Police toppled what had been the lone remaining pro-Palestinian encampment in New York City overnight at the Fashion Institute of Technology, hours before a faculty group at The New School launched a new tent demonstration Wednesday.
About 50 protesters were taken into custody as cops broke up the demonstration outside the art and design school, part of the State University of New York system. Some of the arrestees started a protest in Union Square Park before marching to the W. 27th St. campus.
“You are currently participating in an unauthorized encampment. Gather your belongings, disperse from the breezeway, leave the campus immediately,” cops warned before students were arrested and put onto an NYPD bus, an Instagram story video shows.
The tent city was up for 13 days. FIT students occupied the lobby of the school’s museum before moving to its courtyard as “regular activities” of the college over the last couple of weeks had to be “compromised or canceled,” college officials said.
“I tried very hard to allow students and other members of our community on both sides of this issue to peacefully protest and make their feelings known,” FIT President Joyce Brown said in a memo to students and faculty Wednesday morning. “However, in the end, for some there was no room for dialogue or coexistence.”
Brown said FIT set and extended a deadline to continue discussions around students’ demands, so long as they left the encampment — an offer that the student protesters declined and instead took to social media to call for reinforcement from outside protesters.
“I write this message with the clear knowledge that there is no sentiment — there are no words — that will not offend someone,” Brown continued. “I write with no notion of convincing anyone of my painful awareness of the fear and suffering so many are experiencing on all sides of this issue.”
Ahead of the arrests, students posted on Instagram they were suspended for “nondiscriminatory harassment” and school policy violations related to food and drinks.
Photojournalist Olya Federova was taken into custody during the protest last night, but the arrest was voided and she was set free, cops said.
“I am profoundly disappointed in their actions,” FIT student body President Amanda Knight said in a statement about the administration, “and believe they should feel ashamed of this outcome.”
A mile away at The New School, faculty started a solidarity encampment with Gaza and their arrested students, which they named the Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment, after a Palestinian professor killed in an Israeli airstrike in December.
The demonstration called for divestment from 13 arms and surveillance manufacturers and a boycott of Israel, and the end of disciplinary action and the use of police.
“We will not stop until all demands are met and NYPD leaves our campus,” they said in a statement.
The tent demonstration is believed to be the first led by faculty amid ongoing campus protests that have swept the U.S., the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine said.
Over the past few weeks, students set up several encampments protesting Israel’s war in Gaza at Columbia University, New York University, The New School and Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. All have since been cleared by university officials and cops, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
