At least nine people were arrested at a pro-Palestinian encampment at MIT on Thursday after the university’s president, Dr. Sally Kornbluth, ordered students to leave earlier in the week. File Photo by Will Oliver/EPA-EFE
May 10 (UPI) — Authorities arrested at least nine Massachusetts Institute of Technology students as they dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment on the Cambridge campus. MIT President Sally Kornbluth warned student protesters, who had joined with hundreds of others to call for MIT to end research contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense, to leave the Kresge lawn where the encampment was set up by Monday afternoon.
MIT had already suspended dozens of students with their cases being referred to its Committee on Discipline for refusing to clear the tent site when originally ordered.
Protesters returned to the encampment and held an “emergency” rally Thursday in support of those who faced punishment, organized by the MIT Graduate Student Union which some of the students arrested on Thursday belong to.
“We must fight back to defend our coworkers now,” the message said.
“We are not going to stop acting,” MIT student Quinn Perian told WCVB-TV. “We are not going to stop letting the institution know that there is no life as normal — there is no life as normal in Gaza. We are going to continue showing everyone that this complicity in a genocide is not acceptable.”
The MIT arrests are part of aggressive actions taken by college administrations to shut down encampments created by pro-Palestinian protesters at campus around the country. The encampments have picked up in the spring with many protesters calling on universities to divest from Israeli institutions.
