While colleges generally pride themselves on being included on various lists, Tulane has now joined a list nobody wants to be on: one of the growing list of American universities that has had an anti-Israel encampment on its campus.
On Monday, April 29, a mob of anti-Israel protesters descended on Tulane’s campus, occupying and setting up a tented encampment on the lawn outside Gibson Hall. Tulane’s anti-Israel encampment is part of a nationwide protest movement in which anti-Israel students and outside activists are occupying university property, disrupting the educational process, and threatening and intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students.
These protesters at Tulane are not peaceful. All night, they spewed antisemitic slogans on megaphones, chided police officers, and tried to instigate fights with Jewish counter-protesters and observers across the street.
They chanted “From the river to the sea,” a slogan deemed antisemitic by the US Congress. They held signs expressing their solidarity with terrorist groups, bearing slogans such as “long live the Palestinian resistance.” One of their encampment tents featured a sign with a red upside down triangle, a dog-whistle symbol that denotes support for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.
Jewish Tulane students were spat on and threatened in the street. Several members of the anti-Israel mob were arrested for setting up tents and clashing with police, and charged with trespassing and battery on police officers.
Tulane University announced in an email that seven protesters were arrested by Tulane Police officers, and that Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the group responsible for the protest, has been subsequently suspended from campus. However, the email failed to mention that the mob was still raging and occupying campus, and did not mention any plan to remove them before the situation worsened. In a separate email, Michael Fitts, the president of Tulane, addressed the Tulane community around 3 am on Monday night, condemning the protesters in broad terms, but refusing to comment on if and when they would be removed.
Eventually, in a coordinated effort between Tulane Police, New Orleans police, and Louisiana state troopers, Tulane took down the unlawful encampment early Wednesday morning. Although this may be a short-term solution to the problem, it does not quell the underlying issue on college campuses. The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas movement remains lurking in the crevices of college campuses across the country, and they have shown that they are not afraid to trespass, vandalize, and intimidate Jewish students to achieve their radical agenda.
This was not the first disruptive, hateful anti-Israel protest on Tulane’s campus. On October 26, in the immediate aftermath of the horrifying October 7 Hamas massacre, the same group of protesters descended upon the outskirts of Tulane’s campus in a protest that ended with Jewish students being hospitalized and blood spilled on the street. The clash at the October protest led to several of the anti-Israel protesters being charged with hate crimes for their actions on that day.
Despite knowing this latest protest was coming, Tulane was clearly underprepared, and completely lost control of their campus.
This week’s events should not have come as a surprise. SDS has spent the last few months ratcheting up its rhetoric, and the last several days making clear its plans to copy the encampment movement that is spreading across college campuses. Tulane also knew based on events at other universities that this is not a peaceful movement.
At the University of Florida, protesters were arrested for battery of police officers. At George Washington University, protesters smashed through police barriers and clashed with officers. At UCLA, anti-Israel protesters at an encampment linked arms to prevent Jewish students from freely entering their own campus. Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University used hammers to bash in the windows of a university building, entering and occupying the site and even holding a facilities worker hostage before later releasing him.
These violent, pro-terror protests and encampments signal a turning point in America. Leftist and anti-Israel groups are no longer willing to engage in discourse or discussion with people who think differently from them. They have turned to violence and instigation. Universities have succumbed to the mobs occupying their campuses, and have refused to enforce their own rules on trespassing, illegal protests, and protecting Jewish students.
I call on Tulane University and all other universities faced with anti-Israel agitators to act swiftly to remove these agitators and not to allow mob rule to reign. The eyes of all Jewish students in America are on you.
This article was originally published in the Algemeiner.
