Workers for The New School in New York City have erected the first-ever faculty solidarity encampment amid the wave of pro-Palestine protest encampments that have been led and sustained by students at over 100 colleges and universities across the U.S.
On Wednesday afternoon, a group of about 20 faculty put up roughly six tents in the lobby of the New School University Center, a major building for the university, as Hell Gate reported. The autonomous group named their encampment after Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian writer, poet, professor and activist who Israel killed in a targeted airstrike in Gaza in December.
“The Israeli military has slaughtered over 40,000 people in Gaza,” faculty said after tents were erected, per Hell Gate. “As we restart The New School Gaza Liberation Encampment, bombs rain down on Rafah, where over 600,000 children are trapped. U.S. funds, U.S. weapons, U.S. endorsement continues unabated. Every university in Gaza has been turned to rubble.”
The encampment is the only one standing in New York City after numerous schools in the city unleashed the full force of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on protesting students, violently clearing encampments at Columbia University and City College of New York last Tuesday, Fordham University on Wednesday, and the New School and New York University on Friday. Then, on Tuesday night, police brutalized students and journalists in a surprise clearing of the encampment at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which was the last known remaining student encampment in NYC.
Part of the aim of the faculty encampment is to express solidarity with students who the university ordered arrested. Police arrested 45 students early Friday morning while students were sleeping, with protesters saying that 150 police were present to raid the encampment. Students who were arrested have called for faculty and staff at The New School to go on strike in solidarity with the protesting students’ demands.
Overall, roughly 2,600 students across the U.S. have been arrested in campus crackdowns on pro-Palestine protests so far, according to a count by The Appeal.
“Alareer used his position as an academic and as an artist to amplify voices for a liberated Palestine,” the faculty group said in a statement released as the encampment went up. “In addition to aligning in solidarity with our students, we stage this protest in his memory, in the memory of the over 40,000 innocent civilians already killed in Gaza since October 7th, 2024, and in honor of the life that persists and will persist in Palestine.”
The faculty laid out five main demands, with divestment from 13 weapons manufacturers that the school is invested in at their core. They also called for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, amnesty for students and staff punished by police and the university, and an end to the university’s collaboration with the NYPD.
The group has called for their movement to spread across universities, the same way that Columbia students’ encampment sparked similar protests nationwide.
“We call on faculty across all campuses to escalate and take greater coordinated risk in solidarity with the student movement, their demands, and the people of Palestine and their righteous struggle against 6 months of a genocide and 75+ years of settler colonial violence and apartheid,” the faculty said.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 7 days to add 432 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.