Pro-Palestinian protests continue on Chicago campuses; here’s what to know

Hundreds of Chicago-area college students have joined the wave of pro-Palestinian protests sweeping campuses across the country, expressing support for the people of Gaza and demanding their universities divest from Israel.

Only one protest camp in the Chicago area remains, at DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus.

Police cleared an encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday. On Saturday, police arrested 68 protesters as they tried to set up a camp outside the Art Institute of Chicago. Northwestern University’s camp was dismantled last week after a deal with administrators.

Protesters’ demands have focused on divestment — demanding universities cut ties with Israel and businesses supporting the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

On Oct. 7, Palestinian militants launched an unprecedented attack into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250 hostages.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.

The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, caused vast destruction in several towns and cities and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine.

Here’s what we know so far about what’s happened, what the protests are about and what comes next.

How did the protests start?

Students at Columbia University in New York City set up a protest camp on April 17, the same day university President Nemat Shafik was called to testify before Congress. Shafik faced criticism from Republicans over alleged antisemitism from pro-Palestinian protesters.

The next day, New York City police were called to clear the encampment and arrested over 100 protesters.

The arrests, which New York Mayor Eric Adams says were requested by Columbia officials, garnered national attention and inflamed college protests nationwide. Soon, protest camps had been set up at University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina.

What do protesters want?

As the death toll mounts in the war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis worsens, protesters at Columbia and universities all over the U.S. are demanding schools cut financial ties to the conflict and pledge to support a cease-fire in the region.

Protesters have said universities should disclose — and unload — any investments in companies doing business with Israel or manufacturing weapons and end programs that partner with Israeli institutions.

“From this divestment campaign to the divestment campaigns all around the world, we demand divestment, repair, justice, freedom for all Palestinians,” Moon G., an incoming master’s student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, told the crowd at the encampment at the university’s Hyde Park campus last week.

Organizers at Northwestern called on the university to end its Israel Innovation Project, a STEM program where students, faculty and staff collaborate with counterparts in Israel.

At U of C and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, protesters demanded the school refuse future donations from the Crown family, who own a 10% stake in defense company General Dynamics. U of C is home to Crown Family School of Social Work, Family and Practice, and the family has endowed a professorship at SAIC. The family is a major donor to many universities.

Protesters have also called out how universities have responded to the protests and demands.

A statement announcing the Northwestern encampment said students “report the administration is curtailing free speech.” A University of Chicago protester said the university turned down requests for a public meeting regarding divestment from Israel in the fall.

Where are protests happening in the Chicago area?

University of Chicago

Campus police at the University of Chicago cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at the school early Tuesday morning, ending an eight-day demonstration that brought student protesters and university officials to an impasse over the protesters’ demands.

The action, which sparked a subsequent standoff with demonstrators, began around daybreak as campus police surrounded the university’s main quadrangle in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

When the police barricade that blocked students’ path was removed about 8 a.m, a mass of protesters made for the steps of Edward H. Levi Hall, where they linked arms as police surrounded them.

By 9 a.m. protesters had dispersed of their own accord as a rainstorm moved through.

Hundreds of University of Chicago students set up the encampment on April 29.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

A pro-Palestinian encampment set up Saturday outside the Art Institute of Chicago was cleared by Chicago police hours after it went up leading to nearly 70 arrests, officials said.

Students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the group SAIC Students for Palestinian Liberation assembled shortly before noon at the museum’s North Garden, near Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street.

The group said they were staging the protests to demand the school and museum disclose its investments, give amnesty to demonstrators and divest from those supporting the “occupation of Palestine.”

The first arrest was made around the time the encampment was set up as police tried to push protesters away from Monroe Street at Michigan Avenue, a Sun-Times reporter observed.

Growing to several hundred demonstrators, including students and faculty, students from other universities and passersby who joined, they were met by dozens of Chicago police officers who set up barricades to stop protesters from moving onto the sidewalk on Monroe Street. Scuffles broke out between police and protesters at times.

SAIC United for Palestine said more than half the protesters arrested were held in custody for more than 11 hours. The school accused protesters of stealing keys and a radio from a security guard as well as blocking emergency exits near the encampment, among other allegations.

COPA has opened a preliminary investigation to determine whether it or the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs will take over the inquiry into officer conduct.

DePaul University

The encampment on DePaul University‘s Lincoln Park campus officially began at 10 a.m. last Tuesday, and by noon, over 100 students had gathered on the lawn. Students shared lunch, some signed in to online classes, and others tossed a volleyball around.

“We posted this encampment only a few hours before, and as you can see, we already have numbers,” Henna Ayesh, an organizer with the DePaul University Divest Coalition told the Sun-Times. “I think that’s a testament to the power of the Chicago community as a whole and just [that] people in general support Palestine.”

DePaul University’s Divestment Coalition Encampment has published a list of demands, which call on the administration to acknowledge the mounting death toll in Gaza, divest from companies that “advance Palestinian suffering and profit off the occupation,” and join the city of Chicago in calling for a cease-fire.

The 200 to 500 protesters at DePaul remain focused on pressuring the university to meet their demands, Ayesh said over the weekend.

Protesters have met twice with the administration, and Ayesh said negotiations have been going nowhere. Some demands could be met immediately, she added, such as calling for a cease-fire or using direct language to describe what’s happening in Gaza, in addition to financial transparency.

Northwestern University

Hundreds of people set up an encampment on April 25 on Deering Meadow on Northwestern University’s Evanston campus.

Despite the university enacting an “interim addendum” to its student code of conduct to prohibit tents, protesters kept the encampment up through the weekend before reaching a deal with university administration last week to take down all but one aid tent. The agreement allows protests to continue without tents until June 1, the last day of class.

The university is facing heavy backlash over the agreement, with university president Michael Schill bearing the brunt of the criticism. Three Jewish organizations are calling for him to resign, and he will testify before Congress later this month about antisemitism on campus. Meanwhile, a truck with signs saying “Hamas’s favorite university president, Michael Schill…” above a link to a campaign calling for Schill to resign has been seen parked across from Deering Meadow at the university.

Other protests

Hundreds of demonstrators from the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University marched, chanted and held up signs supporting Palestinians living in Gaza on April 26.

And students at a few Chicago high schools protested the war on Wednesday by first demonstrating in their schools then marching to an encampments at the University of Chicago.

About 15 Jones students took a CTA bus to join a group of around 30 kids from Kenwood Academy High School, Hancock College Prep and Kennedy High School who marched through Hyde Park to the University of Chicago encampment.

On the 1.5-mile walk to U of C, the group chanted “Gaza, Gaza don’t you cry, we will never let you die,” “Biden, Biden you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide” and “No more weapons, no more war, cease-fire is what we’re fighting for.”

Are their demands being met?

Before their encampment was cleared, pro-Palestinian organizers at the University of Chicago reached what they called an “impasse” with university officials.

The university had not met with student organizers since Sunday, after both parties failed to come to terms over language in a draft agreement and funding for future scholarships and research, according to a student organizer.

“There were areas where we were able to achieve common ground, but ultimately a number of the intractable and inflexible aspects of their demands were fundamentally incompatible with the University’s principled dedication to institutional neutrality,” said university president Paul Alivisatos in a statement.

A coalition of over 120 faculty and academic staff from the University of Chicago on Monday called on the school’s administration to resume negotiations with the pro-Palestinian encampment organizers.

Student protesters had some of their demands met as part of a deal with Northwestern administration to end the encampment announced on April 29.

University President Michael Schill said the agreement represents a “sustainable and de-escalated path forward.” The agreement allows protests to continue without tents until June 1, the last day of class. The demonstrators will be allowed to keep one aid tent.

As a first step toward divestment, the agreement requires the university to disclose information about any investments to people associated with the university within 30 days of the inquiry. It will also re-establish a committee to advise on investments that will include student representatives. The university also committed to fully funding tuition for five Palestinian undergraduate students, supporting visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk, providing an immediate temporary space for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Muslim students, and renovating a building for future use.

The deal has come under criticism from Jewish groups — ADL Midwest, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center — who have called on the university’s president to resign.

Demonstrators at Rutgers University — where finals were paused due to the protests on its New Brunswick campus — similarly packed up their tents Thursday afternoon. The state university agreed to establish an Arab Cultural Center and to not retaliate against any students involved in the camp.

Protesters at Brown University in Rhode Island agreed to dismantle their encampment on April 30. School officials said students could present arguments for divesting Brown’s endowment from companies contributing to and profiting from the war in Gaza.

Faculty at Pomona College in California voted in favor of divesting from companies they said are funding Israel’s war in Gaza, a group of faculty and students said Friday.

What about allegations of antisemitism?

In a statement, the Illinois Holocaust Museum described the protests convulsing campuses as “a moment of grave crisis” and says the Holocaust is being used as a political and rhetorical tool. It also said Columbia University in New York offering hybrid classes for students anxious about being on campus is a “worrisome sign.”

“There is nothing antisemitic about supporting the Palestinians’ rights or demonstrating in support of Palestinians,” the statement said. “But within these protests have been worrisome and persistent examples of antisemitic expression. … Bad actors are using the cover of free speech in this moment of tension to normalize dangerous ideas that cause real harm to Jewish students and communities.”

The museum said statements like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine is Arab,” “Students will go home when Israelis go back to Europe, US, etc. (their real homes)” and “All you do is colonize” were “explicitly calling for the murder of these protesters.”

For Palestinians, the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been a rallying call for decades, signifying what they believe is their right to peacefully return to the land that is now Israel.

Sivan Spector, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago’s Coordinating Committee — a progressive Jewish pro-Palestinian organization — said in a statement she had spent Sunday at the Northwestern protest encampment with other Jewish Chicagoans, where she felt welcomed and didn’t experience or see any antisemitism.

On Wednesday, three Jewish students identified only as Jane Doe, John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, filed a lawsuit against the university, alleging harassment by members of the encampment.

The lawsuit filed in Cook County Court condemns the university for allowing the encampment on campus, alleging it violated multiple Northwestern policies. But rather than enforce school policy, “Northwestern twisted itself into a pretzel to accommodate” the encampment, the complaint alleges.

Have there been arrests or violence in Chicago?

After the SAIC encampment was set up on Saturday, police said 68 people were taken into custody and would be charged with criminal trespass to property.

The Chicago Police Department says officers spent a little more than two hours negotiating with demonstrators to clear the area. About 4:30 p.m., police began making mass arrests at the request of museum officials.

There were no injuries or arrests made when the University of Chicago encampment was cleared, but people were pushed to the ground, an organizer told the Sun-Times.

University of Chicago and DePaul saw confrontations with counterprotesters over the weekend, prompting police to show up with riot gear at one point to the U of C encampment.

Nationally, just over 2,600 people have been arrested on the campuses of 50 colleges and universities since April 18, according to figures based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.

More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on the campus of Columbia University in New York City or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks.

At least 132 people were arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles last week as an encampment there was cleared, according to a spokesperson for the CHP Southern Division.

Another 132 protesters were arrested when police broke up an encampment at the State University of New York at New Paltz starting late Thursday, authorities said.

Twenty-five people were arrested Saturday for trespassing at the University of Virginia after police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to remove tents from campus.

What happens next?

Northwestern protesters plan to continue their protest until June 1. University of Chicago organizers said they will continue to push the school to divest from Israel and support its Palestinian students, with or without the encampment.

“This is one tactic in a much larger campaign,” said a senior organizer named Sammy who did not give their last name out of safety concerns.

The end of the semester — and May graduations — remain a looming deadline for universities.

The president at Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Connecticut, has commended the on-campus demonstration — which includes a pro-Palestinian tent encampment — as an act of political expression.

But as Wesleyan’s May 26 commencement approaches, some protesters fear they will be forcibly removed from the center of campus, adjacent to the field where the ceremony is to take place.

“The longer we are here the more that their facade of laid back, hands off is falling away,” said Batya Kline, a 22-year-old graduate student. “We know that the university does not want us here and we know that they can change their pace at the drop of a hat without letting us know.”

Officials at New York City’s Columbia University on Monday canceled its main ceremony but said students will be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next. The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony. Other universities have held graduation ceremonies with beefed-up security.

Contributing: Associated Press, Isabel Funk, Jessica Ma, Violet Miller, Sophie Sherry, Aidan Sadovi