In solidarity with their student activists, professors at The New School in New York City on Wednesday erected the first faculty-led pro-Palestinian encampment in the United States.
Rather than find the traditional quad or open-air space to build their tent city, the faculty chose a lobby in one of the school buildings. Like the students, the professors are calling on the university to divest from several weapons-manufacturing companies and for an academic boycott of all Israeli institutions.
They are also calling for an end to the police presence on campus and for all disciplinary charges against students to be dismissed.
"The movement started by our brave students must continue, and it is incumbent upon us as faculty to heed their calls, and help finish what they started," an anonymous representative who is organizing the new encampment said in a statement released by The New School's Students for Justice in Palestine.
The faculty have named their encampment the Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment, after a well-known writer and professor who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December.
Last week, the New York Police Department arrested 43 people at The New School when they responded to school requests to remove encampments. "I deeply regret having to do this," the school's interim president, Donna Shalala, said in a statement. "My decision is about their conduct, not speech."
Like most universities, The New School is in the midst of finals, and some faculty members are also engaged in a grade strike meaning they are refusing to submit grades.
"Everyone is witness to this genocide, to this atrocity, that is unfolding on a daily basis. All the universities in Gaza are gone. This is a mass starvation campaign. There's a bombing campaign in Rafah, where 600,000 children live. How can anyone stay on the sidelines?" one professor said to CBS News.
The faculty members have also demanded that colleges and cities across the U.S. drop the charges against the more than 2,300 protesters who have been arrested.
"This is the first faculty-led encampment in the U.S. We hope it will not be the last. We thank our students for showing us the way; for being our teachers."
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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