Police Clear Pro-Palestinian Encampments at Penn, MIT

Police on Friday cleared pro-Palestinian encampments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, the latest efforts by colleges across the country to rein in escalating protests.

Both schools—along with Harvard University, where protesters remain camped on Harvard Yard—have long been in the hot seat over their handling of a tense debate on campus over the monthslong Israel-Gaza conflict. A congressional hearing in December thrust leaders of all three elite schools into the spotlight, with two of the presidents losing their jobs amid criticism of their responses.

The schools have struggled more recently to use sanctions like suspensions to wind down protests they said weren’t permitted.

On MIT’s Cambridge, Mass., campus, police arrested 10 graduate and undergraduate students, the school said Friday. None resisted, and the students were taken off campus by MIT police officers to be booked, a spokeswoman said.

“The escalation of the last few days, involving outside threats from individuals and groups from both sides, has been a tipping point,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said. “It was not heading in a direction anyone could call peaceful. And the cost and disruption for the community overall made the situation increasingly untenable.”

MIT said police also arrested several protesters on Thursday after they marched to a campus building and blocked a garage.

In Philadelphia, Penn said police arrested about 33 protesters who were cited for “defiant trespass” after repeated warnings. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a day earlier that it was “past time” for the school to disband the encampment on Penn’s College Green, which had grown in recent days.

Videos posted to social media by news outlets showed helmeted officers, with riot shields and zip ties, detaining people after Penn’s public-safety department warned protesters to leave.

“If you do not take your belongings and leave within two minutes, you will be considered a defiant trespasser and will be arrested,” Penn’s safety department said on X early Friday. Videos showed dozens of officers from the Philadelphia and Penn departments at the scene.

Penn said the College Green area of its campus will be restricted until further notice. Earlier in the week, the school said six students had been placed on mandatory temporary leave.

“Our community has been under threat and our campus disrupted for too long. Passion for a cause cannot supersede the safety and operations of our University,” J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, and other school officials said Friday.

The letter said that university officials met with encampment representatives on multiple occasions, but that their demands—including that Penn divest itself of investments in companies doing business in Israel—“were not possible.”

Universities have been navigating a volatile environment where students, donors, parents and teachers often have divided views. Some, such as Brown University, have managed to negotiate a peaceful end to encampments. University of California, Los Angeles, by contrast, saw dangerous clashes between counterprotesters and protesters and mass arrests.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses since April 18, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

Police in Washington, D.C., for example, made 33 arrests early Wednesday while clearing an encampment at George Washington University that began April 25. The district’s police chief cited growing volatility, including indications protesters were gathering items that could be used as weapons.

Police also earlier forcibly evicted protesters at Columbia University and many other colleges. Columbia canceled its main commencement ceremony, citing security concerns, but said it would go ahead with smaller-scale graduations.

MIT, Harvard and Penn were steeped in controversy five months ago after their leaders appeared before a Republican-led House committee and gave equivocal, legalistic answers to questions about where they would draw the line between protected speech and harassment.

They drew particular criticism for their response to a question about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate school policies. The presidents of Penn and Harvard—the latter also pressured by plagiarism allegations—ultimately resigned.

The fenced-in encampment on MIT’s Kresge Oval established weeks ago had included signs reading “End the genocide” and “Jews for Palestine.” Placed on the lawn just outside the camp were pictures of people taken hostage when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and a large collection of Israeli flags.

Earlier this week, Israel supporters hung the nation’s blue-and-white flags from a fence encircling the pro-Palestinian encampment, covering protesters’ signs. Encampment members responded by making red handprints on the flags.

That tense back-and-forth came two days after Kornbluth told protesters to vacate the campus lawn or face consequences that have also included dozens of suspensions.

The pro-Palestinian demonstrators have demanded that MIT cut all research ties with Israel’s Defense Ministry. The school said that two contracts worth $265,000 are active and that both involve research available to scientists worldwide.

MIT previously tried to clear the encampment on Monday, telling protesters they needed to leave that afternoon. Many did leave before toppling a fence and reoccupying the space by that evening, the school said.

Junior Maya Makarovsky, a Jewish student who is involved with a pro-Israel campus group formed after Oct. 7, said she had to walk by the encampment there several times a day because of its central location. To her, rhetoric such as calls for an “intifada” are antisemitic and causing growing anxiety. “Intifada” is an Arabic word meaning “an uprising” that Jewish leaders say is an incitement to violence against Israelis and Jews.

Before the encampment’s clearing, she said it had “become completely mentally consuming.”

At Harvard, interim President Alan Garber said earlier this week that students who remained encamped there faced the potential for “involuntary leave.”

“The encampment favors the voices of a few over the rights of many who have experienced disruption in how they learn and work at a critical time of the semester,” Garber said.

Garber at a meeting late Wednesday offered protesters a chance to meet with university officials to address their questions about the university’s endowment, but only if they voluntarily ended the encampment first, a spokesman said Friday. Garber also reiterated that Harvard won’t use its endowment as a political tool, the spokesman said.

The school said protesters declined by deciding to continue the encampment.

Protesters at Harvard and elsewhere demanded their schools cut financial ties with Israel. The student protest group “Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine” said on social media that Garber had rejected their proposal, and that “mass suspension” was imminent.

Melissa Korn contributed to this article.

Write to Jon Kamp at [email protected] and Scott Calvert at [email protected]