SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLVIII, ISSUE 47
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2023
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
STUDENTS ARRESTED AFTER U. HALL SIT-IN CALLING FOR DIVESTMENT, CEASEFIRE IN GAZA Students rally on Main Green, occupy U. Hall
20 students arrested, released on same night, have court date set in late November BY SAM LEVINE & HALEY SANDLOW UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
The Department of Public Safety arrested 20 Jewish students who participated in a sit-in at University Hall Wednesday evening. The students, who entered earlier that afternoon, refused to willingly leave the building until President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 publicly committed to “include and support a divestment resolution in the next meeting of the Brown Corporation,” the University’s highest governing body, The Herald previously reported. The students were escorted out of the building by police officers and brought to police transport vans owned by the Providence Police Department, which were parked outside the Van Wickle Gates. Police began arresting students around 5:45 p.m. and continued through the next hour. The students were released from police custody Wednesday evening and have an expected court date on Nov. 28, organizers told The Herald. “After offering students every opportunity for a different outcome, Brown issued multiple trespass warnings and ultimately moved forward in arresting approximately 20 (students) who refused to leave a campus building where their presence after operating hours posed security concerns,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald. More than 150 students stood on either side of University Hall during the hour before the arrests, shining phone flashlights and singing in unison. Throughout the sit-in, which was organized by a new student group, BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now, supporters had sat outside the building singing Jewish songs and prayers “in solidarity with the activists inside of University Hall,” speakers announced earlier in the afternoon. The songs continued throughout the arrests. Students lined the walkway from the back of University Hall to the Van Wickle Gates as police officers placed students in zip-ties or handcuffs and escorted them to the vans parked on Prospect Street. Lit by dozens of camera flashes as students recorded the events on their phones, arrested students joined the crowd’s singing of a Jewish prayer. They continued to sing while in the vans. The arrests concluded a day of protest at the University that began when students gathered on the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center in a walkout organized by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine calling for a ceasefire in Israel-Palestine. Protesters also called for the University to divest from “Israel and the military-industrial complex” and for the University to “protect students from intimidation, doxxing and harassment for their Palestine activism,” according to SJP’s demands.
BY SAM LEVINE & HALEY SANDLOW UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
COURTESY OF BROWNU JEWS FOR CEASEFIRE NOW
COURTESY OF BROWNU JEWS FOR CEASEFIRE NOW
KATY PICKENS / HERALD
SEE ARREST PAGE 3
More than 150 students stood on either side of University Hall during the hour before the arrests, shining phone flashlights and singing in union.
Twenty Jewish students began a sit-in at University Hall Wednesday afternoon, demanding that the University administration and President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 support a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and divest Brown’s endowment from “companies that enable war crimes in Gaza.” The group, BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now, announced in an Instagram post that they would “not leave University Hall until President Christina Paxson publicly commits to include and support a divestment resolution in the next meeting of the Brown Corporation,” the University’s highest governing body. Organizers told The Herald that they delivered a copy of their demands to Paxson’s secretary. At Tuesday’s faculty meeting, Paxson declined to comment on a faculty letter calling for a ceasefire while affirming the University’s commitment to free speech and expression on university campuses. According to organizers inside University Hall, another administrator informed the students that Paxson would not change her stance. The Herald could not immediately independently verify this claim. The demands specifically called for the resolution to be based on a 2020 report from the University’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies recommending that the University divest from “any company that profits from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.” ACCRIP was later replaced with a successor body, the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management. “It is imperative that the Corporation support the democratic decision of the Brown community on the financial ethics of our institution,” an organizer with BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now said in a speech announcing the sit-in. “At Brown, we recognize our responsibility for being an educational institution that manages challenging discussions in a way that remains true to the fundamental principle of freedom of expression while emphasizing the importance of safety for all community members,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in a message to The Herald. “Brown leaders have met with many student groups (affected by the events in Israel and Gaza) in recent weeks to listen to and address concerns, and we will continue to do so moving forward.” Clark did not respond to request for comments on the students’ demands at the time of this article’s publication. Before the sit-in began, more than 400 people gathered at the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center in a walkout organized by Brown Students for
Justice in Palestine calling for a ceasefire and divestment. Speakers criticized Paxson for declining to respond to the portion of the letter, signed by more than 160 faculty, which urged the University’s administration to call for a ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. “I have to respectfully decline making public statements on these issues,” Paxson said at the Tuesday faculty meeting, adding that her “responsibility, as president, is not to place a stamp of approval on the views of a subset of the community, even if that subset is large.” Multiple student speakers at Wednesday’s walkout described the call for a ceasefire as the “bare minimum.” After hearing speeches on the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center, attendees marched around University Hall for about 20 minutes. Protest slogans overlapped between the hundreds of people circling the building, as chants of “ceasefire now” echoed from one part of the picket line to the next. The sound crescendoed when the bell above University Hall rang. Attendees then gathered at the front of University Hall to hear organizers announce the sit-in, which had already begun. “As Jewish students who have peers, friends and loved ones, both Israeli and Palestinian, affected by the violence, we’ve had enough of our university using us as a justification to maintain financial ties to an apartheid state,” said an organizer with BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now in a speech on the steps of University Hall. Multiple human rights organizations, as well as an independent human rights expert commissioned by the United Nations, have published reports stating that the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to “apartheid.” UN experts have said they are “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide” as violence has continued to escalate since Oct. 7, according to a Nov. 2 press release. According to BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now organizers, the group is made up of more than 80 Jewish students who came together after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel and the retaliation by the Israeli military to create a space for “holding the values of Palestinian liberation very closely with the fear they felt for their friends and family” in Israel. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed over 1,400 people. In the month since, Israel’s retaliation has targeted the Gaza Strip through airstrikes, blockades and a ground invasion, which have killed over 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reported. Some members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now separately published a Nov. 8 op-ed in The Herald standing in
SEE SIT-IN PAGE 3