20+ detained in pro-Palestine protest at Case Western
CLEVELAND (WJW) — More than 20 people were detained and released on the Case Western Reserve University campus on Monday, as a group of local pro-Palestine demonstrators “occupied” part of the campus, a university spokesperson confirmed.
Students protesting the conflict in Israel are demonstrating on a public green in the campus’ Kelvin Smith Library oval, footage from SkyFOX shows. A nearby sign reads, “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine.”
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Protesters are demanding that administrators “divest from the state of Israel,” according to a Monday news release.
“As anti-war protests occur across university campuses in the U.S. with increasing hostility from university administration, CWRU students feel it is imperative to take a stand, as students have always led the way in the anti-war movement,” reads the news release.
According to the news release, students are demanding:
1. Amnesty for all students and faculty disciplined for advocating for Palestinian liberation.
2. Divest all of CWRU’s finances from the companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine including implementing Resolution 31-15.
3. Disclose CWRU’s investments.
4. Retract remarks made against Resolution 31-15, statements in support of the Israeli [government], and accusations of antisemitism towards the student body.
5. Call for a permanent ceasefire and an end of the occupation of Palestine.
6. Academic Boycott – cut ties with all Israeli academic institutions which includes
Statement from Palestine Task Force CLE
“We want the university to divest from those assets, if they are funding Israel’s prison or military industrial complex that is currently proliferating genocide in Gaza,” said Jad Oglesby, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine.
“You’re welcome to protest, but it has to be in an appropriate time, place and manner,” said Peter Whiting, Vice President of CWRU Student Affairs, in response to the protest.
Those university standards sparked a controversy on Monday.
The students created an encampment on campus that included tents. The university announced that tents are not permitted on campus, and when the students refused to remove them, police officers temporary detained 21 students and removed the tents.
“When dealing with tents, you’re not sure exactly what’s going on. Who’s in the tent? How do we maintain safety?” said Whiting.
Student protesters were upset by the actions taken by the university.
“How can you say you’re in support of protests if the pleas of the people are going to fall on deaf ears? You know, how can you say you’re in support of the protest if you’re not allowing students to conduct an encampment and utilize their First Amendment Freedom of Speech?” said Oglesby.
After a series of negotiations throughout the day, the university and the students reached a compromise Monday night that will allow the protesters to remain on the campus overnight.
As part of the agreement, students, faculty and alumni with Case Western IDs are being permitted to put up tents for shelter overnight, but the tents must be removed on Tuesday morning before the protest continues.
“We want safety for our students and in the end, concluded we can more clearly assure who will be on our campus for those overnight hours, we are comfortable with this,” Whiting said.
“We plan to stay here until our demands are met. We plan to stay here as long as it takes,” Oglesby said.
In the player below, watch previous Associated Press coverage of anti-war protests at U.S. universities:
The university’s student government in November 2022 approved Resolution 31-15, calling on Case Western leaders to examine the university’s financial assets, to determine if its investments indirectly support Israeli “apartheid” and to divest from those assets within two years.
Specifically, the resolution calls for Case administrators to determine whether the university has invested in companies that provide weaponry or military support for “the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories,” and identifies several by name. It also identifies other companies that support “illegal Israeli settlements” or operate private prisons in the U.S. and Palestine and elsewhere in the world, that are “profiting from exploitative prison labor.”
Following that resolution, President Eric Kaler issued a statement expressing disappointment in the resolution, which he called “profoundly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.”
“Vigorous political debate is welcome and encouraged, but hate towards any group will be opposed at every step, including categorically rejecting the calls to action outlined in this resolution,” it reads.
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Case Western administrators earlier this year suspended the pro-Palestine student group Students for Justice in Palestine, alleging violations of the university’s student code of conduct. Several members of the group were accused of “[gluing] fliers to various surfaces around campus” on three separate days.
The Monday news release from the protest group claims students were fined $2,600 “for posting fliers.”
“The relationship between CWRU administration and its students is forever tainted by its deliberate creation of a hostile and unsafe student environment as a way to ignore their own complicit role in shedding Palestinian blood,” reads a March statement from the group.
CWRU President Eric Kaler issued a statement Monday that read:
Open discourse and the free exchange of ideas are hallmarks of higher education—and they are central to all that we do at Case Western Reserve. Across classrooms and common spaces, lecture halls and laboratories, and everywhere in between, challenges to the status quo are what make universities—especially ours—such powerful learning environments.
We are seeing this in action right now, as individuals in support of Palestinian liberation are protesting on the Kelvin Smith Library oval. We support these individuals’ rights to free speech, and Case Western Reserve police will protect their right to peaceful freedom of expression in accordance with our policies.
However, we want to be clear about the rules and processes moving forward for those who choose to participate in this activity:
— The university will not tolerate hate speech in any form.
— In accordance with Case Western Reserve policies, protestors must follow specific restrictions regarding the time, place and manner of such activism—including ensuring their actions do not unreasonably interfere with university operations (this includes setting up encampments on campus property and the use of disruptive sound).
Statement from Case Western Reserve University President Eric Kaler
Protests at Oberlin College
About 40 miles west, protesters at Oberlin College were also calling for divestment.
The group Oberlin College for Palestine called for students to “(de)occupy” the Wilder Bowl green at the heart of campus on Monday. A noon rally was planned, followed by an afternoon parade and a vigil and seder meal in the evening.
A sign spotted by SkyFOX on Monday afternoon read: “No business as usual. Divest now.”
Oberlin College administrators last month met with representatives of Students for a Free Palestine and Jews for a Free Palestine to discuss a formal proposal of divestment from Israeli companies, the college’s student-run newspaper The Oberlin Review reported. The college’s policy for divestment sets criteria for those proposals, including that they must be “wide-scale acts of injustice” that “shock the conscience.”
“The conscience of the Oberlin community is beyond shocked. And that shock compels us to act,” reads a Monday statement from the pro-Palestine group:
Until the Oberlin College Administration:
— Recognizes and condemns the ongoing genocide in Palestine
— Commits to divestment from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, as per the divestment proposal submitted earlier this month
Oberlin College maintains moral and material complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. As such, we act in steadfast solidarity with Palestine and with students across the country to demand that the administration and the board of trustees examine Oberlin’s financial link to war, oppression and exploitation. As people of conscience, with our eyes on Gaza, we affirm that none of us are free until all of us are free.
A university spokesperson on Monday issued a statement to FOX 8 News that read, in part:
“Oberlin supports the rights of our students to gather and demonstrate peacefully.
“Oberlin expects all who participate to conduct themselves in ways that are respectful of others, that do not disrupt the day-to-day activities of the school and that uphold our shared values: respect for each other and our community.”
About 40 years ago, Oberlin students were among the loudest voices for the college’s divestment from South Africa during apartheid, and in May 1986 erected a “shantytown” near the college’s administration building and in Wilder Bowl, The Oberlin Review reported that year.
The following year, students secured “anti-apartheid crusader” Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the college’s commencement address, The Review reported.
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