- Students and professors are calling on the university to withdraw from Israel.
- At Indiana University, protesters said they received a military-style response from police.
- Professors say the current protests share clear differences and chilling similarities with those of the past.
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On April 25, the day after Indiana University made a controversial protest policy change, students set up an encampment in the school’s Dunn Meadow.
The meadow had been designated a free speech lawn since 1969. At the time, student protests were intensifying at the school over tuition hikes, anti-black discrimination, and racial discrimination. Vietnam War.
Sources told Business Insider that several generations of activists are currently gathering on the same grounds to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, but the police presence was unknown to demonstrators until now. Or that it was very different from what he had experienced.
The decision, made on 24 April, states: “Any time structures (including but not limited to posters, tents, etc.) are to be erected temporarily or permanently at Dunmeadow, prior approval of the University must be obtained. and, if approved, must be complied with.” Please follow the guidelines provided by the university,” according to a statement from Indiana University President Pamela Witten.
The university said in a press release that it has strengthened its policy against encampments, calling police to arrest protesters who do not follow rules against “unapproved temporary or permanent structures.”
Whitten’s statement, shared with Business Insider, said the policy change was made “to balance free speech and safety in the context of similar protests across the country.”
As a result of this change, 64-year-old Barbara Dennis became: The Indiana University School of Education professor and self-described “long-time peace activist” criticized the police response for “militarizing” it.
A Palestinian flag flies over the Indiana University Liberation Area.
Isabella Vollmert/AP Photo
She participated in a campus protest on April 25 with her husband, an IU employee. Within hours, Dennis was taken into custody and is now appealing a one-year ban from university campuses.
Dennis said the reaction was unlike anything he had witnessed on campus since he began teaching there in 2001 and went against everything he knew beforehand about the university’s history.
From Vietnam to the Israel-Hamas war
When Dunn Meadow was founded in 1969, official university policy did not allow overnight camping. Despite this, Dennis said the policy has never been enforced.
She said during the Vietnam War, South Africa’s apartheid policy in the 1980s, and the first Gulf War, protest tents were left on grasslands, sometimes for months at a time.
Dennis described similar scenes he witnessed on campus during protests against the Iraq War and the Occupy Wall Street movement. She said a kitchen was set up during the protests and people slept there all night.
“Militarization is not just new,” Dennis told BI, adding, “IU has previously allowed people to camp on grasslands during peaceful protests without invoking its own policy on tent camping. was allowed,” he said.
IU did not respond to questions about its past enforcement of a tent policy, instead pointing Business Insider to Witten’s public statements.
“We know things like this have happened on college campuses.”
Videos and images taken on college campuses across the country over the past few weeks have shown large police presences and dozens or even hundreds of protesters being detained. More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested in the US so far. The New York Times reported.
At Columbia University and the City University of New York, 300 protesters were arrested overnight on April 30th.
As students faced university and police responses to their protests, school staff also took a resolute stance, in some cases standing in front of police or forming human chains to protect students. There is.
Pro-Palestinian protesters link arms at the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the Columbia University campus in New York City.
Jia Wu/AFP via Getty Images
Dennis said he tried to stand between three other teachers, students and police when he was arrested. She said none of the campus protests she’s attended or witnessed have called for professors to protect students in the same way, but that worse violence has sometimes occurred on college campuses. He said there are also.
“We just passed the anniversary of the Kent State massacre,” Dennis told BI. “We know that things like this happen on college campuses. This type of military police response is not completely absent from college protests.”
On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on demonstrators protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War, killing four unarmed Kent State University students and injuring nine others. None of the guards were convicted of their actions.
The Indiana University Police Department did not immediately respond to BI’s request for comment.
Passing the torch to Generation Z
Bryce Green, a Gen Z graduate student at IU who helped found the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, went camping to “protest genocide and, more precisely, our school’s complicity in it.” He told Business Insider that he helped launch the company.
Professor Green said the encampment’s main purpose was to force universities to disclose and divest from investments in Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers.
Some students are calling for the school to sever ties with the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana. Her STEM department at IU includes the study partnership This facility will be useful for research and development of warship and submarine systems. The university also announced the following at the end of last year. invested $111 million It will work with the NSWC to advance “strategic initiatives focused on advances in microelectronics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cybersecurity” for defense purposes.
Green is also appealing a five-year ban from campus following his April 27 arrest.
IU representatives did not immediately respond to questions about why there was a discrepancy in the ban, but pointed Business Insider to Witten’s comments about campus safety.of ACLU of Indiana The campuses are suing, saying these bans violate free speech rights.
All arrested protesters, including the professor, were banned from Indiana University’s campus for one year.
Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket (via Getty Images)
But while on campus, Green said he and other students witnessed faculty protecting students from police and offering assistance to students who had lost housing due to suspensions.
Dennis said he comforted young students while in jail during their arrest by singing “old hippie songs and freedom ballads.”
“I thought things were going to go well. I was the oldest person arrested that day,” Dennis said.
Green said many faculty and staff share similar sentiments with students and have the institutional power to advance this cause.
“Teaching staff are usually a permanent part of an institution. When they get upset, you create long-term problems that can’t be hidden for a year or two,” Professor Green said.
“How can we consider ourselves educators if we ignore what’s going on?”
Green and Dennis have both supported student camps since their arrests. Denise is still back at the camp, where she was granted a stay on her ban as part of her appeal, and is encouraging other educators to join the student-led movement.
Dennis told BI: “I do not support war as a solution to human or ecological problems.” To truly solve problems in a peaceful way, we need our moral and intellectual capacity. I think we need to increase that.”
The current student movement retains the atmosphere of the Vietnam War era, with student conversations on blankets and outdoor libraries. teach in By university faculty. At IU’s camp, Dennis himself participates in teach-ins.
“UNICEF says Palestine is the worst place in the world to be a child,” Dennis said. “I mean, can we just ignore that and consider ourselves educators? That just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.”