April 26, 2024
Pro-Palestinian student demonstrators have been subject to arrests at nearly a dozen colleges and universities including Columbia, USC, UT-Austin, Emory, NYU and Emerson College
NATIONWIDE — During the past week, law enforcement has arrested more than 400 people at nearly a dozen college campuses who were engaged in peaceful protest of Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza.
The following statement can be attributed to Manjusha P. Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate.
“Stop AAPI Hate is alarmed and angered by the violent suppression of students who have been peacefully protesting on college campuses across the country.
Colleges and universities should be places where differing viewpoints and free expression are encouraged. In the United States, our college campuses have a rich history of ushering in critical movements for change. Students have held protests, demonstrations and sit-ins during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, against the Vietnam War, for divestment in South Africa during apartheid, and against gun violence, anti-LGBTQ policies and police brutality today.
Students should be able to peacefully demonstrate their views on the devastation in Palestine without facing harm. But in nearly a dozen campuses across the country, universities have subjected protesters to violence. At Emory University, Atlanta Police Officers and Georgia State Troopers reportedly used pepper spray, rubber bullets and tear gas, tased people and wrestled students to the ground. Columbia University brought in dozens of police officers in riot gear, and over 100 peaceful protestors have been suspended, arrested and barred from common spaces on its campus. The NYPD deployed its violent Strategic Response Group to use pepper spray on demonstrators and shut down protests near New York University.
We are disturbed by the accounts of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian rhetoric on college campuses. But by bringing in large numbers of law enforcement officers armed with chemical agents and riot gear, universities are responsible for turning these peaceful protests violent. The continued involvement of police will only make campus environments more repressive and charged, putting students in increasing danger.
We call on universities to stand by their own values of academic freedom and remember the legacy of progress we owe to student movements. We ask administrators to stop targeting students who express pro-Palestinian views, as USC recently did when it barred its South Asian American valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from speaking at graduation. Most urgently, we call on universities to remove law enforcement from sites of peaceful protest and cease the use of violence on demonstrators. All students — Asian American and Pacific Islander, Muslim, Jewish, Palestinian and otherwise — have the right to safely and peacefully stand up for their views.”