DETROIT – Wayne State University forced an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters off of the Detroit campus early Thursday morning after “many good-faith efforts to reach a different conclusion,” officials said.
Wayne State students and faculty began their spring semester remotely on May 28 because of an “ongoing public safety issue,” the university reported. University officials were referencing a group of protesters who formed an encampment on May 23 in protest of the war in Gaza.
The Detroit university was one of the latest U.S. schools to erect a pro-Palestinian encampment in an effort to push their institution to divest from Israel and companies that support Israel’s military efforts in Gaza. Protesting students had hoped to come to an agreement on divestment in exchange for the encampment’s removal.
At 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 30, university police told the protesters that they had to leave. Officers made repeated announcements to give protesters time to collect their belongings and leave, officials reported.
“Many people left,” university President Kimberly Andrews Espy said in a statement Thursday. There were still some people actively protesting while our cameras and crews were at the school as of 7:30 a.m.
At least 13 people were arrested Thursday as police cleared the encampment. Arrests took place throughout the morning as protesters appeared to clash with police.
The university had hired crews to physically dismantle the large encampment and clear all of the tents and objects from campus after protesters were removed from the area.
The move to clear the encampment was made due to ”multiple legal, health, and safety challenges that disrupted our operations,” the university president said. Since the encampment was established, school officials had maintained it was a trespass and had told protesters to dismantle it.
University officials said they made repeated attempts to work with protest organizers to “find a path to dismantle the encampment.” One of those attempts included offering a meeting with the university president and other officials -- but protesters declined that offer, saying they wanted a public forum.
Organizers told Local 4 on Thursday that they were weren’t prepared to meet with the president when the offer was made. Officials wanted them to meet “right then and there,” but protesters were up all night and tired after being told there would be a raid, according to a protester.
Protesters reportedly waited for a member of the Board of Governors to meet with them Wednesday afternoon, but a protester said the member never showed up. The Wayne State president did not mention any plans for divestment in her statement Thursday morning.
Protesters were not being allowed on campus as the encampment was being cleared Thursday morning. Classes at Wayne State were to stay remote through at least Thursday. Officials said a decision on Friday’s schedule would come soon.
All events on campus were canceled on May 28 until further notice.
Authorities similarly broke up a weekslong pro-Palestinian encampment last week at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Encampments at other universities, like Rutgers and Brown, came to mutual ends after the institutions negotiated with protesters. At Brown, university leaders agreed to vote on divesting from companies that support Israel in exchange for removing the encampment.
The University of Michigan, however, made no such deal. University President Santa Ono instead said that the university will “support multiple opportunities to discuss and debate complicated issues, including the war in the Middle East,” over the next year.
Ann Arbor protesters told Local 4 that the removal of their encampment does not mark the end of their mission.
---> The Israel-Hamas war is testing whether campuses are sacrosanct places for speech and protest
Palestinians in Gaza have been subject to incessant Israeli bombing, displacement, and a lack of food and resources since Oct. 7, 2023. The latest fighting between Israel and Hamas, the group that rules the Gaza territory, was trigged by Hamas’ surprise attack in Israel that October day, in which Hamas took about 250 hostages and killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government.
More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began in October, the Gaza Health Ministry reports. Tens of thousands more people have been wounded in Gaza.
Israel still has support from the U.S., its largest ally, plus several other Western countries amid the war -- though that support has slightly waned as the number of civilian casualties continues to rise in Gaza. The U.S. and other allies have warned Israel against an attack in the city of Rafah, where displaced civilians are seeking refuge amid the war.
Israel recently launched strikes on Rafah, killing at least 16 Palestinians as of Tuesday, according to first responders. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said that launching an offensive attack in Rafah would cross a major line.
In a recent move, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and in Israel. The International Court of Justice last week ordered Israel to halt its military action in Rafah, but the court can’t enforce that order.
Watch our report from Wayne State University as the encampment was dismantled below.