CHICAGO
\nPolice began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday at DePaul University in Chicago, hours after the school\u2019s president told students to leave the area or face arrest.
\nOfficers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents and camping equipment at the student encampment, leaving behind yellow squares of dead or dying grass where the tents had stood. Front-loaders were being used to remove the camping equipment.
\nJust across the street from where the encampment was spread across a grassy expanse of DePaul\u2019s campus known as \u201cThe Quad,\u201d a few dozen protesters stood along a sidewalk in front of a service station, clapping their hands in unison as an apparent protest leader paced back and forth before them, speaking into a bullhorn.
\nAll of the protesters at the encampment \u201cvoluntarily left\u201d the area when police arrived early Thursday, said Jon Hein, chief of patrol for the Chicago Police Department.
\n\u201cThere were no confrontations and there was no resistance,\u201d he said at a news briefing. \u201cAs we approached, all the subjects voluntarily left the area.\u201d
\nHein said, however, that two people, a male and female in their 20s, were arrested outside the encampment \u201cfor obstruction of traffic.\u201d
\nThe move to clear the campus comes less than a week after the school\u2019s president said public safety was at risk.
\nThe university on Saturday said it had reached an \u201cimpasse\u201d with the school\u2019s protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear. Most of DePaul\u2019s commencement ceremonies will be held the June 15-16 weekend.
\nIn a statement then, DePaul President Robert Manuel and Provost Salma Ghanem said they believe that students intended to protest peacefully, but \u201cthe responses to the encampment have inadvertently created public safety issues that put our community at risk.\u201d
\nEfforts to resolve the differences with DePaul Divestment Coalition over the past 17 days were unsuccessful, Manuel said in a statement sent to students, faculty and staff Thursday morning.
\n\u201cOur Office of Public Safety and Chicago Police are now disassembling the encampment,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery person currently in the encampment will be given the opportunity to leave peacefully and without being arrested.\u201d
\nHe said that since the encampment began, \u201cthe situation has steadily escalated with physical altercations, credible threats of violence from people not associated with our community.\u201d
\nStudents at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it, to protest lsrael\u2019s actions in the war with Hamas. The protests began as schools were winding up their spring semesters and are now holding graduation ceremonies.
\nSeparately, some students and faculty were detained Wednesday after police removed an encampment and pro-Palestinian protesters briefly took over a lecture hall at the University of California, Irvine. There was a large law enforcement response when demonstrators demanding the university divest from Israel blocked the building\u2019s entrance with a makeshift barricade. Police declared an unlawful assembly, cleared the building and took an unknown number of people into custody.
\nAlso Wednesday, 11 members of a group protesting at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who did not vacate the area despite repeated warnings were arrested for trespassing, the university said in a statement. Those arrested included three students and eight people who are not affiliated with the university. Any students who were arrested will also be referred to student conduct, officials said.
\n\u201cThe University of Tennessee respects individual\u2019s rights to free speech and free expression and is committed to managing the campus for all,\u201d the university said in the statement. \u201cWe will continue to be guided by the law and university policy, neutral of viewpoint.\u201d
\nTensions at DePaul flared the previous weekend when counterprotesters showed up to the campus in the city\u2019s Lincoln Park neighborhood and prompted Chicago police to intervene.
\nThe student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, who are calling on the university to divest from Israel, set up the encampment April 30. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want my tuition money to be invested in my family\u2019s suffering,\u201d Henna Ayesh, a Palestinian student at DePaul and Coalition member, said in the statement.
\nDePaul is on the city\u2019s North Side. Last week, police removed a similar encampment at the University of Chicago on the city\u2019s South Side.
\nThe Associated Press has recorded at least 79 incidents since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the US More than 2,900 people have been arrested on the campuses of 60 colleges and universities. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHICAGO Police began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday at DePaul University in Chicago, hours after the school\u2019s president told students to leave the area or face arrest. Officers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents and camping equipment at the student encampment, leaving behind yellow squares of dead or dying grass where the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64908,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887\/revisions\/64908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}