Police Move In on Pro-Palestinian Encampments at Penn, MIT

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

The move at Penn came a day after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said it was “past time” for the school to disband the encampment on Penn’s College Green that 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 at 5:53 a.m. Videos showed dozens of officers from the Philadelphia and Penn departments at the scene.

At MIT, 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.

The arrests come at the end of a week in which three schools long in the hot seat over their handling of the debate about the Middle East conflict—Penn, MIT and Harvard University—struggled to end encampments they said weren’t permitted. The encampment has continued on Harvard Yard, a central part of campus the school has closed to the general public.

A congressional hearing in December thrust leaders of all three elite schools into the spotlight, and two of the presidents lost their jobs amid widespread criticism of their responses.

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

Police also 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—would resign.

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 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. Police were on hand but made no arrests.

The latest arrests follow crackdowns on many other campuses. 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.

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.

Penn said Thursday that six students had been placed on mandatory temporary leave, which university policy says is a sanction reserved for “extraordinary circumstances” when a student’s presence is deemed “a threat to order, health, safety, or the conduct of the University’s educational mission.”

At Harvard, interim President Alan Garber said earlier this week that students who continue the encampment face “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.

At MIT, the school has been buffeted by demands from many corners. Groups representing parents, alumni and faculty have weighed in, some defending protesters and others accusing MIT of failing to protect students from antisemitism.

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.”

Melissa Korn contributed to this article.

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