The police in Philadelphia cleared an encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators off the campus of the University of Pennsylvania early Friday, making arrests and bringing an end to a two-week standoff between administrators and protesting students.
Video from the scene, shot by one of the protesters, showed a group of demonstrators on College Green, near a statue of Benjamin Franklin, encircled by police officers in riot gear. Some were taken away in police vans.
Thirty-three people, including nine Penn students, were arrested and cited for defiant trespass, and then later released, said Steve Silverman, a university spokesman, in a statement on Friday evening.
Sahir Muhammad, a 23-year-old Temple University graduate who had joined the protesters before dawn on Friday, said that he was lifted off his feet and carried out of the encampment when officers saw that he was shooting video.
“The police literally gripped me up and took me off the premises,” he said.
Mr. Muhammad was taken to the corner of 34th and Walnut streets, where he joined a group of protesters who were chanting and trying to block police vans from leaving. His video shows a group of roughly 40 protesters on College Green standing a few yards from a line of police in riot gear.
The arrests came a day after Gov. Josh Shapiro said it was “past time” for Penn’s administration to clear the encampment. “Over the last 24 hours at the University of Pennsylvania, the situation has gotten even more unstable and out of control,” he said, speaking at an unrelated news conference near Pittsburgh.
The governor, a Democrat, is a nonvoting member of Penn’s board of trustees.
In a letter sent Friday morning to Penn’s staff, the interim president, J. Larry Jameson said that “extraordinary circumstances” had forced the administration’s hand. He added that a university ID card would be needed to enter the campus green. “Passion for a cause cannot supersede the safety and operations of our university,” he wrote.
Mr. Jameson became Penn’s interim president late last year after his predecessor, Elizabeth Magill, resigned in the wake of harsh criticism of her testimony at a congressional hearing. In the hearing, Ms. Magill and the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T. were accused by Republicans of failing to crack down on campus antisemitism.
In a statement after the arrests on Friday morning, the executive committee of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors condemned what it called “repressive action” by the school’s administration and “a cowardly, shameful attempt to silence and punish speech.”
The committee demanded that Penn drop all of its pending disciplinary cases against the student protesters and the “mandatory temporary leaves of absence” it imposed on six of them on Thursday.
Justin Seward, a 20-year-old Penn undergraduate, said that he believed the university’s actions were contrary to the school’s mission and driven by pressure from donors and Congress. “I think they were disruptive,” he said of the demonstrators, “but I think that’s the whole point of protesting.”
Source Agencies
