Police cleared a pro-Palestinian camp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology early Friday and arrested 10 protesters, after several days of heightened tensions on the Cambridge campus.
Around 4 a.m., police officers gave demonstrators a 15-minute warning to vacate their tent encampments and then began loading people into police vehicles. The arrests appeared to be largely peaceful, with about a dozen other protesters chanting on nearby sidewalks.
In a letter to the MIT community on Friday morning, university President Sally Kornbluth said removing police posts is a “last resort” and that the ongoing unrest makes it difficult to continue removing the posts. “It is becoming increasingly unsustainable,” he said.
“We did not believe that we could responsibly keep the encampment alive,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote. “We did not suddenly take this step. We issued a warning. We clearly telegraphed what was going to happen. At each point, students took their own decisions. We made a choice, and in the end, out of several bad options, we chose the path we took this morning. Once again, each student had a choice.”
The move to end the encampment came after several protesters were arrested Thursday afternoon for blocking access to the parking lot.
The university has set a Monday deadline for protesters to leave the campground or be suspended, and some students who failed to meet the deadline received notices of suspension. Tensions had been rising over the past few days.
Administrators did not say how many students were suspended.
“This means that you will be prohibited from participating in any academic activities, including classes, exams, and research, for the remainder of the semester,” the letter received by a student and seen by a reporter said. was. “You will also be prohibited from participating in any admissions activities or any extracurricular or extracurricular activities.”
The university detailed the impact of the suspension in a letter to student protesters before Monday's deadline, saying it had previously received disciplinary action “in connection with events since October 7.” It was also made clear that students who were admitted to the university would also be prohibited from entering the university's dormitories and cafeterias.
Additional conditions of the suspension included the disqualification of some students from university employment and the loss of income for suspended graduate student employees.
“I don't know what will happen next,” said Prahad Iyengar, a first-year graduate student who lost his income and housing as a result of his suspension. “I have friends and a community and I can find a place to stay, but there are also survivors who are housing and food insecure, and some of them have children.”
Dr. Kornbluth was one of three university leaders harshly criticized last year for testimony during a Congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism. The remaining two, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Elizabeth McGill of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned in the aftermath.
Kornbluth did not face the same level of criticism, but hundreds of MIT alumni signed a letter calling on the university to take strong action to combat anti-Semitism on campus. Last week, a group of concerned parents sent a letter to administrators detailing the “toxic” environment their children have faced since the camp began on April 21.
