Professors at The New School Launch First Faculty Encampment for Gaza
MAY 09, 2024
Image Credit: Rafaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment
Here in New York City, faculty at The New School have launched the first faculty encampment to protest the violent police crackdown on their students. The professors named the encampment after the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December.
Suneil Sanzgiri: “Following police raids and violence, The New School faculty established the Refaat Alareer faculty solidarity encampment. The call from students and Palestinians in Gaza is clear. We cannot give up. We must escalate and persevere to demand our universities divest, disclose and boycott from the war profiteers and institutions justifying and aiding the genocide in Gaza.”
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12 Arrested Outside NYC’s New School as First Faculty-Led Gaza Solidarity Encampment Continues
STORY MAY 10, 2024
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TOPICS
The first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment in the United States was launched Wednesday at The New School in New York City, where nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents inside the lobby of the university’s main building on Fifth Avenue. The encampment is named after the Palestinian writer, poet and professor Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December. The faculty protest began after the police raided a student encampment at The New School and arrested more than 40 students following a request by the university administration to clear the encampment. On Thursday, 12 more people were arrested outside The New School as the faculty encampment continued inside. Democracy Now! was on the scene and spoke with protesting faculty who denounced the school’s ties to Israel and the militarized police response against student protesters. “For the state violence that our students were subjected to and traumatized because of, we could not stand on the sidelines any longer,” part-time lecturer Suneil Sanzgiri said. “What we’re doing here is calling for all faculty across the country to step up, to risk more and to escalate, because we have to get all war profiteers out of our universities.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The first faculty-led Gaza encampment in the country was launched at The New School here in New York City Wednesday evening. Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents inside the lobby of The New School’s main building on Fifth Avenue. They named their encampment after the Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December.
The faculty encampment was launched several days after the police raided a student encampment at The New School and arrested more than 40 students after the university administration called on the NYPD to clear the encampment. In a statement Thursday, The New School said it would not pursue criminal charges against the student protesters who were arrested. It also said it would be reactivating a college committee to examine the issue of divestment.
However, on Thursday evening, 12 people were arrested outside The New School as the faculty encampment continued inside. Last night, I got a text as the protest was heating up. I was walking my dog Zazu. We raced over to The New School, and I met up with Democracy Now! fellow Hana Elias, and we started reporting and recording.
PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! We’re standing in front of The New School. There are posters in the windows, a faculty encampment, the first in the country. The posters say “40K people dead. You arrest kids instead,” “All eyes on Rafah.” But the slogan of The New School here on the window is “Radical Democracy.” Two professors are here who are part of the encampment.
HALA MALAK: My name is Hala Malak. Have a few demands. The first one is we want The New School to divest from the 13 companies that are — that they have investments in weapons and manufacturing that are part and complicit in this war, so demilitarization of divestment, basically, of the school. Our second demand is that we would like all cops to be off campus indefinitely, and we also want the school to cut all ties with the NYPD.
PROTESTERS: Up, up with liberation! Down, down with the occupation!
SUNEIL SANZGIRI: My name is Suneil Sanzgiri. I’m a part-time faculty in the Culture and Media Department. I’m here because I teach a class on decolonization, and there is no better way to put into place the knowledge that students learn in our classrooms into practice. In the encampment that we see sweeping across the country, we know that the state repressive police forces are lock in step with the larger U.S. imperialist presence around the globe, and specifically with what’s happening in Palestine. And so we understand that what we’re doing here, the calls for divestment, are directly and materially impacting in an end to the genocide. And for us, as faculty, for the state violence that our students were subjected to and traumatized because of, we could not stand on the sidelines any longer. We knew we had to step up. Many faculty across the country have risked so much. And what we’re doing here is calling for all faculty across the country to step up, to risk more and to escalate, because we have to get all war profiteers out of our universities.
CLARA MATTEI: Hi. My name is Clara Mattei. I’m associate professor of economics at the NSSR. I’m out here because this is the struggle of the moment everyone has to be in. I must say that these encampments are places where culture actually explodes, emerges, connections are made. And ultimately, this is a fight against capitalism and the violence of capitalism at large.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re standing in front of the police van where they put a young Black man who they arrested. Then scores of people came, professors and students, to demand that he be let go. They sat in front of the police van. And now scores of police have come to arrest the people that are sitting in front of the van.
CRESA PUGH: My name is Cresa Pugh, and I’m assistant professor of sociology here at The New School. And I’m sitting here because as I was walking to support our students, in the encampment, the faculty encampment, they arrested one of my Black students, refused to tell me why they were arresting him, and promptly threw him in this van. And I am not going to stand up and let this van go until they let my Black student out of that van. And he was arrested for supporting Palestinian Gazans. Forty thousand have died. And you’re arresting this kid?
PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!
AMY GOODMAN: There are now dozens of police here. We’re right next to Parsons and The New School. Parsons has a plaque on it that says this is the site of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis magazine and the headquarters of the NAACP, a place where Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and others wrote. They’re arresting a young Black man. The crowd has been asking, many of them professors and students here at The New School, “Why is he being arrested?”
CRESA PUGH: Why will you not speak to us about our students? What is his name? I’m a professor here. I deserve to know who my student is that you have in this van.
NATASHA LENNARD: I’m Natasha Lennard, and I’m a faculty member at The New School of Social Research. I’m here to support my students. I’m here to stand in solidarity with other faculty members, other staff members who want to see an end to genocide. We’re also calling profoundly for cops off and away from campus. And this is what you see when you keep standing armies of NYPD in and near a campus. A small incident — and I didn’t see exactly what happened — but an incident has led now to many people being put at risk. A young man, a young Black man, is in police custody. None of this would happen if we didn’t have police ready because of the completely unnecessary actions of our administration in calling the police in on our students, like so many administrations around the country calling police in on a peaceful protest for the end to the genocide in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Your name? And why are you being arrested?
NEW SCHOOL STAFF MEMBER: I’m being arrested for trying to protect a student at the university. I’m a staff member here. This is shameful. This all started because a student at this university was arrested with no cause. The police refused to give an answer. And now they’ve arrested more students.
JULIETA SALGADO: I’m Julieta!
AMY GOODMAN: Are you a student? Are you a professor?
DENIS MOYNIHAN: Tell us your name!
AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?
AMY GOODMAN: The person we were shouting to, who was being put into a police car, was Julieta Salgado. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back. But just before they put her into the car, a police officer unbuttoned her shirt and put her hands up and down her chest over her bra in full public view. A total of 12 people were arrested on the streets outside The New School last night. Special thanks to Democracy Now! video fellow Hana Elias and Hany Massoud.
When we come back, we go to Princeton University, where over a dozen students are on hunger strike calling for divestment from companies with ties to Israel. We’ll speak with one of the hunger-striking students and with Larry Hamm. He’s running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey. He’s also a Princeton alum who helped lead the protests there in the ’70s calling for Princeton to divest from apartheid South Africa. Stay with us.
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