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At Northeastern University this spring, students set up camp, waving Palestinian flags, chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
At other universities across the country, students initiated similar encampments to protest the military occupation of Gaza by Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attack in October 2023.
“We showed what we believe in, and if people don’t want to listen to us, well, they’re probably on the wrong side of history.”
Ali Caudle, a Northeastern student, said that the protests were intended to pressure universities to make change.
She criticized Northeastern for indirectly using students’ tuition money “to fund dropping bombs on innocent civilians.”
“We were hoping for, if not meeting all three demands, at least disclosing and denouncing [the war], ” she said.
Northeastern shut down the encampments, citing both student and campus safety risks that arose from the growth of the encampment’s size and the use of anti-semitic slurs.
“The persistent use of intolerant and hurtful speech over the course of two days reached a crescendo late Friday night,” Northeastern administration explained in a statement. “Hate speech has no place in any decent society, least of all on a college campus.”
Other institutions took similar approaches to handling the student encampments. At MIT, the administration was forced to arrest protesters and suspend students after the protest became increasingly tense.
However, at Brown University, administrators took a more collaborative approach. The university agreed to meet with student representatives to divest funds going toward companies funding the Israeli military. In October, the Corporation of Brown University will vote on whether the university will divest the funds.
“We were hoping for, if not meeting all three demands, at least disclosing and denouncing [the war]. ”
Despite their size and prominence around the country, this is not the first time universities have encountered student encampments and protests. During the 1960s, student protests over the Vietnam War turned violent when students began to set fire to Reserve Officers’ Training Corps buildings.
Back in Boston, Caudle believed the encampments improved awareness.
“I think we proved our point,” she said. “We showed what we believe in, and if people don’t want to listen to us, well, they’re probably on the wrong side of history.”