years ago, and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia on bogus espionage charges since last March. Gershkovich’s parents were in attendance. O’Donnell also noted the more than 100 journalists who have been killed in the past six months of the Israel-Hamas war.
Clockwise from top L: Colin Jost and US President Joe Biden; First Lady Jill Biden; Eugene Daniels and US Vice President Kamala Harris.All from Getty Images.
Biden did not mention the war during his speech, though he did call on Russia’s Vladimir Putin to release Gershkovich. “We are doing everything we can,” he said.
“There are some who call you the enemy of the people. That’s wrong and it’s dangerous,” Biden told the crowd, adding that “the defeated former president has made no secret of his attack on our democracy.”
Jost ribbed the president and the press, as expected, at one point saying he was honored to be at what might be, “judging by the swing state polls, the last White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” He also struck a serious tone: “When you look at the levels of freedom throughout history, and even around the world today, this is the exception,” he said, adding: “This freedom is incredibly rare and the journalists in this room help protect that freedom, and we cannot ever take that for granted.”
The hot ticket this year was the NBCUniversal after party, held at the French Ambassador’s Residence—the outside of which was lit up in rainbow with NBC’s peacock logo—a few blocks away from the Hilton. “For a party that was impossible to get into, there’s a lot of fucking people here,” one journalist grumbled.
People were letting loose, dancing alongside portraits of historical French figures hanging on the wood-paneled walls, sipping French 75’s, and eating passed hors d’oeuvres (lots of salmon). Leaning into the SNL theme, there was a Weekend Update photobooth that guests embraced as they got increasingly drunk. Everyone was fawning around the celebrities who had congregated on the tented patio—ScarJo and Jost, Pine, and Jon Hamm, who I spotted chatting with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Standing a few feet away was senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, holding an unlit cigar as “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” played throughout the party. And there was Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, drinking a Belvedere and cran. “I had a dynamite weekend,” he told me.
“Colin Jost had a pretty apt joke tonight when he said this may be the final White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” CNN’s Jim Acosta told me. “I think people have to think seriously about what’s going on right now.”
An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden’s handling of the conflict and the Western news’ media coverage of it. In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump. With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event. “Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism. Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people was being followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.”Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation,” and in a decisive election year.The night’s remarks also were expected to cast a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023. Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.” Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October. More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether. “The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment. According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants. “Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement. Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.” In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.”How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON —
An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden’s handling of the conflict and the Western news’ media coverage of it.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.
With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event.
“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.
Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.
Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.
Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.
Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.
Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people was being followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.”
Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation,” and in a decisive election year.
The night’s remarks also were expected to cast a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”
Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”
Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden’s handling of the conflict and the Western news’ media coverage of it. In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump. With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event. “Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism. Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people was being followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.”Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation,” and in a decisive election year.The night’s remarks also were expected to cast a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023. Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.” Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October. More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether. “The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment. According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants. “Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement. Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.” In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.”How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON —
An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden’s handling of the conflict and the Western news’ media coverage of it.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.
With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event.
“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.
Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.
Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.
Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.
Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.
Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people was being followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.”
Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation,” and in a decisive election year.
The night’s remarks also were expected to cast a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”
Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”
Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
Pro-Palestinian student protests on and near George Washington University’s University Yard entered their third day on Saturday with no sign of slowing down.
Students protest the Israel-Hamas war at George Washington University in Washington, Saturday, April 27, 2024. Protests and encampments have sprung up on college and university campuses across the country to protest the war.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at George Washington University sit in a tent to avoid the rain in Washington, Saturday, April 27, 2024. Protests and encampments have sprung up on college and university campuses across the country to protest the war.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
George Washington University students, who declined to provide their names, hug during a protest of the Israel-Hamas war at George Washington University in Washington, Saturday, April 27, 2024. The student at left is inside the fence of the school’s University Yard, unable to leave because he would not be allowed back in.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
George Washington University students protest the Israel-Hamas war at the university in Washington, Saturday, April 27, 2024. President Joe Biden is set to deliver an election-year roast at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, April 27, 2024, before a large crowd of journalists, celebrities and politicians against the backdrop of growing protests over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
Chalk street graffiti on the campus of George Washington University that reads “Welcome to The DMV People’s University for Gaza,” as students demonstrate on campus during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
(WTOP/Linh Bui)
WTOP/Linh Bui
George Washington University police officers are seen scanning tents and signs as students demonstrate on campus during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
(WTOP/Linh Bui)
WTOP/Linh Bui
George Washington University students demonstrate on campus during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
(WTOP/Linh Bui)
WTOP/Linh Bui
Tents pitched on George Washington University’s campus as students demonstrate during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
(WTOP/Linh Bui)
WTOP/Linh Bui
George Washington University students demonstrate on the street after police close the student plaza during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
George Washington University police close a student encampment as students demonstrate during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
A statue of George Washington draped in a Palestinian flag and a kaffiyeh is seen at George Washington University as students demonstrate on campus during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Hatchet, the GW University student newspaper, reported that about 200 demonstrators were outside the yard around 8 p.m.
While many protesters have abandoned the encampment on the yard, WTOP’s Linh Bui saw 15 tents in the new H Street encampment and over 50 protesters waking up on the street Saturday morning.
Most protesters, mix of students and nonstudents, had moved onto the street and surrounding area Friday afternoon — taking their bags and tents with them — after university workers put up metal fencing around University Yard. The student news source reported that there were far less demonstrators in the original encampment as of Saturday morning.
“We’re here to remind people of what’s going on in Gaza, to say that we’re here in solidarity with Gaza and to remind of the fact that there’s still a genocide going on,” Moataz Salim, a GW University graduate student, told WTOP.
As for the encampment itself, GW University had wanted it cleared by 7 p.m. Thursday, and requested D.C. police assistance, but according to reporting Friday by The Washington Post, officials rejected the request.
Police had gathered at the site around 3 a.m. Friday morning and were ready to go in, according to the Post, but were told to stand down.
In a statement to WTOP, D.C. police said the department “has stood in support of the George Washington University Police department as they lead the response to first amendment demonstrations occurring on George Washington University grounds.”
D.C. police said it will continue to monitor the activity both on-and-off the university’s property and that so far, “This activity has remained peaceful.”
Student protesters suspended
The university announced that multiple students will face disciplinary action.
In a statement Friday night, the university said demonstrators “violated several university policies and were trespassing” and several students have been temporarily suspended for participating in the protest.
“The university also said that any student who remains in University Yard may be placed on temporary suspension and administratively barred from campus. Several students have already been notified of their suspensions.”
In an Instagram post, the Student Coalition for Palestine said that seven students “currently face 9 charges of misconduct and are being evicted from their homes.”
“Administrators are actively working to punish students for speaking up against the oppression of Palestinians,” they wrote in the post.
Salim told WTOP seven of the students in the encampment on Friday received suspensions from the university. “And that’s exactly the kind of thing we don’t want, because they’re just here peacefully protesting in solidarity with Gaza, and they’re being punished in a really despicable manner, honestly, by the university.”
A statement from a GW University spokesperson on Saturday said “The university does not comment on individual student conduct cases or ongoing conduct cases, including whether or not such a case exists.”
Salim said the university, the George Washington University Police department and the D.C. police have been “intimidating” them.
‘We’re staying until the demands are met’
Salim told WTOP that protesters have “a list of demands.”
He said they want GW University to be open about “any sort of donor money that they receive, endowments, to disclose all their investments, to have full transparency. And then building on that, to divest from any investments they have in any sort of Israeli tech companies or Israeli weapons manufacturing or weapons technologies companies.”
Salim said protesters also want the university to “end any academic partnerships they have with Israeli institutions.”
He said protesters are also calling on the university “to do a lot more to protect their Black and brown students, especially those who are aligned with our movement and who are pro-Palestinian, like myself.”
“We’re staying until the demands are met. Otherwise they’re gonna have to drag us out of here,” Salim said.
Those demonstrations stretch from the University of Southern California — which canceled its main stage graduation ceremony set for May 10 after its campus was roiled by protests — to Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Florida.
WTOP’s Linh Bui, Emily Venezky and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
Last week, students at Columbia University set up an encampment on the campus green to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, kicking off what would quickly become a national mobilization of student activists.
Similar encampments and demonstrations at more than 50 other colleges erupted this week against the Israeli offensive, which has killed over 34,000 people in Gaza, caused famine and displaced most of the population.
Online, scenes of peaceful solidarity were quickly intertwined with reports of mass arrests, punditry and misinformation. More than 100 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia’s demonstration, and more than 500 have been arrested nationwide as of Friday, according to Axios and The New York Times.
Here’s a breakdown of what the pro-Palestine protesters want to see from their colleges and the response to these protests.
Divestment From Companies Funding Israel
One of the top demands that students across the country have is for their universities to divest from companies linked to Israel or businesses which profit off of its war with Hamas — and, by proxy, the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, they argue.
“I’m a member of this community, and I don’t want this particular community to be profiting from apartheid, from war, from genocide,” Ariela Rosenzweig, a senior at Brown University, told The New York Times.
Several colleges have refused or ignored this demand.
In a statement, American University president Sylvia Burwell rejected calls to end investments and partnerships with Israel, claiming that such actions “threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the values of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community.”
Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber, told student newspaper the Harvard Crimson that the university staunchly opposes calls for it to divest from Israel and “will not entertain” such demands.
Colleges and universities receive large endowments that are spread across an array of investments and assets. According to USA Today, the biggest university endowments in the U.S. total nearly $50 billion and make up thousands of funds. Columbia University holds a spot among the top 15 largest endowments in the country, with more than $13 billion.
Colleges are required to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources to the Department of Education. The department found that about 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. have reported $375 million in gifts or contracts from Israel over the past two decades, the Associated Press reported.
Students are calling for transparency on these investments, as well as divestment from Israeli weapon manufacturers and other companies that are profiting from the war in Gaza.
During House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) address at Columbia University this week condemning the protests, students emphasized their commitment to the demand by chanting “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” CNN reported.
Similar calls for colleges to divest from certain companies in the past have yielded results. For example, in the 1980s during the South African anti-apartheid movement, more than 150 colleges divested from companies that did business with South Africa, per the New York Times.
Transparency On Ties To Israel
Several students have called for greater transparency on their colleges’ financial ties to get a better sense of their overall investment in Israel.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has been scrutinized for its holdings in weapons manufacturers by students at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, who believe that their colleges should divest from it, The New York Times reported.
Students are also demanding that their schools sever academic ties with Israel. For example, students from Columbia University and New York University are both demanding the end of their schools’ respective Tel Aviv programs.
Denouncement Of Genocide, Call For Cease-fire
Student protesters across the country are calling for Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory and for their colleges to show support for a cease-fire. The United States, a staunch ally of Israel, has repeatedly voted against a widely supported cease-fire resolution put before the U.N.
Israel and its allies have argued that it has the right to defend itself against Hamas through a military offensive. But a United Nations human rights report last month argued that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Students have called for their colleges to openly denounce the assault in Gaza as a genocide.
“We would like Northeastern [University] to denounce the genocide that is happening in Palestine. We think that would be a very powerful gesture from the university, and we think it would be very in line with the university’s values,” August Escandon, a senior at Northeastern University, told NBC Boston.
The Response
Most of the protests thus far have been peaceful, Al Jazeera and CNN reported. But colleges have cracked down hard on encampments and demonstrations, arguing the protests endanger students’ safety, particularly that of Jewish students.
Heavily armored police have been sent in to arrest the protestors on some campuses.
One video captured from the protest at Emory University shows a professor being violently arrested, as police slamming her head into the concrete while tying her hands behind her back.
And on Saturday morning, Northeastern University police and other local law enforcement officers cleared the encampments on the campus.
In a statement shared on X (formerly Twitter), the school said the student demonstration was “infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern” and that “virulent antisemitic slurs” and the phrase “kill the Jews” were used at the protest.
Video footage from the protest shows a counter-protester holding an Israeli flag saying, “kill the Jews,” as corroborated by a reporter for a local news outlet, though it’s not clear if this is the incident the Northeastern statement refers to. The crowd booed and asked the person to leave. (Northeastern did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the protests.)
Many pro-Palestine student groups — which often also include Jewish students and organizations — have come forward to denounce antisemitism and affirm that the individuals making such inflammatory remarks don’t represent their groups or their values concerning the war in Gaza, ABC News reported.
“At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of the groups that protested, wrote in a statement. “As a diverse group united by love and justice, we demand our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Jewish students who have joined pro-Palestinian efforts have warned the dangers of conflating criticisms of Israel to antisemitism or labeling all pro-Palestinian protestors antisemitic. The progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace has argued that such assumptions are dangerous and actively harms both Palestinian and Jewish students.
“We build a new community, and as we built it, we committed to fighting all forms of oppression together, knowing that antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians, are all cut from the same cloth,” Barnard student protester Soph Askanase said at a press conference last week.
At the press conference, a Columbia student said, regarding student safety concerns, that there’s a difference between feeling unsafe and uncomfortable.
“Those two are not always the same thing,” the student said, adding that protestors have had peaceful and cordial conversations with Israeli Jewish students who don’t agree with their movement. “We open our encampment to everyone. What we don’t allow is people who are coming in who will harass people, who will spew hatred.”
Some politicians and groups, such as Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, have expressed support for students protesting on their college campuses this week, and have called out aggressive responses from police.
Johnson suggested in his address at Columbia University that the president might need to call in the National Guard to end the encampments.
But students have no intention of backing down, and have vowed to continue advocating for Palestine through demonstrations in the upcoming weeks. At institutions such as Emerson College in Boston, the student government also voted for their president to resign due to encampment arrests, as did California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt’s senate of faculty and staff.
Meanwhile, administrators and protesters at some colleges began negotiating demands, and students are refusing to leave until they’re met.
“We have amazing students who support the Palestinian liberation movement and want to see a free Palestine. This movement is very big and it’s only growing every day,” one Columbia protestor said at a press conference. “We are not going anywhere until our demands are met.”
Cal Poly Humboldt announced on Friday that its campus will remain closed through the rest of the semester due to the ongoing protests and occupation of Siemens Hall and Nelson Hall East.Watch previous coverage in the video player above.The semester was set to end on May 10. The university said remote instruction and work will continue until that time.On Monday, several dozen demonstrators took over Siemens Hall, one of the main buildings on campus. Another group of protesters was outside the building.University officials said the ongoing occupation of the two buildings has caused an “ongoing inability to open other campus facilities.” They said vandalism and theft have continued across campus.The university made an offer to protesters who were barricaded inside campus buildings, giving them the chance to leave the buildings with no arrest by 5 p.m. Friday.The university has also responded to several demands made by protesters. Read through the demands and responses here.”The University supports free speech through open dialogue that is respectful and constructive,” a statement from Cal Poly Humboldt read. “That does not include behavior that involves destroying and damaging property, and disrupting students, faculty, and staff from learning, teaching, and working. Everyone deserves to be in an environment where everyone can feel safe, included, and respected.”
ARCATA, Calif. —
Cal Poly Humboldt announced on Friday that its campus will remain closed through the rest of the semester due to the ongoing protests and occupation of Siemens Hall and Nelson Hall East.
Watch previous coverage in the video player above.
The semester was set to end on May 10.
The university said remote instruction and work will continue until that time.
University officials said the ongoing occupation of the two buildings has caused an “ongoing inability to open other campus facilities.” They said vandalism and theft have continued across campus.
The university made an offer to protesters who were barricaded inside campus buildings, giving them the chance to leave the buildings with no arrest by 5 p.m. Friday.
“The University supports free speech through open dialogue that is respectful and constructive,” a statement from Cal Poly Humboldt read. “That does not include behavior that involves destroying and damaging property, and disrupting students, faculty, and staff from learning, teaching, and working. Everyone deserves to be in an environment where everyone can feel safe, included, and respected.”
Washington, DC – A Gaza-focused campus protest movement in the United States has highlighted a generational divide on Israel, experts say, with young people’s willingness to challenge politicians and college administrators on display nationwide.
The opinion gap – with younger Americans generally more supportive of Palestinians than the generations that came before them – poses a risk to 81-year-old Democratic President Joe Biden’s re-election chances, they argue.
It could also threaten the bipartisan backing that Israel enjoys in Washington.
“We’re already seeing evidence of a generation divide on Israel, and that is going to be a long-term issue for the Democratic Party,” said Omar Wasow, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
“These protests accelerate that generation gap,” Wasow told Al Jazeera.
Students at Columbia University in New York set up a Palestine solidarity encampment last week, and they have since faced arrests and other disciplinary measures after the college administration called on police to clear the protest.
Yet, despite the crackdown, similar encampments have sprung up across the US, as well as in other countries.
Footage of students, professors and journalists being violently detained by officers on various campuses spurred outrage but has done little to slow the momentum of the protests, which have continued to spread.
‘Inflection moment’
The students are largely demanding that their universities disclose their investments and withdraw any funds from weapons manufacturers and firms involved with the Israeli military.
Politicians from both major US parties, as well as the White House and pro-Israel groups, have accused the students of fuelling anti-Semitism – allegations that protesters vehemently deny.
Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, said younger people are growing increasingly frustrated with the status quo on domestic and foreign policy issues.
“I think there’s a real disaffection with the older generation, but more importantly with the system that they’re running,” said Abdelhadi.
She added that the protests mark an “inflexion moment” in US public opinion more broadly.
“In American history in general, usually the big shifts in public opinion have either coincided with or been triggered by large student movements,” Abdelhadi told Al Jazeera.
She said campus activism can be the basis of political change. “There’s a sort of sense that this is the future.”
People demonstrate at a protest near an encampment in support of Palestinians in Gaza at George Washington University in Washington, DC, April 26 [Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters]
Biden’s woes
For years, public opinion polls in the US suggest that younger people are more likely to be sympathetic towards Palestinians and critical of Israel.
But Americans overall have grown more critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including in the ongoing war on Gaza.
Multiple polls suggest that a majority of US respondents back a permanent ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian enclave, where Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians since the conflict broke out on October 7.
But Biden has maintained staunch support for Israel, the US’s top Middle East ally, amid the war.
The 81-year-old president’s stance could be politically costly, as Biden faces a tough re-election bid in a November election that is expected to pit him against his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.
Polls suggest that Biden will need to appeal to his Democratic Party base, which is not as united in support of Israel as the Republican Party.
Angus Johnston, a historian of US student activism, explained that the generational divide on Israel is especially pronounced among Democrats.
“On a national level, we have seen this for a while as a disconnect between the values of young voters and most Democratic politicians,” Johnston told Al Jazeera.
“And what we’re seeing now is a similar disconnect between young people on campus and many of the administrators who run these campuses, along with alumni and donors.”
Abdelhadi, the sociologist, added that the heavy-handed law enforcement approach to the Gaza solidarity protests has undercut Democrats’s argument that electing Biden would protect the nation from Trump, whom they accuse of authoritarianism.
“The reality is the Democrats have been telling us that young people need to save democracy and that people of colour need to save democracy and that any quibbles with this current administration need to be put aside in order to save democracy,” she told Al Jazeera.
“But where’s the democracy when you have state troopers beating up students and faculty for protesting, and the White House saying nothing about that?”
Wasow also said the protests and crackdown against them could add to the apathy towards Biden.
“The Democrats can’t really afford to give people more reasons to vote against Biden, and this actually becomes one.”
Policy change
The student protesters are not getting involved in US partisan politics, however. They instead have stressed that their demands aim to help protect the human rights of Palestinians.
So can the demonstrations help bring about changes to US policy and achieve their divestment demands?
Johnston, the historian, said it is unlikely that US colleges will divest from large firms and the defence industry in the short term, but the call for transparency in their investments is reasonable.
He added that long-term change is possible, but it will not come overnight.
“We have seen over and over again that student organising does change policy, not always quickly, and not always in the ways that the students would have hoped,” Johnston said.
“But we do see that when student organising rises to a certain level of intensity, it can have a significant effect.”
For example, he said college activism against apartheid in South Africa began in the 1950s and grew over the years.
“I think that there is no question that the anti-apartheid campus organising of the 1980s was a significant piece of what shifted American popular opinion and political opinion on the South African regime,” he said.
Wasow, who studied the 1960s civil rights protests, also said demonstrations could shift public opinion, help grow political coalitions around a cause, and build civic capacity to advance an issue.
“If what’s happening now doesn’t result in any kind of policy change but does result in a generation of young people developing some kind of civic capacity around activism around these issues, I think that would continue to have effects in the long term.”
Police broke up a demonstration against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza on Thursday at Emory University in Atlanta, the latest flashpoint in a growing movement on college campuses around the country. Hundreds of people have been arrested in California, Massachusetts, Texas and other states during the tense protests, following several rounds of arrests in New York in recent days.
Several dozen protesters set up tents in an encampment on Emory’s quad early Thursday morning, Assistant Vice President Laura Diamond said in a statement. The initial group of protesters wasn’t associated with the university, but they were later joined by some members of the Emory community, Diamond said.
Protesters chanted slogans supporting Palestinians and opposing a public safety training center being built in Atlanta.
The school’s police department told the group they were trespassing, and police took around two dozen people into custody and cleared the quad when they refused to leave, Diamond said. Some officers carried semiautomatic weapons, and video showed officers using a stun gun on one protester who they had pinned to the ground.
The Georgia State Police confirmed later Thursday that officers used a Taser on one protester who they said was resisting arrest. The protester was tased twice before he was taken into custody, according to Courtney Lund, a public information officer for the state police.
Police officers detain a demonstrator during a protest against the war in Gaza at Emory University on April 25, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images
The Emory and Atlanta police departments requested assistance from state law enforcement authorities after being met by university protesters who threw bottles and refused to leave, Lund said.
The university police called city and state authorities after deciding that the initial group of protesters were not affiliated with Emory University based on their refusal to confirm their connections, Cheryl Elliott, the university’s Vice President for Public Safety, said in a statement Thursday evening, adding that the individual who was tased also “is not a member of the Emory community.”
“Due to the direct assault of officers, law enforcement released chemical irritants into the ground to assist with crowd control,” Elliot said.
At 7:41 a.m. a few dozen protestors arrived on campus. When they arrived, these individuals ignored and pushed past EPD officers stationed on the Quad and set up tents in an area where equipment and materials were staged for Commencement. Based on their actions and refusal to confirm their connection to Emory, EPD made the assessment that these individuals were not Emory community members.
At Emerson College in Boston, chaos erupted overnight as police tried to break up a pro-Palestinian alleyway camp. Police said Thursday 108 people were arrested and four police officers suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.
Video shows police first warning students in the alleyway to leave. Students link arms to resist officers, who move forcefully through the crowd and throw some protesters to the ground.
“As the night progressed, it got tenser and tenser. There were just more cops on all sides. It felt like we were being slowly pushed in and crushed,” said Ocean Muir, a sophomore at Emerson.
“For me, the scariest moment was holding these umbrellas out in case we were tear-gassed, and hearing them come, and hearing their boots on the ground, just pounding into the ground louder than we could chant, and not being able to see a single person,” she said.
Police move in to arrest pro-Palestinian supporters who were blocking the road after the Emerson College protest camp was cleared by police in Boston, Massachusetts, April 25, 2024.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Muir said police lifted her by her arms and legs and carried her away. Along with other students, Muir was charged Thursday with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Emerson College leaders had earlier warned students that the alley has a public right-of-way and city authorities had threatened to take action if the protesters didn’t leave. Emerson canceled classes Thursday.
In nearby Cambridge, Harvard University had sought to stay ahead of protests this week by limiting access to Harvard Yard and requiring permission for tents and tables. That didn’t stop protesters from setting up a camp with 14 tents Wednesday following a rally against the university’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Harvard law student Tala Alfoqaha, who is Palestinian, said she and other protesters want more transparency from the university.
“My hope is that the Harvard administration listens to what its students have been asking for all year, which is divestment, disclosure and dropping any sort of charges against students,” she said.
In Philadelphia, more than 100 students at Temple University walked out of class and marched from campus to City Hall, CBS Philadelphia reported. The protesters were also joined by students from Drexel University.
George Washington University in the nation’s capital on Thursday evening called anti-war encampments “an unauthorized use of university space” and said they were in violation of several university policies.
Indiana University’s police department similarly said a gathering of tents at Dunn Meadow was in violation of the university’s policies and that 33 people were arrested after refusing to take them down.
Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies enabling its monthslong conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus as graduation nears, partly prompting a heavier hand from universities.
USC
Another 93 people were arrested Wednesday night during a protest at the University of Southern California and accused of trespassing, the Los Angeles Police Department said. There were no reports of injuries.
Tensions were already high at USC after the university canceled a planned commencement speech by the school’s pro-Palestinian valedictorian, citing safety concerns. On Thursday, the university canceled its main-stage commencement ceremony, which is attended by as many as 65,000 people, because of the amount of time needed to process the crowd in line with new safety measures, USC said. Individual school ceremonies would still be held.
After scuffles with police early Wednesday, a few dozen demonstrators standing in a circle with locked arms were detained one by one without incident later in the evening.
Officers encircled the dwindling group sitting in defiance of an earlier warning to disperse or be arrested. Beyond the police line, hundreds of onlookers watched as helicopters buzzed overhead. The school closed the campus.
“Both sides of my family were displaced from Palestine, and I’m here using my voice because my grandparents couldn’t,” protester Randa Sweiss told CBS Los Angeles.
University of Southern California safety officers try to disperse students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, at the school’s Alumni Park in Los Angeles, California, April 24, 2024.
Reuters/Zaydee Sanchez
In Northern California, students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, barricaded inside a building for a third day, and the school shut down campus through the weekend and made classes virtual.
UT Austin
At the University of Texas at Austin, hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — moved against protesters Wednesday, at one point sending some tumbling into the street. Officers pushed their way into the crowd and made arrests at the behest of the university and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was in the push-and-pull when an officer yanked him backward to the ground, video shows. The station confirmed that the photographer was arrested. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff.
Dane Urquhart, a third-year Texas student, called the police presence and arrests an “overreaction,” adding that the protest “would have stayed peaceful” if the officers had not turned out in force.
University of Texas police detain a man at a protest over Israel’s war in Gaza at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, April 24, 2024.
Jay Janner/Austin Statesman/USA Today Network via Reuters
“Because of all the arrests, I think a lot more (demonstrations) are going to happen,” Urquhart said.
Police left after hours of efforts to control the crowd, and about 300 demonstrators moved back in to sit on the grass and chant under the school’s iconic clock tower.
In a statement Wednesday night, the university’s president, Jay Hartzell, said: “Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied.”
On Thursday, university spokesperson Brian Davis said not everyone at the protests were students. “There was significant participation by outside groups present on our campus yesterday,” Davis said in a statement. He said 26 of the 55 people arrested were unaffiliated with the university.
The Travis County Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes misdemeanor crimes, dropped 46 cases stemming from Wednesday’s protests after finding deficiencies in the probable cause affidavits, a spokesperson said in a statement.
A student stares at a row of Texas state troopers as students protest the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, on April 24, 2024.
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
Columbia University
While grappling with growing protests from coast to coast, schools have the added pressure of approaching May commencement ceremonies. At Columbia University in New York, students defiantly erected an encampment where many are set to graduate in front of families in just a few weeks.
Columbia continued to negotiate with students after several failed attempts to clear the encampment and over 100 arrests in recent days.
The university averted another confrontation between students and police Wednesday. University President Minouche Shafik had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours.
Late Thursday night, the school said, “The talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned. … We have our demands; they have theirs. A formal process is underway and continues. There is a rumor that the NYPD has been invited to campus this evening. This rumor is false.”
Nevertheless, two police buses were parked nearby and there was a noticeable presence of private security and police at entrances to the campus.
Just past midnight, a group of some three dozen pro-Palestinian protestors handed out signs and started chanting outside of the locked Columbia University gates. They then marched away as at least 40 police officers assembled nearby.
Students prepare to spend another night maintaining a protest encampment in support of Palestinians on the Columbia University campus in New York City, April 24, 2024.
Reuters/Caitlin Ochs
A group of Columbia University students filed a federal civil rights complaint against the school Thursday, accusing it of discriminating against Palestinian students and pro-Palestinian protesters, CBS New York reports.
On a visit to campus Wednesday, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, called on Shafik to resign “if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”
He claimed the university is being taken over by a radical and extreme ideology, citing several recent incidents of antisemitic language by protesters on and off campus.
“We need the National Guard, law enforcement or someone to come in here and take control,” Johnson told CBS News correspondent Nancy Chen. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul accused Johnson of politicizing the protest by coming to campus and said she has no plans to call in the National Guard for now.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took a measured approach Thursday on how to handle the demonstrations, telling CBS News he’d wait to see if university presidents “can get control of the situation” before taking more forceful measures.
On Wednesday evening, a Columbia spokesperson said rumors that the university had threatened to bring in the National Guard were unfounded. “Our focus is to restore order, and if we can get there through dialogue, we will,” said Ben Chang, Columbia’s vice president for communications.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whose daughter was involved in the protests, visited the protesters on Thursday.
“I had the honor of seeing the Columbia University anti-war encampment firsthand,” Omar wrote on social media. “Contrary to right-wing attacks, these students are joyfully protesting for peace and an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza. I’m in awe of their bravery and courage.”
Columbia graduate student Omer Lubaton Granot, who put up pictures of Israeli hostages near the encampment, said he wanted to remind people that there were more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas.
“I see all the people behind me advocating for human rights,” he said. “I don’t think they have one word to say about the fact that people their age, that were kidnapped from their homes or from a music festival in Israel, are held by a terror organization.”
On Wednesday about 60 tents remained at the Columbia encampment, which appeared calm. Security remained tight around campus, with identification required and police setting up metal barricades.
Columbia said it had reached an agreement with protest representatives that only students would remain at the encampment, and that the protesters “have taken steps to make the encampment welcome to all and have prohibited discriminatory or harassing language.”
Elsewhere in Manhattan, at New York University this week, police said 133 protesters were taken into custody. And on Monday, more than 40 protesters were arrested at an encampment at Yale University in Hew Haven, Connecticut, and charged with criminal trespass, a misdemeanor.
