M.I.T. Orders Encampment Cleared, and Columbia Cancels Main Commencement

Tensions escalated on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, as pro-Palestinian student protesters resisted a 2:30 p.m. deadline set by the university to clear an encampment on the school's grounds.

Brief shoving matches broke out between the police and protesters, whose numbers swelled when hundreds of high school students showed up to offer their support.

The protesters blocked a busy road past the Cambridge campus at rush hour on Monday, shutting it down for hours and snarling traffic, and tore down metal fencing that had been erected last week to separate pro-Palestinian protesters from a growing number of pro-Israel counterprotesters.

The police were an increasing presence around the edges of the protest as evening fell, including state troopers with tactical gear and zip ties, which are commonly used in place of handcuffs during mass arrests. By 7 p.m., about 200 students filled the lawn, linking arms and writing phone numbers on their arms in case they were arrested.

The uptick in activity followed a letter from the university's president, Sally Kornbluth, on Monday warning students that they would face immediate academic suspension if they did not leave the encampment voluntarily.

Administrators at Harvard sent a similar message on Monday, calling the right to free speech "vital" but "not unlimited."

"I must now take action to bring closure to a situation that has disrupted our campus for more than two weeks," Dr. Kornbluth wrote at M.I.T. "My sense of urgency comes from an increasing concern for the safety of our community."

Concerned parents of students at M.I.T. sent a letter to administrators on Friday objecting to the stress, trauma and "poisonous reality" they said their children faced from the protest, which began on April 21.

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Campus police began restricting access to the encampment on Monday afternoon, allowing students to leave but not to re-enter. Some left voluntarily and stayed away. Others who remained said the university would only hurt itself by taking aggressive action to end the protest.

"Right now I'm not thinking about the police, I'm thinking about how bad this looks for M.I.T.," said Hana Flores, 24, a doctoral student in biology.

At one point, Ms. Flores shared a moment with her husband, holding his hand through a fence as he urged her to stay safe and promised to tell her mother what was happening.

Dr. Kornbluth was one of three university presidents who faced harsh criticism last year for their testimony in a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism and discipline for hate speech. The other two leaders, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, both resigned in the fallout, and hundreds of M.I.T. alumni signed a letter calling for stronger actions to combat antisemitism.

About 200 high school students from a dozen schools in cities including Boston, Cambridge and Somerville also protested at M.I.T. on Monday afternoon; two 16-year-olds from Somerville High School, Olive Redd and Leyla Abarca, a co-founder of Massachusetts High Schools for Palestine, were among them. Ms. Redd said she had spent time at both the Columbia University and the M.I.T. encampments and found them to be very peaceful.

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Campus protest organizers said they worked with the local high school students to help plan their visit. The younger students stayed at a distance from the encampment; some sat in the street writing messages like "Free Palestine" and "Defund and Divest" in colored chalk on the pavement.

"I think it's just like so disappointing to see that this peaceful, beautiful community is being shut down," Ms. Redd said. "That's why we're here, because even though we're young, we know that our voices matter."

In an echo of actions taken by students on some other campuses, a small group of protesters briefly set up tents and banners inside M.I.T.'s Building 7 earlier on Monday before the students were forced out onto the building's front steps, across the street from the encampment.

Pro-Israel counterprotesters were also a presence during the day. Some yelled "Killers!" at the students from the encampment, who responded with their own chants, all while state police officers stood between the two groups.

Baltasar Dinis, 24, a first-year doctoral student in computer science, said he believed the counterprotesters had the right to express their views, but "asking for M.I.T. not to make weapons of genocide, I don't see how that can be perceived as an aggression against the Israeli students."

He criticized M.I.T.'s threat of disciplinary actions, and said the school had not negotiated in good faith with protesters.

"The oppression of free speech on campus is detrimental to the entire community," Mr. Dinis said. "It's abhorrent that we cannot even do the minimum as an institution to stand against genocide."

— Matthew Eadie and Jenna Russell Matthew Eadie reported from Cambridge, Mass.

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As Pro-Palestinian protesters continue to issue long lists of demands to university administrators, one stipulation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has drawn notice.

Students for Justice in Palestine UCSC demanded last week that university leaders cut ties with Hillel International and three other Jewish organizations as part of a call to "cut ties with all zionist institutions."

Hillel operates chapters at 850 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad, and bills itself as "the world's largest and most inclusive Jewish campus organization."

It serves as a meeting place for Jewish students and a place to celebrate Jewish holidays and learn about the culture, and offers resources for reporting antisemitism and accessing mental health support.

Hillel International "is steadfastly committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders as a member of the family of nations," according to its website. However, the group has encouraged local chapters to create their own guidelines that "reflect the local environment."

Becka Ross, executive director of Santa Cruz Hillel, said the organization was "the proud home away from home for hundreds of Jewish students at U.C. Santa Cruz." Nearly 6 percent of students there are Jewish, according to Hillel International.

"It is deeply antisemitic to call for the university to cut ties with our organization, along with other Jewish communal organizations that students depend on," she said in an email.

Students for Justice in Palestine UCSC did not return a request for comment.

The school's chancellor, Cynthia Larive, issued a statement on Sunday reaffirming the university's commitment to Hillel.

"Hillel has long been an important part of our campus's interfaith council and we value and intend to continue this relationship," Chancellor Larive said.

— Heather Knight reporting from San Francisco

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More demonstrators were arrested Monday as classes resumed at the University of California, Los Angeles, the site of some of the tensest moments during a wave of student activism at U.S. universities over the war in Gaza.

Lieutenant Richard Davis of the U.C.L.A. campus police said the protesters arrested in a campus parking deck were charged with conspiracy to attempt burglary. A U.C.L.A. spokesman later said that 44 people had been taken into custody.

The arrests came as pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempted a sit-in at Moore Hall, student organizers said. About 30 protesters were sitting in a corner of the parking deck around 9:45 a.m. local time, with their hands zip tied behind them. They were later taken to a sheriff's bus.

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The university sent a message telling students and faculty members to avoid Moore Hall and switched to remote classes.

Another group of demonstrators amassed in nearby Dodd Hall, where about 40 were inside on Monday morning, chanting, "Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest." They later moved outdoors to Bruin Plaza near the center of campus, where about 150 protesters had gathered by late morning.

U.C.L.A. administrators originally took a tolerant approach to a pro-Palestinian encampment at the school, even as student protesters were arrested across the nation. But the peace was shattered late Tuesday: Videos analyzed by The New York Times showed pro-Israeli counterprotesters attacking students in the encampment, beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons.

No arrests have been made in connection with the attack, which the police allowed to continue for hours without intervention. But on Thursday, police officers from three law enforcement agencies arrested more than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators and dismantled their camp.

The university said on Sunday that it had created a new campus safety position as it examines what led to clashes between demonstrators there.

— Jonathan Wolfe Reporting from the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles

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Police officers in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, San Diego early Monday in the first sweep by law enforcement at the campus since the demonstration began last week.

Videos from the scene showed police officers wearing helmets and carrying batons as they handcuffed protesters and led them away from the tents. The university said in a statement that the police had dismantled the encampment and that one person had suffered a "minor injury."

The U.C. San Diego Police Department arrested 64 people, 40 of whom were confirmed to be students, said Matt Nagel, a university spokesman. All of the students would immediately face an interim suspension, he said.

Students erected the encampment on the sprawling Southern California campus on Wednesday and demanded that the university condemn Israel's military campaign in Gaza and call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. They also demanded that the university sever ties with Israeli institutions and divest from weapons manufacturers or similar companies.

In recent days, the group held a series of events on the university's Library Walk, drawing a few hundred people at times. Students participated in prayers, learned about historical student movements and spoke with concern about Israel's potential invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The university's chancellor, Pradeep Khosla, said on Sunday that the encampment had tripled in size and that it had posed "an unacceptable safety and security hazard on campus." Mr. Khosla also said that protesters had reneged on their assurances that they would not expand the encampment and that they had denied access to a fire marshal and health inspectors.

Noting an earlier pro-Palestinian demonstration in March, Mr. Khosla said the campus supported the right of students to express themselves, but he said that the encampment was "not a peaceful protest" because it violated the law and campus policy.

The university moved all in-person classes on Monday to remote instruction.

— Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs Reporting from Los Angeles

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After weeks of student protests, Columbia University announced Monday that it would be canceling its main commencement ceremony, and holding smaller ceremonies for each of its 19 colleges, mostly at its athletics complex some 100 blocks north.

The university's main campus has been in a state of near lockdown since last Tuesday, when hundreds of police officers swarmed Hamilton Hall to remove some 46 pro-Palestinian protesters who had occupied the building and arrested more than 100 people protesting in and around the campus.

Dozens of police officers are still on and around campus, leaving questions as to how some 15,000 graduates and their guests could easily be admitted to the area around it for the May 15 commencement.

Nemat Shafik, Columbia's president, had previously cited her desire to host the graduation on campus as one of the key reasons that she called in the police on April 30 to remove both the occupiers from Hamilton Hall and the large tent encampment that had taken over a central lawn for two weeks.

But on Monday, Columbia officials explained that security was one of the main reasons for canceling.

"We have decided to make the centerpiece of our Commencement activities our class days and school-level ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, rather than the University-wide ceremony," the university wrote in a statement.

The school said that it was still considering holding a "festive event on May 15" instead of the main ceremony, and that it would follow up with more details. The celebrations for the different colleges will begin on Friday and run through May 16.

"Holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable," Ben Chang, a university spokesman, said. He added that the school had made extensive efforts to identify an alternative venue and was unable to locate one that could host such a large event. "Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome."

The main campus quad has become an emotionally charged site as the location of the protest encampment and arrests. The 21-acre football and other playing fields at 218th Street in Inwood, known as the Baker Athletics Complex, is more neutral ground.

But the decision was also about capacity. In its announcement, the school said that rather than divide its resources to keep both the school-level events and the main commencement ceremony safe, it would instead focus "on those school ceremonies and on keeping them safe, respectful, and running smoothly."

Parents from around the world will be flying in to celebrate commencement with their graduates, which include those completing the undergraduate college, law school, medical school and many other degree programs.

Many of this year's graduating seniors, officials had pointed out, also had their high school graduations canceled because of Covid-19 precautions, and many had started their college experience in remote learning.

"We also do not want to deprive thousands of students and their families and friends of a graduation celebration" Dr. Shafik said last week. "Many of them are the first in their families to earn a university degree. We owe it to all of our graduates and their loved ones to honor their achievement."

At other universities around the nation where protests have broken out, administrators have also canceled or altered commencement events, out of concern over renewed protests.

Typically at the end of the school year, the heart of Columbia's Morningside Heights campus becomes a sweeping venue with bleacher seating and thousands of graduates arrayed around the steps of Low Library. The university president takes center stage, officially conferring the degrees on the graduates from the school's different colleges.

Two weeks ago, the University released a video of several graduates in their blue-and-white robes, explaining how important an in-person ceremony was to them.

But the way the administration has handled its pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including by calling in police to crack down and make more than 200 arrests on two separate days, has proved to be deeply unpopular with many students and faculty. Officials also became concerned that an event meant to unite the campus would divide it further.

The commencement decision also caused anger, however, including from some of the Jewish students who had felt most targeted by the protests.

"For the last three-plus weeks, I've had to listen as students on campus and protesters off campus shout for Zionists to get out of Columbia," said Josie Toubin, the co-president of an organization of Jewish students at Columbia's business school. "I am a Zionist, so they are yelling for me to leave."

"Moving graduation is another action that punishes Jewish students without justification," she said, adding that the main campus has been cleared of protesters so graduation should be held there. "Don't isolate us to a site 100 blocks north of campus as a response to the unrest on campus."

Tazia Mohammad, a freshman living on Columbia's campus, was also upset, particularly with the ongoing police presence.

"It's hypocritical to say you're acting for the graduating class and then cancel their commencement," she said of the crackdowns Dr. Shafik authorized. "It's just silly."

Khepera Lyons-Clark, 22, a senior at Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia University and normally participates in its main commencement ceremony, said the decision to cancel commencement seems to have demoralized students more.

"I just don't understand what the motive is," she said.

On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul criticized Columbia's decision to cancel its main graduation ceremony. The governor said she had offered her support in devising security plans for the upcoming ceremonies at all New York colleges.

"One thing I did not want to do is have the lives and the families and all the young people who've worked so hard disrupted," Ms. Hochul said during remarks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. "I wanted them to have the benefit of walking across the stage. They earned it."

The governor added that she had spoken to leaders at N.Y.U., Cornell University, City College and the State University of New York on Monday morning and those schools all confirmed they would proceed with graduation ceremonies as planned.

Karla Marie Sanford and Claire Fahy contributed reporting.

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At least three dozen history professors at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville signed an open letter on Sunday condemning "the repression of a peaceful protest of our students" by the police, a day after officers in riot gear clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators, spraying chemical irritants and arresting at least 25 people.

In the letter, which was particularly scathing toward President Jim Ryan and Ian Baucom, the provost, the professors also demanded answers about the intensity of the police response, who approved it and why, and whether protesters at the school could be guaranteed the ability to protest peacefully.

The letter is the latest example of faculty and staff members at universities across the country stepping into the tense relationship between administrations and students protesting the war in Gaza, keeping watch over encampments, acting as a liaison between the two groups or pushing to protect the free speech rights of their students. Others, including pro-Israel professors, have sought to build other avenues of support for students.

Faculty members at Emory University and Columbia University are among those who have either taken or pushed for no-confidence votes in their school presidents.

Some professors, faculty and staff members have gotten caught in police sweeps and arrested as law enforcement has moved to evict students and their tent encampments from campuses. Videos of their treatment — including one that showed Annelise Orleck, a 65-year-old labor historian at Dartmouth College, taken to the ground by police — have further intensified the debate over the police response.

"What makes the situation unprecedented is the crackdown on student speech — that's what has sort of marked the departure here and that's what has led faculty to speak out," said Erik Linstrum, a University of Virginia professor who helped draft and circulate the letter. He added, "there's just an extremely aggressive and intolerant response to a certain kind of speech."

The professors were careful to note that they spoke as individuals, rather than on behalf of their departments. And in the letter, they did not take a stance on the pro-Palestinian protest, emphasizing that "whatever our divergent views about the cause for which the protesters were advocating, the virtues of inquiry and debate as well as the importance of critical questioning are fundamental."

Asked to comment on the letter, Brian Coy, a spokesman for the university, pointed to a Saturday statement from Mr. Ryan, which the letter had dismissed as "replete with platitudes, half-truths and evasions."

He added that both Mr. Ryan and Mr. Baucom, the provost, "have been deeply engaged in every step of this episode and spent the day yesterday in the university's command post helping to oversee U.Va.'s response."

"Their charge to every official involved in this matter was to do everything possible to protect the rights of the protesters, as well as the rights and safety of the rest of our community," Mr. Coy said of the two men. "This protest endured peacefully for four days before demonstrators began intentionally flouting university policies and resisting efforts to secure their compliance."

But several professors and students have questioned the school's decision to bring in the police to remove the tents set up on Friday, adding that university policy on whether recreational tents were allowed without a permit was unclear as of Saturday morning. (University officials said on Saturday that the school noticed and updated a document "that inaccurately referenced an exemption to the policy.")

The school has also said that police officers were met with "physical confrontation," which protesters and some observers have denied.

"I did not observe anything at all — when I saw that statement, I was shocked," said Laura Goldblatt, an English and global studies assistant professor who did not sign the history professors' letter but was among the faculty members present on Saturday. She added, "everything they're being charged with only happened when police started to aggress upon them."

In the letter, which is still collecting signatures, the professors invoked not only the principles of the university's founder, Thomas Jefferson, but some of their own lessons to students about nonviolent protests.

Mr. Linstrum, whose area of study has focused on British imperialism and decolonization, said he had not been involved in the protests but headed over to the encampment on Saturday when he heard the police were coming. He said the letter came together as colleagues expressed outrage over seeing some of their students caught in the clash and not receiving a response from some administrators when they pleaded for intervention.

"There was a very clear sense from very early on, even as things were happening yesterday, that some response was imperative — that we couldn't let something like this go unanswered," he said.

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After a week of escalating violence involving campus protests over Gaza, the University of California, Los Angeles, said it would resume in-person classes on Monday and had created a new campus security job.

The leader of the newly created office of campus safety will report directly to the chancellor, Gene Block, and manage the U.C.L.A. police department and the office of emergency management, and comes as leaders of the school and other college administrators across the country face a backlash over the way they have handled pro-Palestinian demonstrators on university property.

Last Tuesday, after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, the clash went on for hours with no police intervention, and no arrests.

The new office will take over the management of the campus police department from the vice chancellor Michael Beck, who also oversees events, facilities management, transportation and other campus operations. Mr. Beck and the U.C.L.A. police chief, John Thomas, have faced mounting criticism as demonstrations on campus last week between pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters turned increasingly violent.

After the violence on Tuesday, critics said Mr. Thomas was unprepared and failed to protect students. He defended himself over assertions that the university waited too long to intervene and secure backup from the Los Angeles Police Department. The University of California's president announced that it would conduct an independent review of what led to the clash.

The new office of campus safety will be run by Rick Braziel, a former police chief in Sacramento and a well-known expert on policing in California, according to a statement by Mr. Block. Mr. Braziel, who is also a former inspector general for Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, has previously been tapped to review high-profile police actions, including after the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 and the protests and riots in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, among other cases.

Mr. Braziel has long been a sought-out voice on law enforcement for California's Democratic establishment. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him to an advisory council tasked with improving interactions between law enforcement and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In a statement, U.C.L.A. told members of the campus to avoid the area around Royce Quad, the site of the protest encampment, and said law enforcement would continue to be stationed around campus "to promote safety."

Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 

May 5, 2024

: 

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the last name of the U.C.L.A. chancellor. He is Gene Block, not Bock.

How we handle corrections

— Jonathan Wolfe Reporting from Los Angeles

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A group of University of Chicago professors said on Monday that they would risk arrest alongside students if police officers attempted to disperse an increasingly fortified pro-Palestinian encampment on a campus quad. Their announcement came after a week of mixed signals from administrators about when and if they might seek to evict demonstrators.

"As faculty members, we will protect the safety of our students if the administration attempts to violently remove them, even if that means arrest and detention," said Elham Mireshghi, an assistant instructional professor in Chicago's Divinity School.

The announcement by the faculty members, who stood on the steps of a campus building, came after a tense weekend in which protesters had braced for a police crackdown that did not materialize. After initially taking a permissive approach to the cluster of tents that went up last week, the university's president, Paul Alivisatos, wrote a letter on Friday morning saying the encampment "cannot continue."

"I stated that we would only intervene if what might have been an exercise of free expression blocks the learning or expression of others or substantially disrupts the functioning or safety of the university," Dr. Alivisatos wrote on Friday. "Without an agreement to end the encampment, we have reached that point."

Many assumed after his letter was published that police action was imminent, and a brief scuffle between protesters and counterprotesters on Friday led to a heightened law enforcement presence. But officers made no attempt to force protesters from the quad, and administrators and protesters negotiated again over the weekend.

The Chicago encampment, one of dozens across the country, has drawn heightened attention because the university is home to the Chicago statement, a set of free speech standards adopted in 2015 that has become a touchstone and guide for colleges across the country. Professors said on Monday that the university would violate those principles if it attempted to remove the encampment with force.

The protest "exemplifies the values of inquiry and free expression espoused by the University of Chicago," said Jessica Darrow, who teaches in the university's social work school and was joined by dozens of colleagues at the Monday news conference. "Our students' demands are reasonable, and they are clear. They are applying what they've learned in courses and from each other to create a peaceful, welcoming and educational space."

Dr. Alivisatos, a chemist who became president of the university in 2021, accused protesters on Friday of vandalizing buildings, blocking walkways, destroying a nearby installation of Israeli flags and flying a Palestinian flag from a university flagpole. A university spokesman did not immediately respond to questions on Monday.

Protesters told their supporters late Sunday night that they believed the police would soon move in, but officers made no such move. A philosophy professor, Anton Ford, said dozens of faculty members had come to the encampment overnight Sunday expecting a police raid, and most had been prepared to get arrested.

"Our most immediate concern is for the well being of our students," Dr. Ford said. "We don't want them getting beat up just because they're camping on the lawn."

By Monday morning, the encampment of several dozen tents appeared significantly more fortified than it had a few days prior. Makeshift fencing surrounded the tents, large pieces of plywood had been erected around parts of the perimeter and a cluster of hard hats was visible inside. Small numbers of security guards and university police officers were posted nearby.

But away from the encampment, it looked like any other spring Monday at the university, a private institution that is one of the country's most selective. Students studied on park benches, grabbed coffees at campus shops and posed for photographs in graduation attire.

— Mitch Smith Reporting from the University of Chicago

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Harvard University's president on Monday called for students protesting Israel's military campaign in Gaza to shut down their tent encampment, saying that students who remain would be placed on an involuntary leave from the school and risk being kicked out of their campus housing.

The statement on Monday from Alan M. Garber, Harvard's interim president, raised the possibility of harsher consequences for the protesters, and came as other universities around the country continued to crack down on encampments, in many cases having the police arrest students.

At Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass., the university has restricted access to the grassy quad known as Harvard Yard where protesters began their protest two weeks ago, but it has largely allowed the tent encampment to stay intact.

Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, the coalition of pro-Palestinian students who are leading the protest there, said Dr. Garber's warning about involuntary leave was "a significant and unprecedented escalation." The student group scheduled a news conference for 5 p.m.

The pro-Palestinian group has demanded that Harvard disclose its investments in what it describes as "companies complicit in the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza" and withdraw those investments. The group had set a deadline of Monday afternoon for the university to begin negotiations over that demand.

"Rather than negotiate, the University has initiated an unprecedented wave of collective disciplinary action against over 60 students and student workers — what might be the largest collective disciplinary action in the University's history," the group wrote on Sunday, before the further threat of consequences from the university president.

If students are placed on involuntary leave, they are not allowed to be on campus and cannot live in Harvard housing. The student handbook says that students on a leave of absence are "expected to vacate University property as soon as possible."

Dr. Garber, who took over in January after the university's previous president, Claudine Gay, resigned, said in the email to students and others that the protest 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."

He said the university had received reports of people in the encampment intimidating or harassing other people, though he did not go into detail.

Dr. Garber said that the disruption that the encampment has posed will become "more consequential" as students move out of housing and the university begins to prepare for graduation later this month. "The members of the Class of 2024 deserve to enjoy this milestone uninterrupted and unimpeded," he said.

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The University of Chicago has built a brand around the idea that its students should be unafraid to encounter ideas or opinions they disagree with.

To drum that in, the school provides incoming students with copies of its 2015 free-speech declaration, known as the Chicago statement, which states that freedom of expression is an "essential element" of its culture.

And the university has long adhered to a policy of institutional neutrality, which strongly discourages divesting from companies for political reasons, or from making statements aligning it with a social cause. That neutrality, the university argues, allows for a robust, unencumbered exchange of ideas.

Many professors swell with pride talking about how the school's commitment to these principles has endured through two world wars, Vietnam and, more recently, the tumult of the Trump administration. And more than 100 institutions have adopted or endorsed similar principles.

But the University of Chicago's image as the citadel of free speech is being tested again — this time over an encampment on its central quad, where protesters of Israel's war in Gaza defied orders to leave for more than a week.

On Tuesday morning, the university called in police to bring down dozens of tents.

When the encampment first went up last week, Paul Alivisatos, the university's president, said the school wanted to show "the greatest leeway possible for free expression," and allowed the tents to stay up, even though they were in defiance of a policy against erecting structures in public spaces.

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But he also said that this leniency was not indefinite. He later said that the tents had to go, because the ongoing protests were disrupting student life and degrading civility on campus.

Student protesters viewed the demand as hypocritical.

"The university continuously batters this point about free speech," said Youssef Hasweh, a fourth-year political science major, during a rally on the quad on Saturday.

He said that the college tells protesters, "'We are giving you your First Amendment rights, and we're one of the only universities to do that, so we're the good guys.'"

As Mr. Hasweh sees it, the Chicago statement is a fig leaf. "They're kind of just using that to shut us down."

Across the country, encampments have forced administrators and students to grapple with the outer limits of free speech. The tents, protesters argue, are a form of speech. But to many universities, they violate rules about the use of physical space and campus disruption.

Should academic institutions ignore their own policies against disruptive activity for the sake of speech, even if many Jewish students feel their very identity is under attack? When does a protest dominate a campus enough to drown out opposing views? And what if encampments overwhelm student life, with drums and chants affecting the ability to study for finals?

Some schools, like Brown and Rutgers, have reached agreements with protesters that have lowered the temperature, at least enough for the tents to come down. Others, like Columbia, have been unable to reach a détente and called in the police.

But in some ways, the argument is as much about the culture of debate and disagreement as it is about free speech.

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Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the university, oversaw the Chicago statement, and said that some nuance has been lost.

While the First Amendment protects the right for people to "say things that scare other people," Mr. Stone said, "what you want to tell students and citizens is: You should try not to do that. You should communicate your message in a civil and respectful manner."

Tents, Music, Disruption

The quad at the University of Chicago pulsed all weekend with the din of protest. The encampment, a mini-village of more than 100 tents, was just a few steps away from the building that houses the president's office.

At any given time, the area teemed with dozens of students, who seemed to be enjoying unseasonably warm spring weather. Bob Dylan blasted from loudspeakers. Chants that many Jews consider a call to wipe out the state of Israel — "Free, free Palestine" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" — rang out. Chalked slogans covered the sidewalks: "Staying invested is a political statement, not neutrality"; "Chinese Queer Feminists for Palestine."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson even paid a visit.

Tension was evident, however, with some students wearing masks or kaffiyehs to cover their faces. Protesters held up blankets to prevent photographers from taking pictures. Some Jewish students walked through the quad on their way home from services, passing signs that read "Globalize the Intifada" and "Jews Say Ceasefire Now."

Negotiations to take the encampment down, which the university once characterized as "substantive," had persisted all weekend then broke down on Sunday.

Students insisted that they would stay on the quad until their demands were met, which spanned a range of issues that were both related to and tangential to the Palestinian cause. These included pulling out of investments that fund military operations in Israel; stating that a genocide and "scholasticide," the destruction of Palestinian universities, are taking place in Gaza; disbanding the campus police; and ending construction of new buildings in the surrounding neighborhood as a way to stop gentrification.

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Those appeared to be nonstarters with the administration, because of Chicago's neutrality policy. It had resisted such pressure before. As other prominent universities heeded students' demands in the 1980s to divest from companies that did business in South Africa, the University of Chicago was a notable exception.

But the university has also been inconsistent, said Mr. Hasweh, the student protester, pointing to its statement of support for those affected by the invasion of Ukraine.

For other protesters, Chicago's vaunted free speech doctrine seems like a dusty relic, irrelevant to what is happening in the world, especially when it comes to the war in Gaza, which for them, amounts to genocide.

The speech principles are relatable to these students and faculty in "the way that the value statements of Procter & Gamble are related to the employees of Procter & Gamble," said Anton Ford, an associate professor of philosophy who was at the encampment. "We didn't vote on them. The students didn't vote on them. Nobody asked us about our opinion on them."

Callie Maidhof, who teaches global studies with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, advised protesters as they negotiated with the administration. She said the university was "strategically using" its stance on neutrality as a way to clamp down on the protests.

"I hear people saying, 'I like free speech, but this has gone too far,'" Dr. Maidhof said. "But where is the line when you're talking about 40,000 people killed? What could be considered too far?"

A Last Warning

On Friday, four days after the encampment started, the university sent a statement to the campus.

"The encampment cannot continue," Dr. Alivisatos, the president, wrote. "The encampment has created systematic disruption of campus. Protesters are monopolizing areas of the Main Quad at the expense of other members of our community. Clear violations of policies have only increased."

The university accused demonstrators of engaging in the kind of activity that flies in the face of Chicago's culture — including shouting down counter demonstrators and destroying an installation of Israeli flags. The student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, reported that at one point, demonstrators used a projector to display a profane insult to Dr. Alivisatos on the main administration building.

"The encampment protesters have flouted our policies rather than working within them," Dr. Alivisatos wrote, warning that the ongoing demonstration was jeopardizing the university's ability to function.

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On Tuesday, shortly before 5 a.m. local time, the university's police arrived in riot helmets and began clearing tents, a humbling reminder that even an institution dedicated to nurturing a culture of civilized disagreement could not breach the considerable gap between its values and those of its protesting students and faculty. Nor could a culture of neutrality quell the outrage, which at other institutions has led to raucous demonstrations, occupations of buildings, graduation disruptions and arrests.

"If someone were to design a stress test to reveal all the of fault lines and unresolved issues in higher education among student activism, this is it," said Jamie Kalven, a journalist who has extensively studied the University of Chicago's history of free speech and protest.

Mr. Kalven's father, Harry Kalven, chaired the committee that established the university's position on political neutrality in 1967. The impasse today, the son said, reflects how many students — on Chicago's ivy-draped campus and beyond — do not share the school's values when it comes to political expression.

"It's really remarkable the degree to which young people are alienated from what I think of as the First Amendment tradition," he said.

The tension on Chicago's campus was also a sign that today's combative political climate has infected academia.

"The default setting is confrontation," said Eboo Patel, president of Interfaith America, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes cooperation across religious faiths.

"What was the symbol of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee?" Mr. Patel asked, referring to one of the most active civil rights groups of the 1960s. "It was two hands clasped together."

And today, what is the symbol that many groups seeking social and political change use? Mr. Patel answered: "The fist."

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The ability to engage productively with people who share different political views is something that Olivia Gross, a fourth-year undergraduate, wishes young people would learn to do more naturally.

"I came here to hear views that are different than mine," she said in an interview on Saturday. "That's the point of coming to the University of Chicago. I want to know what you think and why you think it."

But she said the current climate made that difficult sometimes. Students at the encampment, she noted, had set up tents for a variety of different purposes — for welcoming protesters, for medical needs and for food.

"How nice would it be," she mused, "to have a tent that invited dialogue across differences?"

Bob Chiarito contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 

May 6, 2024

: 

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the date of the Chicago statement on free speech. It was released in 2015, not 2014.

How we handle corrections

— Jeremy W. Peters and Jamie Kelter Davis Jeremy Peters reported this story from the campus of the University of Chicago.

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Pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves inside the main administrative building at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I., on Monday night, protest organizers said. The school said its president and provost were meeting with the demonstrators.

Twenty-four protesters, including students at the private art and design school, began a sit-in inside the building on Monday morning, according to a statement from the organizers, RISD Students for Justice in Palestine. Just before 7 p.m., they occupied the second floor of the building and set up barricades, the statement said.

A livestream by the organizers showed protesters gathered in a corridor on the second floor of the building, chanting "Free, free Palestine," as security guards inside a room appeared to prevent them from entering it. Videos showed other protesters gathered outside the building.

The developments escalated a protest that has been held outside the building, 20 Washington Place, since last Wednesday, and added to the short list of school buildings that have been occupied by activists protesting Israel's war in Gaza. Last week, police officers ended occupations of buildings at Columbia University and Cal Poly Humboldt, clearing the buildings and arresting dozens of people.

The building at 20 Washington Place contains the offices of the Rhode Island school's top officials and its administrative and financial services.

The school's president, Crystal Williams, and its provost, Touba Ghadessi, were at the building meeting with students involved in the protest, Jaime Marland, R.I.S.D.'s senior director of public relations, said in an email at about 10 p.m. "We have and continue to affirm our students' right to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly," she added.

The protesters' demands included that the school divest from investments that benefit Israel and that the school's president "publicly condemns the Israeli occupation of Gaza as a genocide," the organizers' statement said.

The protesters declared that they had renamed the building Fathi Ghaben Place, after a Palestinian artist who died in Gaza in February. Palestinian officials have said that Mr. Ghaben was not allowed to leave Gaza to seek medical care.

A Providence Police Department spokesman said that the school had not requested police assistance, although the police were "aware of the protest."