Forty-one Brown University students were arrested after they held a sit in on school property, demanding that the university call for an immediate ceasefire and divest from companies that allegedly facilitate the “Israeli military occupation” in Gaza.
“The disruption to secure buildings is not acceptable, and the University is prepared to escalate the level of criminal charges for future incidents of students occupying secure buildings,” Brian Clark, a school spokesperson, told the student newspaper on Monday night. The students were “photographed, fingerprinted, and provided their arrest paperwork” to “expedite the process and avoid processing arrests in two locations,” Clark added.
Late Monday night, students barged into University Hall and vowed not to leave as a crowd of hundreds gathered outside in a show of solidarity. “Given that this is the second prominent incident in recent weeks of students trespassing in a secure, non-residential building after operating hours, the University fully expects to recommend more significant criminal misdemeanor charges for any future incidents after the Dec. 11 sit-in,” Clark noted.
In early November, nearly two dozen members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now conducted a sit-in at the same location, leading to their arrests. The university eventually asked the Providence city solicitor’s office to drop the charges on the heels of Brown student Hisham Awartani being among three Palestinians shot in Burlington, Vermont, later that month. “While we are relieved our peers are no longer risking criminal charges, this is far from the end of our fight,” the student group said in a statement shortly after the announcement.
Brown has been a campus hotspot for antisemitism since Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, which left over a thousand Israelis dead.
In late November, university President Christina Paxson changed lines in her speech, removing references to Judaism after pro-Palestinian protesters shouted her down. “We can’t disentangle what happened to Hisham from the broader events in Israel and Palestine that sadly we’ve been dealing with for decades,” Paxson said over the chants of demonstrators. “Sadly, we can’t control what happens across the world and country. We are powerless to do everything we’d like to do.”
The next line in Paxson’s speech published online read: “At a faculty meeting last month, I said that ‘Every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly wear a Star of David or don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab or yarmulke.'” However, battling the voices of pro-Palestinian hecklers, Paxson eventually changed the line to “every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab,” with no mention of a Star of David or yarmulke,” National Review first reported.
Brown’s resident chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was also among the first wave of student groups celebrating the Hamas massacres, calling them “justified violence” and “in fact a victory.” “In reality, the root of the violence comes from the side of the oppressor,” the group wrote in documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The university’s SJP also sought to highlight the “difference between an ‘innocent’ civilian and a settler.”
An executive of Brown’s SJP chapter, Mica Maltzman, also serves as a spokesperson for the BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now, the group whose members were arrested in November.”We formed out of this desire to act, and also because there’s a common perception across the globe right now that like the Jewish people are a monolith and stand solidly behind Israel,” the Middle East studies student told one local outlet in November.