On Friday morning, police cleared a protest camp of pro-Palestinian activists on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), marking the latest incident of campus protesters being evicted following a series of similar events at universities across the United States.
In the early hours of Friday morning, police surrounded the camp and urged protesters to leave. Despite organizers of the protest claiming that there were only about 10 people at the camp, a group of demonstrators chanted slogans loudly outside.
According to the report by the Associated Press, the protesters received a notice at 4:03 am demanding their withdrawal within 15 minutes. The first arrests began at 4:29 am, as reported by the student newspaper “The Tech.”
The report stated that some police officers in riot gear started dismantling the camp. By 7 am, only “a small team of police officers remained on standby on the campus.”
In the days before, authorities had taken action to try to clear tent encampments within MIT, but protesters had set up camp again in the same location.
The MIT Graduate Student Union stated that on Thursday, nine undergraduate and graduate students were arrested while protesting in front of a parking lot on the Cambridge campus in Massachusetts.
Local media reported that the protesters were attempting to block cars from leaving the parking lot.
On Thursday night, the student union posted on Instagram: “We must fight back now and protect our fellow protesters! Tomorrow, on May 10, Friday at 3 pm, an emergency rally will be held at the 7th-floor lobby.”
Similar to some other universities, protesters are demanding that schools sever financial and academic ties with Israel.
Over the past few weeks, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have set up camps on the campuses of over 400 colleges and universities nationwide, urging their institutions to divest from Israeli companies or companies that supply weapons to Israel.
Police from various regions have intervened in these unauthorized campus protest camps, with over 2,000 people being arrested so far.