A group of more than 100 Princeton faculty and post-docs have signed a letter demanding that the university reinstate and expunge the records of two graduate students who were arrested for trespassing while participating in an anti-Israel protest last week.
“This repressive action, undertaken at the behest of the University administration, constitutes a grave threat to freedom of speech, dissent, and assembly on the Princeton campus,” reads the open letter, which was released on Saturday.
An activist group called “Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest” claims two graduate students, Hassan Sayed and Achinthya Sivalingan, were arrested for trespassing and “evicted” on Thursday. A Princeton University spokesperson confirmed that two graduate students had been arrested for trespassing and immediately barred from campus, pending a disciplinary process, but have not been evicted from university-owned housing.
In response to the arrests, four Princeton affiliates — two graduate students, one post-doc, and one alumnus — resigned from the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Climate, Culture, and Conduct convened by the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) committee.
The graduate students were arrested Thursday morning, when roughly 50 people set up tents in McCosh Courtyard. After immediately receiving a warning that the tents violated school policies, the protesters disassembled the tents and transitioned to holding a sit-in with singing, chants, and drums. National Review previously reported that at least three Princeton professors held class within the demonstration. Since the university policies do not permit sleeping outdoors, the protesters have taken shifts staying awake in the courtyard during the night.
The pro-Palestinian demonstration, which has since featured speeches by Linda Sarsour and a pro-North Korea activist, now enters its fifth day.
Princeton University students told National Review that their classes were disrupted by the demonstration, and some have raised complaints to the administration.
“I am in class inside McCosh currently, trying very hard to complete an assignment. However, the yelling, drumming, and chanting is quite traumatizing, annoying, and most of all disruptive to my learning,” a sophomore wrote in an email on Thursday to Vice President Rochelle Calhoun, which the student shared with National Review.
“I am not a Jewish student,” the email continued. “I’m here at Princeton to learn, and it is almost impossible to do so when there is incessant yelling outside and drumming. My professor is having to shout so we can hear her teaching the material over the loud drumming in the courtyard (our windows are closed).”
Another Princeton undergraduate told National Review that the protest entertained students in class.
“I had a precept in McCosh Hall during the encampment,” a junior wrote to National Review. “There was constant drumming and at points shrieking or very bad singing. A lot of the kids in precept just laughed at it.”
On Friday, the demonstration — which calls itself the “Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment” as well as the “Princeton Popular University” — released ten community guidelines, including a commitment to “not engage with zionist counter-protestors” and a commitment to not disclosing anyone’s identity to university administrators.
“We recognize our role as visitors, and for many of us, colonizers, on this land,” the community guidelines state. “We camp with an acute awareness that we do so on colonized Lenapehoking land, which after being ethnically cleansed of its Indigenous population has experienced subsequent waves of racist displacement.”
The schedule for the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Saturday featured a “drum circle,” “Latinx solidarity speeches,” “abolition letter writing,” “talking to cops 101,” and a “water ritual.” Featured speakers included Linda Sarsour, as well as faculty members like history professor Elizabeth Ellis and English professor Rob Nixon.
The schedule listed an event with “Queers for Palestine Philly,” a group whose work centers on “prison, military and border abolition, anti-zionism, anti-normalization, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, 3rd world feminism, and a radical queer of color critique on society and empire.” The group endorses a one state solution, namely the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest sent an email on Saturday urging students to demand that the student government cancel “Lawnparties,” a university tradition that occurs bi-annually featuring live music and food. The Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest message included a script for students to send to student government.
“I am writing to demand that USG cancel all upcoming Lawn Parties events due to the horrific circumstances surrounding the genocide in Gaza and the violent criminalization of peaceful student protests at American universities, including our own,” reads the email template asking student government to cancel Lawnparties, which were scheduled to occurred the following day.
“Every day children in Gaza listen in fear to the sounds of bombs, drones, and the screams of the dying,” the email template continued. “Ask yourself: How can festivities continue here as if every university in Gaza has not been annihilated? As if journalists, authors, professors, students—everything we ourselves strive to be—are not under attack?”
A Princeton graduate student released a video on social media on Sunday, in which he walks around the encampment and is followed by protesters holding tarps, keffiyehs, and blankets that hide their faces and obscure the demonstration.
“Please stop stalking me in public,” the student says in the video. “I’m trying to walk, please stop following me.”
The demonstration on Sunday featured “solidarity statements from Latine students,” a Sunday service with former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges, and the activism group “Nodutdol” made of “diasporic Koreans and comrades” who advocate for “Korea’s re/unification and national liberation.”
“It was the North that passed Korea’s first gender-equality law in its entire history,” the Nodutdol speaker said at the protest, who praised the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for its “unwavering” support for Palestine. He added, “It has never established diplomatic relations with Israel.”
Classes at Princeton have ended, and exams are scheduled to begin on Wednesday, May 8.