Tulane University and a group of pro-Palestinian protesters remained in standoff late Monday after the group pitched a small tent encampment and police arrested several protesters during hours-long rally Monday evening.
The tents remained on the lawn outside of Gibson Hall by midnight, and dozens of protesters – many wearing face masks and holding umbrellas – linked arms to protect the encampment from police.
It is unclear how the university will respond. Dozens of police were at the St. Charles Avenue scene Monday night, but administrators and law enforcement offered no clues of whether they would clear the encampment.
Police arrested at least six protesters as of 9:30 p.m., Kirk Bouyelas, Tulane’s assistant vice president for public safety and community engagement, said in a message to students. Their charges include trespassing, battery on an officer and resisting arrest, Bouyelas said.
It is unclear if any of the arrested protesters were Tulane students. The six people arrested earlier Monday evening refused to identify themselves, Bouyelas said.
“We fundamentally respect the right to protest,” Bouyelas said in the email. “However, breaking the law, hate speech, harassment, intimidation, trespassing, violence and other criminal acts will not be tolerated.”
Tulane evacuated Gibson, Tilton Memorial and Dinwiddie Hall at 6:15 p.m., when the group of about 200 protestors marched from Freret Street and arrived in front of the university.
The protest escalated Monday evening after pro-Palestine demonstrators first gathered outside the Tulane Navy ROTC Building about 5 p.m. Students also organized a rally for Israel on the Berger Family Lawn. That rally remained peaceful and separate from the Palestine rally.
The pro-Palestine group swelled to about 200 people by 5:30 p.m. and began marching up Calhoun Street. They turned down St. Charles Avenue and stopped in front of Gibson Hall.
There, police arrested protestors and confiscated tents from protesters who stood on university property.
By 6:15 p.m., the group pitched several tents and locked arms to prevent officers from arresting those inside.
And for hours Monday evening, the pro-Palestinian group chanted popular slogans of the movement, including “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “disclose, divest, we will not stop we will not rest.” The U.S. House of Representatives recently condemned the “from the river” chant as antisemitic.
Campus administrators indicated earlier Monday evening that more police were on the way to clear the protest, but additional officers did not appear at scale by midnight.
The Tulane University Police Department, New Orleans Police Department and Louisiana State Police were on the scene. Law enforcement agencies brought at least 40 officers to Tulane before the protest, Bouyelas said, including mounted police.
Officers brought bright lamp posts powered by generators to shine light on protesters. They also formed a line on the lawn to block protesters from nearing Gibson Hall.
Around 9 p.m., police spoke through a megaphone and issued the first of several warnings that said the protestors were trespassing and offered them “the opportunity to leave without arrest.”
Few protestors did. Just after the announcement, the crowd remained on the lawn, lifting signs, waving Palestinian flags and changing “hold the line.”
A smaller group of pro-Israel protestors stood on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground for much of the protest, but no severe clashes were reported between the groups.
Police made no further arrests as of midnight.
The crowd dwindled by 11:20 p.m. but a group still circled the tent encampment.
Tulane canceled classes in each of the evacuated buildings for the rest of Monday night. Police asked students inside the buildings to leave and remain away from Cowen Circle.
The events at Tulane follow a week of unrest at colleges around the country. A pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia University has led to at least 100 arrests and deep turmoil after its president vowed to crackdown on campus protests earlier this month. Similar scenes of protest and arrest also emerged at Emory University and the University of Texas at Austin, among other schools, and administrators at the University of Texas and Columbia threatened to suspend students who refused to leave their encampments.
About three dozen pro-Palestinian protestors briefly formed an encampment in Jackson Square Sunday evening until police surrounded the square near its closing time of 7 p.m. and arrested at least 10 people, the Times-Picayune reported.
Protests at Tulane and in New Orleans had remained mostly peaceful ever since a rally and counter-protest on Freret Street last fall turned briefly violent when a man tried to burn an Israeli flag.
News Editor Ellie Cowen and Staff Writer Lillian Foster contributed reporting.
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