About a dozen people gathered outside the Hennepin County jail Tuesday morning to demand the release of 11 University of Minnesota students and former students who were arrested Monday during a protest inside a campus building.
The University of Minnesota’s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) started a protest Monday afternoon with students barricading themselves inside Morrill Hall and refusing to leave. The group’s tactics were meant to pressure the university into meeting their divestment demands.
Juliet Murphy, a University student and SDS member, said at Tuesday’s news conference that the group is demanding that the university cut all ties with Israel and weapon manufacturing companies because of the war in Gaza. Divestment includes no longer investing in those companies and halting study abroad programs in Israel, she said.
University of Minnesota police and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department arrested the protesters around 5 p.m. at Morrill Hall. SDS said the demonstrators are facing riot, trespassing and damage to property charges; one arrestee is facing a fourth-degree assault charge.
All of the arrestees were being held at the Hennepin County jail without bail as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office. The university said eight were current students and three were former students.
SDS member Sasmit Rahman said the organization is working to obtain legal representation for everyone who was arrested.
Rahman said police officers were “aggressive” in arresting demonstrators, and pushed protesters out of the building Monday evening. Murphy and Rahman said the police presence at the protest was “significant.” There were about 50 squad cars parked outside Morrill Hall, Murphy said.
“I know they came in with riot gear, with their batons,” Rahman said. “I think there absolutely was the intent to seriously hurt our protesters if they didn’t comply.”
University President Rebecca Cunningham sent an email to the campus community Tuesday morning, saying that Monday’s protest had “crossed the line into illegal activity.”
“We have seen many peaceful protests this fall,” she wrote. “However, what happened in Morrill Hall yesterday was not a form of legitimate protest.”
Cunningham said protesters spray-painted security cameras so they would not work, broke interior windows and barricaded doors. University staff were inside Morrill Hall at the time of the occupation, she said, and some were unable to leave “for an extended period of time” because students had barricaded doors with furniture and bicycle locks.
“This was a terrifying experience for many of our employees,” she said.
The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Minnesota and the Dakotas issued a statement Wednesday praising Cunningham’s response to the protests, and described the activists who occupied the building as “pro-Hamas demonstrators.”
The JCRC said that over the past year, it had warned about “violent rhetoric” from University of Minnesota student groups that used statements “calling for the murder of Jews,” such as “Glory to the Resistance,” “Globalize the Intifada,” or “Victory to Al Aqsa Flood.” These statements had “disrupted campus life not just for our Jewish students, but the vast majority of U of M students who do not share these activists’ pro-Hamas beliefs,” the council said.
“We have long feared that such violent rhetoric would escalate into actual violence,” said the JCRC statement. “Sadly, our worst fears were realized this Monday with the violent takeover of Morrill Hall.”
Cunningham said the extent of property damage was not yet known, and that Morrill Hall would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday so the university could assess damages and make repairs.
“It [property damage] wasn’t done just to destroy things,” Murphy said at the news conference. “It was done to protect students.”
University employees in Morrill Hall were repeatedly informed by protesters that they could leave the building and were offered student escorts, Rahman said. Several people were escorted out, she added.
“The small group of people who chose to remain in and bunker down, and lock themselves in for as long as possible, made that choice for themselves,” Rahman said. “There was never any threat.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, another group, Students for Justice in Palestine, held a rally on campus. About 100 students marched from Coffman Memorial Union toward Morrill Hall, holding banners and playing drums.
SJP member and biology student Ali Abu said the goal of the rally was to “keep the pressure” and show support for those arrested Monday.
“As Palestinian students, we don’t get what we want unless we escalate,” he said.
With its long history as a site of student protests, Morrill Hall was the most symbolic place for Monday’s action, SDS members said. During the takeover, they renamed it “Halimy Hall” in honor of Mohammad “Medo” Halimy, a Palestinian vlogger who was killed in August during an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.
“In Lebanon and Palestine, the images are horrific,” Murphy said. “It’s an urgent situation and the administration is not acting urgently.”
University officials closed Northrop auditorium on Tuesday and rescheduled a talk by Dr. Anthony Fauci, citing the “complicated” situation on campus.
Students escalate tactics
Monday night’s occupation marked an escalation of recent student protest tactics, after what looked like a peaceful resolution to an encampment in the spring.
In April, nine people, mostly students, were arrested at the university for setting up an encampment in support of Palestinians. After those arrests, another student encampment lasted for nearly 10 days. Students took down the tents when then-Interim University President Jeff Ettinger agreed to consider the protesters’ demands, which included divesting the university endowment from Israel and weapons manufacturers.
But in June, Ettinger reversed a decision to hire the Israeli historian Raz Segal as director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, following pushback from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Segal had described Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “genocide.”
After Ettinger withdrew the offer to Segal, the Faculty Senate held a no-confidence vote in both Ettinger and Provost Rachel Croson.
The University of Minnesota Board of Regents voted in August not to divest from Israel. Instead, the regents adopted a “position of neutrality” regarding the endowment and said they would consider future divestment requests in rare circumstances where “broad consensus” existed in the university community.
During that same meeting, the university’s new president, Rebecca Cunningham, laid out a set of policies that she said would guide the university’s approach to protests this year. Those included limiting protests to 100 people, unless they requested a permit in advance; a maximum of one megaphone per protest; and restrictions on protest sign size.
The guidelines also specified prohibited protest activities, including damaging university property and blocking building entrances. The policies outlined a tiered system of university response to protest, from educational warnings to arrest.
During Cunningham’s inauguration in September, a group of student protesters interrupted her remarks, shouting, “You are all complicit with the Israeli genocide in Gaza!”
Students, joined by about a dozen professors, recited a list of demands, including divestments. The protesting faculty wore shirts that said “Respect the no-confidence vote.” University officials said the interruption lasted four minutes before protesters left on their own, and no formal disciplinary action was imposed on students or staff.
