Protesters mix tactics as movement grows
BOSTON — Wearing riot helmets and carrying zip ties, Boston police officers moved in this past week surrounding a group of pro-Palestinian protesters on a grassy patch of Northeastern University’s campus. Six police wagons were idling nearby, and an officer had issued a terse warning. Mass arrests looked imminent.
Then, without explanation, the riot police packed up and left. The sudden end to the standoff produced cheers from the protesters and confusion for those who had been bracing for chaos. Police officers have rushed in to break up student encampments at the University of Southern California, Arizona State University, Ohio State University and other colleges.
On quads and lawns from coast to coast, colleges are grappling with a groundswell of student activism over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“They don’t seem to have a clear strategy,” said Jennie Stephens, a professor at Northeastern who attended the protest to support students.
“I think there’s this inclination to kind of control what’s happening on campus, but then that’s balanced with the optics — or the violence, or the real harm done to students or faculty or staff or others if there are arrests.” Police and protesters have reported being injured at some college demonstrations, but in many cases, the arrests have been peaceful, and protesters have often willingly given themselves up when officers move in.
At Northeastern on Thursday, 100 protesters had linked arms in a circle around a half-dozen tents on a lawn known as the Centennial Common. The dean of students and university police warned protesters that they would be considered trespassers if they did not produce a student ID. The dean went around the circle asking students for the cards; some showed them, but many did not.
A university spokesperson, Renata Nyul, said in an email that the Boston Police Department had ultimately made the decision for its officers to leave without making arrests.
Then, around dawn Saturday, Massachusetts State Police officers arrived and began to arrest protesters after all, putting them in zip-tie handcuffs and taking several tents down. The state police said 102 protesters who refused to leave were arrested and would be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Nyul said Northeastern had made the decision to have them arrested after the demonstration was “infiltrated by professional organizers.” She also said someone had said, “Kill the Jews,” at the protest the night before. Protesters denied both claims. A video showed it was a pro-Israel counterprotester who used the phrase, as part of his criticism of the protesters’ chants. Pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses have swiftly multiplied since Columbia University students launched theirs this month.
They have drawn ire from students and faculty, who complain about what they see as antisemitism and a lack of safety for Jewish students.
Nicholas Dirks, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, said there were more challenging decisions for a university leader than whether to summon police, in part because outside law enforcement officers use tactics far different from a campus police force. “...Bringing in an external police force, you know the first thing that’s going to happen is you lose control over the situation,” said Dirks.
At Berkeley, he said, he had been reluctant to bring in off-campus police officers, except when there appeared to be credible threats of violence. “You’re in a kind of crisis situation, so you are balancing what is partial, always incomplete information with a kind of time urgency where you really feel you have to make very, very quick decisions, and it’s not the best time to make clear calls,” Dirks said. “They are decisions under fire,” he added.