Pro-Palestinian protest at Johns Hopkins University resumes, demands institution divest from Israel

Protesters trickled in Tuesday at the Johns Hopkins University as a sit-in to pressure the university to divest from Israel resumed amid similar demonstrations nationwide held at campuses from Columbia University to Goucher College.

A group of roughly 40 activists on campus near Charles Street swelled to about 60 students and non-students as noon approached on Tuesday, the second day of protests.

The encampment, which launched Monday afternoon, had mostly cleared overnight after student participants met with the university’s president and provost, and agreed for students to clear the area for the night, so long as the peaceful protest could resume during the day. Student groups participating in the protest said on social media that a “small brave team” of protesters remained overnight on the “Beach,” a grassy area on campus where the demonstrations began Monday night.

The university joins others throughout the U.S. where pro-Palestinian student groups have held demonstrations in the final weeks of the academic year to push their institutions to sever ties with Israel. The nationwide movement of student demonstrations is in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Israel, which has vowed to eliminate Hamas, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry. Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union, killed roughly 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages during the Oct. 7 attacks.

“We stand in solidarity with students across the country who face escalating police violence and administrative repression for their peaceful protest of the war crimes committed daily by [Israel]. None of us are free until Palestine is free,” the Hopkins Justice Collective, a group of students and university affiliates, said in a news release.

The group of protesters on the Beach, located on the edge of campus near its library complex, sat calmly on blankets Tuesday morning and spoke with those joining the encampment for the day. Several campus public safety officers stood uphill and watched. A tour group walked on the other side of the library as other students studied for finals and traversed around the mostly quiet campus. This week makes up the university’s “Reading Days” — five weekdays when there are no classes ahead of next week’s exams.

The university said in an early Tuesday morning statement that the institution’s priority Monday was to “accommodate a protest while maintaining a safe environment for our community.” Student participants met “for several hours” with the university’s president, Ron Daniels, and its provost, Ray Jayawardhana, and came to a “mutual agreement” to disperse overnight. Some protesters remained overnight, according to the student groups organizing the protest, who also disputed the university’s characterization of the discussions.

The protest started around 4 p.m. Monday, when organizers said they emailed a list of demands to Daniels.

Around 6:30 p.m., university police department Chief Branville Bard Jr. approached the protest with a megaphone, asking students to disperse, and was met with boos and then chants. An hour later, Bard and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Rachelle Hernandez returned to offer protesters a meeting with university administrators, including Daniels, “within the next five days” if they disbanded, and that offer was rebuked.

The students are demanding Hopkins divest its endowment from companies that support Israel, including Elbit Systems, BlackRock, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Google, as well as reveal all financial ties to Israel, lobbying efforts to increase militarized spending and a “detailed accounting of the use of weapons and military technology developed at Hopkins for the international slaughter and surveillance of human beings,” the Hopkins Justice Collective said in its news release.

University Board of Trustees member Gary Roughead is also on the board of Northrop Grumman.

In addition, the students are demanding the university disband a cooperative degree program with Tel Aviv University, stop accepting United States Department of Defense funding to develop weapons through the applied physics lab and publicly acknowledge “the current genocide and ongoing occupation of Palestine since 1948.”

The release cites a 1980s protest and nine-day sit-in that led to divestment from apartheid in South Africa and past trustee votes to divest from tobacco companies and coal producers as examples of student activism on campus.

A snare drum beat as students took turns leading chants Monday. Organizers offered free magazines on Palestinian liberation and dinner. In total, around 200 people gathered on the Beach. Around 8 p.m., a Baltimore Police Department helicopter made several audible laps over the protest.

The university, which has 5,253 undergraduate enrolled, said Tuesday morning that its administration had “frank and constructive” discussions with organizers during which institutional officials “conveyed our concerns over the health, safety, and welfare of students involved in the protest, as well as others in our community.”

Hopkins said they came to an agreement early Tuesday in which “students agreed to dismantle the tents and other structures they set up and to refrain from assembling on the campus overnight,” and the institution “agreed to support our students’ ability to return to a designated area on the Beach each day to continue their daytime protest activities” under university policy.

“We are immensely relieved at this peaceful and productive resolution, and express our profound appreciation to those who helped reach this agreement,” university leadership said in its statement.

The student group leading the protest posted on social media later on Tuesday a video stating that the university’s message was a “gross misrepresentation” of the discussions, alleging university leadership was not responding directly to protesters’ demands and rather insisting on a police response. Some protesters were present overnight, it said.

“We are not going anywhere until our demands are met,” reads the statement, which was imposed over a video of a masked organizer.

“As we did yesterday, Johns Hopkins will continue to work with student protesters to ensure free expression and compliance with our policies, codes, and agreements, and will take action for violations as warranted,” a university spokesperson said.

Hopkins’ protest began shortly after related demonstrations at Goucher College appeared to boil over. The president of the small, private institution in Baltimore County, Kent Devereaux, said in a Tuesday email to the campus community that students “verbally attacked or threatened staff members” who were leaving the college’s administrative building and “pounded on windows, kicked walls, and shoved their way through doors past campus security personnel.”

In the Tuesday morning email, Devereaux also ordered for protesters in a “small number of tents that have emerged on the academic quad” to “immediately remove their tents and abide by the campus demonstration policy.” He encouraged students to “find alternate ways to engage in productive conversations” while abiding by the institution’s demonstration policy.

A reporter was denied entry into the campus Tuesday afternoon by a security officer, who said the institution was trying to ensure non-students did not enter.

The encampment at Goucher was still in place Tuesday afternoon, and vehicular access to the campus was limited to curb people from outside the campus community “interfering with students’ studying during the last two weeks of the semester,” a spokesperson said.

Around 1,000 people have been arrested at Pro-Palestinian protests at universities since New York police arrested over 100 demonstrators at Columbia University on April 18, according to the Associated Press. Early on Tuesday, protesters at Columbia took over a campus building, the AP reported.

Last week, police in Washington rejected George Washington University officials’ pleas to clear a small encampment of peaceful protesters. At the University of Texas-Austin, officers made 34 arrests last week, while police in riot gear cleared an encampment at Boston’s Northeastern University on Saturday and arrested around 100 people.

The demonstrations at Hopkins come just weeks after the university reached an agreement with its graduate student workers’ union that included, among other provisions, the right to peacefully protest without being met by force.

“There is nothing antisemitic about the demand for Palestinian freedom and an end to US support to Israel,” Matt Schwartz, a member of activist group Baltimore Jewish Voices for Peace, which participated in the demonstration, said in a news release. “We should carefully examine the proclivity of US. politicians, police, and pundits to smear and silence these student activists standing in solidarity with Palestinians around the country, including many thousands Jewish student activists.”