UC Berkeley Students Set Up Encampment To Protest War In Gaza
Students at the University of California, Berkeley, set up an encampment on Monday in solidarity with Palestine calling for an end to the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.
According to the National Students for Justice in Palestine social media pages, UC Berkeley is joining several other universities also protesting, including Columbia University and Stanford.
In a statement on its website, SJP said they began a “coordinated pressure campaign against university administrations and trustees” on Saturday until schools divested from the war.
“After hundreds of student government resolutions, meetings with administrators, and protests on campus, and following months of increased targeting, harassment, and arrests, the students are ramping up the pressure,” part of SJP’s statement reads. “We will not back down; we will reclaim our universities until administrators comply with our demands.”
In a statement to HuffPost, UC Berkeley said they are “prioritizing students’ academic interests.”
“We will take the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations,” according to the statement. “There are no plans to change the university’s investment policies and practices.”
Protests have been ramping up at UC Berkeley. Earlier this month, the dean of UC Berkeley’s law school was hosting a dinner for students at his home when it was interrupted by a woman “wearing a hijab and checkered Palestinian scarf ... with a microphone and amplifier.”
UC Berkeley is just the latest school to put pressure on its administration to cut its financial ties with companies that aid in the war. Last week, Columbia canceled in-person classes and “police arrested several dozen protesters at Yale University on Monday morning after officials at the New Haven, Connecticut, school said they defied warnings over the weekend to leave,” according to The Associated Press.
