University of Chicago protesters call removal of pro-Palestinan encampment a "brutal police raid"
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Two days after University of Chicago police took down a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on campus, student protesters called what happened a "brutal police raid."
Around 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, University of Chicago police officers began clearing out the protest encampment on the main quad, dismantling tents that had been set up for nine days.
In a statement after the encampment was taken down, the university said all of the protesters "left without incident," but organizers on Thursday accused police of intentionally carrying out a raid while protesters were sleeping, and using excessive force on protesters.
"I ask how UCPD in riot gear raiding people sleeping in their tents, grabbing, shoving and hitting people, throwing me to the ground, how any of this is without incident?" said Katja Stroke-Adolphe, a University of Chicago law student and one of the protest organizers with UChicago United for Palestine.
The university said fair warning was given to those sleeping in tents – with UCPD officers and other staff members directing protesters to leave ahead of the police intervention, and warning that those who refused to do so could be arrested. But some protesters said there was not such a warning.
On X—formerly Twitter— Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor in UChicago's Department of Comparative Human Development, called the school's framing of the morning "a lie."
"Students were not given a warning. Police watched and waited until faculty and legal observers left. They waited until students had gone to sleep, and they came in yelling, throwing chairs and items," he wrote.
Protesters had been camped out on the university's Main Quad for nine days, urging school leaders to divest from companies profiting from Israel's war in Gaza.
Students at several universities across the U.S. have demanded their schools disclose their investments in companies with ties to Israel, such as weapons manufacturers, and end such investments.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched military operations in the Gaza Strip after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Hamas militants took more than 240 hostages and killed more than 1,200 Israelis during their deadly rampage.
Israel's response has prompted growing protests as the civilian death toll in Gaza has continued to climb. One University of Chicago student, who identified himself only as Hassan, said one of their demands was for the university to acknowledge what protesters call "scholasticide" in Gaza.
"Israel, using American-made weapons, has bombed every university in the Gaza Strip," he said.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos said he ordered the protest removed because its organizers were demanding that administrators take sides, which violates the school's principle of neutrality.
"Underpinning the demands was a call for the university to diminish ties with Israel and increase ties with the Palestinians in Gaza. In short, the protesters were determined that the university should take sides in the conflict in Israel and Gaza," he wrote. "Other demands would have led to having political goals guide core aspects of the university's institutional approaches, from how we invest our endowment to when and how I make statements. Faculty members and students are more than free to engage in advocacy on one side or the other. But if the university did so as an institution, it would no longer be much of a university."
Meantime, a group of more than 1,500 University of Chicago alumni on Thursday released a letter condemning the school's response to the protest encampment and demanded the administration reopen talks with protesters to discuss their demands for disclosure and divestment from companies with ties to Israel.
"The University's current position in its investments and lack of disclosure is a non-neutral political statement. It is providing material support for genocide," they wrote.
