Protestors trickled in Tuesday morning at the Johns Hopkins University as a sit-in to pressure the university to divest from Israel resumed.<\/p>\n
The encampment, which launched Monday afternoon, had mostly cleared overnight after student participants spoke with the university\u2019s president and provost. They agreed that the activists would disperse and the peaceful protest would be allowed to continue during the day, a university spokesperson said early Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
Student groups participating in the protest said on social media that a \u201csmall brave team\u201d of protestors remained overnight on \u201cThe Beach,\u201d a grassy area on campus where the demonstrations began Monday night.<\/p>\n
The university joins several throughout the U.S. where pro-Palestinian student groups have launched efforts in the final weeks of the academic year to push their institutions to sever ties with Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand in solidarity with students across the country who face escalating police violence and administrative repression for their peaceful protest of the war crimes committed daily by [Israel]. None of us are free until Palestine is free,\u201d the Hopkins Justice Collective, a group of students and university affiliates, said in a news release.<\/p>\n
The university said in its Tuesday morning statement that the institution\u2019s priority Monday was to \u201caccommodate a protest while maintaining a safe environment for our community.\u201d Student participants met \u201cfor several hours\u201d with the university\u2019s president, Ron Daniels, and its provost, Ray Jayawardhana, and came to a \u201cmutual agreement\u201d to disperse overnight.<\/p>\n
The protest started around 4 p.m. Monday, when organizers said they sent a list of demands in an email to Daniels.<\/p>\n
Around 6:30 p.m., university police department Chief Branville Bard Jr. approached the protest with a megaphone, asking students to disperse and was met with boos and then chants. An hour later, Bard and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Rachelle Hernandez returned to offer protesters a meeting with university administrators, including Daniels, \u201cwithin the next five days\u201d if they disbanded, and that offer was rebuked.<\/p>\n
The students are demanding Hopkins divest its endowment from companies that support Israel, including Elbit, Blackrock, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Google, as well as reveal all financial ties to Israel, lobbying efforts to increase militarized spending and a \u201cdetailed accounting of the use of weapons and military technology developed at Hopkins for the international slaughter and surveillance of human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
University Board of Trustees member Gary Roughead is also on the board of Northrup Grumman.<\/p>\n
In addition, the students are demanding the university disband a cooperative degree program with Tel Aviv University, stop accepting United States Department of Defense funding to develop weapons through the applied physics lab and publicly acknowledge \u201cthe current genocide and ongoing occupation of Palestine since 1948.\u201d<\/p>\n
The release cites a 1980s protest and nine-day sit-in that led to divestment from apartheid in South Africa and past trustee votes to divest from tobacco companies and coal producers as examples of student activism on campus.<\/p>\n
A snare drum beat as students took turns leading chants Monday. Organizers offered free magazines on Palestinian liberation and dinner. In total, around 200 people gathered on The Beach, near the intersection of North Charles Street and University Parkway. Around 8 p.m., a Baltimore Police Department helicopter made several audible laps over the protest.<\/p>\n
The university said Tuesday morning that its administration had \u201cfrank and constructive\u201d discussions with organizers during which institutional officials \u201cconveyed our concerns over the health, safety, and welfare of students involved in the protest, as well as others in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
They said they came to an agreement early Tuesday in which \u201cstudents agreed to dismantle the tents and other structures they set up and to refrain from assembling on the campus overnight,\u201d and the institution \u201cagreed to support our students\u2019 ability to return to a designated area on the Beach each day to continue their daytime protest activities\u201d under university policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are immensely relieved at this peaceful and productive resolution, and express our profound appreciation to those who helped reach this agreement,\u201d university leadership said in its statement.<\/p>\n
The protest arrives in Baltimore following a nationwide movement of student demonstrations following Hamas\u2019 attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed roughly 1,200 people and Israel\u2019s subsequent retaliation on Gaza that killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Around 1,000 people have been arrested at similar protests since New York police arrested over 100 demonstrators at Columbia University on April 18, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
The demonstrations at Hopkins come just weeks after the university reached an agreement<\/a> with its graduate student workers\u2019 union that included, among other provisions, the right to peacefully protest without being met by force.<\/p>\n Last week, police in Washington rejected George Washington University officials\u2019 pleas<\/a> to clear a small encampment of peaceful protestors. At the University of Texas-Austin, officers made 34 arrests last week while police in riot gear cleared an encampment at Boston\u2019s Northeastern University on Saturday and arrested around 100 people.<\/p>\n \u00a92024 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n KeyWords:: 42e156c6-c348-5cc9-920b-823f4c657194 Protestors trickled in Tuesday morning at the Johns Hopkins University as a sit-in to pressure the university to divest from Israel resumed. The encampment, which launched Monday afternoon, had mostly cleared overnight after student participants spoke with the university\u2019s president and provost. They agreed that the activists would disperse and the peaceful protest would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163630,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163629\/revisions\/163630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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