Well, everything is a mess at the University of Chicago and all of us are confused. One thing that seems true is that the University, probably in an attempt to get rid of the Encampment without bringing in cops or promoting violence, has begun some kind of negotiations with the Encamping Protesters. But the nature of those negotiations is confused, as the administration and the Encampers say different things about what was agreed on—if anything.
Further, there are reports that the Encampers are preparing for a raid by agents of the University—a report at odds with the fact that there were negotiations. I’ll just put down what is public and we’ll have to wait to see what happens.
First, remember that in the last week both the President and Dean of Students issued statements (see here) saying that the Encampment, though allowed to remain up for a while, has violated numerous campus rules and “has reached the point of intervention” (i.e., being taken down). The Dean of Students said that “the encampment on the Quad cannot continue, and we have called on the organizers to end it.” All of us took that as a sign that the Encampment, against the will of its inhabitants, would shortly be dismantled.
But it’s still there. There were rumors, which I can’t verify, that the Mayor of Chicago doesn’t want the city cops to be involved in doing this, as there are many protestors and they are angry and apparently ready to fight back (they have shields). City cops were, however, involved this weekend in taking down a smaller protest at the Art Institute of Chicago. Dozens were arrested at that confrontation, but our encampment is different, as it’s large and fortified with barricades and fences.
Because we have too few campus cops to tackle the job of dismantling the encampment in the face of resistance, it’s not certain that there is even an official force capable and willing to dismantle the encampment. That, perhaps, is what spurred the administration to negotiate, especially because Alumni Weekend is coming and graduation is on June 1. It would look mighty bad if the encampment were still there at those events, and could even result in canceling graduation. The administration is between a rock and a hard place.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Maroon reports not only on the negotiations (see below) but on two facts of interest. First, the encampment has surrounded itself with barricades and wire fences; apparently nobody can get in unless you’re a protester. . Second, the administration apparently gave the Encampment a possible deadline for being dismantled, and the Encampers are preparing for an incursion to take down their tents and obstructions, as well as for arrests. I’ll quote the Maroon and show a couple of their photos (Maroon quotes indented):
May 5, 12:15 p.m.
The entire encampment is now encircled with barriers of various forms, including caution tape, plastic mesh barriers, wooden boards, and wire fencing. Parts of the fencing have been up since Friday night, but it appears that new fencing was added before Sunday morning.
On Wednesday night, encampment organizers put up fencing, then took it down on Thursday morning at the request of UCPD and Facility Services. The fencing was partially put back up again on Friday night following rumors of a second counterprotest against the encampment.
— Katherine Weaver and Tiffany Li, Deputy News Editors; Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon, News Reporter
The negotiations mentioned here will be discussed below:
May 5, 4:20 p.m.
In a joint Instagram post published by UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP), Palestinian Youth Movement, and US Palestinian Community Network, UCUP announced that negotiators were successful in having the University establish a “Gaza Scholars at Risk Initiative, which will bring 8 at-risk Palestinian scholars to work and study at UChicago.”
Before negotiations began, UCUP demanded preconditions including reduced UCPD presence on the quad, a guarantee that for the 12 hours after negotiations ended the University would not order any raids on the encampment, and amnesty for negotiators.
UCUP wrote that “daytime talks with subordinate deans over our demands” were “emptied of all substance” after being brought to President Alivisatos.
UCUP also wrote that they remain steadfast “as the administration attempts to trick or intimidate our movement into dismantling the encampment in exchange for hollow promises.”
UCUP closed the post with a “Call To Action,” telling “supporters to be prepared to mobilize en masse to support the encampment within the next 24 hours.”
— Eva McCord and Kayla Rubenstein, Co-Editors-in-Chief; Zachary Leiter, Deputy Managing Editor
The barricades!
May 5, 8:50 p.m.
Protesters have begun placing barricades made out of wooden pallets and boards around the side of the encampment facing the center of the quad. The Maroon has observed individuals bringing the materials into the encampment over the past few days.
— Austin Zeglis, Senior News Reporter; Finn Hartnett, News Reporter; Nikhil Jaiswal, Co-Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
A photo from the Maroon. Clearly the residents have closed off the Encampment from the rest of the campus—a violation of University rules. I suspect nobody can walk though unless they’re a resident, but believe me, I’m not even going to try.
May 5, 11:12 p.m.
Encampment participants are bringing wooden boards reinforced with metal, chain link fencing with green mesh, and sandbags to the encampment from behind the University bookstore on 58th Street and South Ellis Avenue.
The protesters are using the materials to form barricades around the encampment.
— Tiffany Li and Emma Janssen, Deputy News Editors
May 5, 11:35 p.m.
Protesters have placed more fencing around the encampment, supported by hay bales, and have lined tents up against the fencing.
Some protesters have put on helmets.
— Sabrina Chang and Tiffany Li, Deputy News Editors
A photo of the “reinforcement” is below, showing the fences being moved; that’s another violation of University regulations and further prevents people from entering this part of the Quad.
Further, the protestors seem to be preparing for an invasion of police. I saw a ton of UC police and US security cars while walking to work this morning, but I see no indication of a raid. I have to go to the bank later, and so will walk around the encampment and report.
May 5, 11:43 p.m.
In a statement sent to the Maroon, UCUP said that “the raid is not certain, but remains likely.” They said that “the university has made clear to students that their ‘immunity’ from police raids would end at midnight tonight.” Throughout the night, encampment participants have expressed to the Maroon that they believed a raid was likely.
— Sabrina Chang, Tiffany Li, and Katherine Weaver, Deputy News Editors
May 6, 12:44 a.m.
Faculty for Justice Palestine (FJP) at UChicago previously released a statement referring to a midnight deadline for protesters to leave the encampment. In a statement to the Maroon, FJP made a correction, saying that the deadline referred to the expiration of a 12-hour period during which police would not take actions to end the encampment. FJP now claims that this buffer expired at midnight and served as an implicit deadline for the encampment to end or face removal.
“It is accurate that they sent no such communication insofar as they never sent out an email to that effect,” the statement read. “However, this information was conveyed to the student negotiators as well as faculty present and was reconfirmed at the start of the talks in person this morning.”
FJP said that organizers were ready to resume negotiations.
“If [the University has] decided that this deadline no longer holds, the students would be ready to return to good faith negotiation,” FJP wrote. “This is yet another distressing sign that university administration continues to act in bad faith.”
— Peter Maheras, News Editor; Nikhil Jaiswal, Co-Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
This talk of a “deadline” is further confusing.
May 6, 12:52 a.m.
After a brief rally, the large group of protesters has split into the four color categories according to how prepared they are to be arrested. Faculty members have labeled themselves as faculty with signs taped on their backs. Approximately 15 faculty are in the red group, meaning they are most prepared to be arrested.
The groups have established formations and are undergoing training on avoiding a crowd crush. “Be familiar with who is in your line, because you are going down with them,” an organizer said.
Several groups of unidentified onlookers have arrived to watch encampment activities.
This surprises me, but wouldn’t have surprised me two days ago when the administration issued statements that the Encampment could not stand. But since then, as reported by the Maroon and put up on the protesters’ social media, the University has begun negotiations with the protestors. From the Maroon:
The University of Chicago has reduced the presence of the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) on the main quad as a part of preconditions for negotiations with encampment organizers, according to UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP).
In a statement to the Maroon this morning, the group wrote, “UCUP demanded UCPD off the quad as a precondition for negotiating. [The] administration has only partially complied with this agreement by an apparent reduction of UCPD on and around the quad at certain times.”
For most of Saturday evening, there was no consistent UCPD presence on the quad, 57th Street, or 58th Street, with at most one officer intermittently present. University safety ambassadors from Allied Security continued to maintain a robust presence in the area.
In a statement released late Sunday afternoon, the University said it had not agreed to reduce UCPD’s presence on the quad.
Note that if the cops really were taken off the quad, which would be a bad move (the University denies it), and as a precondition for negotiations, it would be bizarre. It would represent the University de-escalating its presence merely to allow negotiations with the Encampers to begin. I’ll give the University’s denial below.
The main report that has upset many of us is the UChicago United for Palestine group’s announcement that they are seriously negotiating with the University about meeting the UCUP’s demands (Students for Justice in Palestine is part of the UCUP’s consortium). We learned this from UCUP’s Instagram post below (I’ve used screenshots in case this is removed; clicking on first one will take you to the site). The Instagram post used to have six parts; this morning it has only five, but I’ve added a screenshot of the missing bit:
Here’s the protester’s report that the University had agreed to a “Gaza Scholars at Risk” program, bringing 8 Palestinian scholars to “work and study” here. This is similar to what Northwestern University did in its bargaining with protesters. I do object to this kind of bargaining. The University of Chicago, as it notes below, already has a “Scholars at Risk Committee”, but aiming the positions at people of a given nationality may well be illegal. Note again that the protesters say that establishing this program WAS merely a “precondition” for negotiations, which is bizarre. Again, the University denies this.
This part of the UCUP post was there yesterday. but apparently has been taken down. It shows communication between the protesters and Provost Katherine Baicker, and suggests that the administration did indeed agree to the Gaza Scholars at Risk program as a precondition for negotiations. (The protestors blacked out their email and the names of University faculty they wanted on the advisory committee for this program, and I have blacked out Baicker’s email address.) Baicker says “Confirmed!” to the protestors’ request for assurance that the Gaza Scholars at Risk Program is a University commitment for beginning negotiations. It is not a compromise worked out via negotiations.
I’m not sure why this bit of the post has been removed from the protester’s Instagram site.
Here the protesters crow that they achieved a victory over the administration while “the administration gained nothing over us.” They also say the Gazan Scholars at Risk program is only one of many demands that the University must meet to end the encampment.
Here we see a glitch: the University and protesters apparently did enter into negotiations, but President Alivisatos would not meet them. At the bottom we see the “preconditions” for negotiations, avers UCUP, were agreed upon by the University, including reduced presence of the UCPD (University of Chicago Police Department) on the quad. Again the University denies that this agreement was made.
And the final ringing statement, the protesters proclaim that they will not be moved, but also crow that they’re ready to “mobilize en masse to support the encampment”. Is a takedown attempt in the offing? Who knows? “Mobilization en masse” implies resistance and, perhaps, violence.
HOWEVER, yesterday this statement from the administration appeared in the UChicago News (click to go to the site). It confirms that there were discussions between the University and the protesters (none of us were informed that these discussions had even been contemplated), but also notes that “there are material inaccuracies and mischaracterizations in the information being shared on social media,” presumably including the UCUP Instagram posts above. The claim that there is an existing Scholars at Risk Committee is correct (see link above). The University also asserts that there was never an agreement to reduce the presence of University Police on the quad, a claim made by UCUP in the fifth Instagram section above.
Where do we stand? People are confused, and many questions remain. A new NYT article (archived here) says that talks have been suspended. The Encampment is still there, and I’m sure the University at one point wanted to remove it without further negotiations (a few days ago, as I reported, they met for one hour with the protesters). It may be too late to take down the encampment, especially if the Chicago city police won’t help remove the encampment. And if the protesters really won’t leave until all their demands are met, they’ll be there for a long time to come, for the U of C will never agree to demands for divestment from Israel (or anything else).
I believe the University’s assertions in their statement above, though Provost Baiker’s email (if it’s real) does seem to show that there was a Gaza Scholars initiative agreed on as a precondition for negotiations. Again, Baicker’s email may be fake, as the protesters are part of an organization that can’t be trusted, or it could be genuine but removed because it violated the confidentiality of negotiations agreed on by both sides. If that’s the case, the entire Instagram post also violated that confidentiality.
What will happen next? We don’t know, but I, for one, wish the administration would keep us more in the loop—not necessarily telling us the subjects of negotations, but at least telling us that negotiations with the Encampers were going on—something that none of us knew.
At any rate, today’s another day, albeit a confusing one.
Finally, our students have started a Change.org petition, addressed to President Alivisatos, to remove the encampment (click on headline to read). So far just 85 students have signed out of a goal of 100, which is not a lot given that we have over 18,000 graduate + undergraduate students. But the petition just got going.
What I think are the lessons to be gleaned from the contrast between how Ben Sasse has managed the situation at U. Florida vs Alivisatos at U. Chicago.
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-universities-ben-sasse
A very good read.
Right now, I think that the Chicago encampment is too dug in and too radicalized to safely deconstruct by direct physical action. There could easily be a stampede with injuries or worse. This is worrying.
Sealing it off, and arresting protestors as they leave for class? Not allowing supplies to come in to sort of starve them out?
The idea of not letting supplies enter the encampment seems like a no-brainer. At the least, I question why the university permitted these students to transport such large and obvious materials as pallets into the encampment without making any effort to prevent them.
And yes, that’s an excellent article. It also references WEIT. Thanks for the link.
As was said in Florida, college is not daycare and if you’re breaking the rules (and laws), you need to face consequences – even if it hurts feelings.
Staff, including professors are employees and need to be treated as such.
How would the university treat these protests if the theme was “Blacks back to Africa” ?
The antisemitism from the Left is staggering.
“The antisemitism from the Left is staggering.”
The view at Pharyngula is that the antisemites are “on the right side of history”, and that there are NO examples of hate, antisemitism, or threats of violence towards Jewish people in this protests…
I think the protest leadership is looking not for a certain defined agreement per se, but who is going to be committed to making the strongest efforts to making anything happen, and how.
IOW : manipulation of power.
Those who make the biggest manipulations will get promoted in rank.
Exactly.
A chief executive in this situation has little choice but to resign because he has been manipulated by his enemies, both internal and external, into a position of weakness.
His own employees wearing red stripes at an assembly their university deems against its rules, to show their willingness to be arrested in defiance of his attempts to preserve the integrity of the university. Shameful. I would just vanish in the night were I the prez.
Decision dilemma.
Straight from the manual.
Anything I can’t think to do (deny access to buildings/bathrooms, cordon off the encampment and deny entry, turn on the sprinklers) requires the same level of determination that sending the cops in would, so I say, Send the cops in. Officially request them, and put Johnson in the hot seat. If CPD won’t play, go to the State Police and put Pritzker in the hot seat.
Exactly. Further, inform all students that, in addition to being arrested, they will face expulsion. Inform all faculty and staff that they will be fired. Give them an hour to decide, then take it down.
This has gone on too long. The protestors need to learn that actions have consequences.
+1
Call the Chicago Mayor’s office (and Governor’s office) and leave messages, for what it’s worth.
Mayor:
(312) 744-3300
PS: He’s mostly useless. But. It’s a nice opportunity to rant. 🙂
Governor:
217-782-0244
Got a live person at the Governor’s office.
Close the University until the Fall term. Cancel commencement. Give all students an A for courses in this term. Walk away. I doubt the encampment will persist through the summer if no one is paying attention and many of the non-student protestors will move to the site of the DNC convention.
Alternatively the Administration can uphold their policies by recruiting private security (if Chicago PD and the Mayor don’t cooperate) and dismantle the encampment.
These fine gentlemen might be willing to act as private security (and they’re based near Chicago): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaws_Motorcycle_Club
lol
This can’t be serious. Give every student an “A” and cancel commencement? That may take the steam out of the encampment, but it’s unfair to grade students this way as well as to rob them of their graduation.
Then proceed with the alternative and clear the encampment. The parents will be grateful and it’s the least the University can do to make the commencement safe for all those attending.
No, don’t give an A if it is not earned.
Don’t cancel anything.
Make all students and the parents of those students feel the impact of these asinine actions so that there is more pressure to remove the barricades.
Students who are spending all their time in the encampment and not completing assignments must live with the consequence of their actions.
Parents and students who try to get to commencement activities and are faced with this should complain to the administration and media.
If I’m sending my kid there and paying $65k for tuition and then even more for room and board, I expect the full experience, including ability to attend classes in person, a grading system that rewards scholarship and penalizes sloth, and the traditional commencement walk.
Giving all students A’s and walking away is allowing the anti-Semitic protesters to win and presents an easy path for the administration to do nothing.
Giving students an A rewards bad behaviour. Don’t do it.
Play loud obnoxious music over loudspeakers? Any suggestions?
Unfortunately, that would also disrupt classes. There is a dormitory close by in the next quad, and the library is just beyond that. Chicago is quite compact.
A friend of mine suggested playing one of those very high-pitched notes that only young people can hear VERY LOUDLY all around the encampment.
I’ve already suggested Lou Reeds ” metal machine music” try listening to that for hours on end. Failing that, a bad odor of some sort, rotton eggs?
As mentioned it would disrupt everyone! Not just the target. But isn’t the protest doing that anyway. Never been to UoC so have not a clue.
That’s some world-class dithering going on from the university president and senior administration. Saying something firm and then not acting on it is even worse than just doing nothing without saying anything, and that was bad enough. The utter lack of leadership qualities is just staggering.
Indeed. I can hardly imagine people this spineless as adequate parents, let alone as top university administrators.
Thanks to our host for sharing those photos of the fortified encampment from The Maroon. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it.
So now what? The protest has become so large and the barricades so strong that even the Chicago Police Department (reportedly) doesn’t want to come in. What larger force is there? (I will leave that question open.) It seems that there will either be a negotiated solution—with lots of goodies being awarded to the militants in reward for their illegal behavior, and setting the stage for further unrest at the U of C and elsewhere—or there will be an ugly mess of a confrontation.
My wife is a U of C alumna and is deeply disappointed with how the university has been handling this. As a former college professor, I’m worried that this will soon become violent.
Surely the campus has enough cops to stop the protesters bringing in all of the wooden pallets and other building materials? Unless Hamas have been digging tunnels for a while…
Yes, I don’t know why they didn’t stop them. One of the photos shows a protestor dragging part of a fence across Ellis Avenue, right by the administration building!
How did UofC go from being recognized for having a policy of neutrality to supporting long-term protests favoring one specific political vewpoint in so short of time? Their words may say they don’t endorse it but the actions speak much more loudly. After all, the camps and anti-Zionist signage are all on campus property, and allowed to exist in clear violation of policy. Therefore, the university must be in favor of the messaging or they would have stopped it long ago.
The encampers demand that the UCPD reduce its presence on the UC’s own quad suggested two thoughts to me.
(1) The next demand will surely be for the University itself to reduce its presence on the quad, and thus turn the quad over entirely to “the movement”. (The encampment at the Univ. of Washington is of course referred to as “the liberated zone”, perhaps in memory of our two-week “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” comic opera in 2020.) (2) Objections to the UCPD are reminiscent of the ripple of agitation against campus police in general in 2020 and for a while afterward. That was the academic version of the “defund the police” fad, and briefly occupied the pop-Left faction of the professoriate—the same faction, no doubt, who are now encamper allies.
The Chicago Police Department is more than equipped to remove the encampment. That they are not doing so means that either the university or the mayor does not want the camp removed.
Negotiate. Why not? It works with Iran. It works with Hamas. It works with recalcitrant faculty and students. It works with tantrum-throwing three-year-olds. Just talk with them. NATO members increased their contributions to defense because we talked nicely for decades, didn’t they? Climate change concord? All countries compliant after negotiating, aren’t they? Russia adhered to all the painstakingly-negotiated arms control agreements, did they not? We could go on.
There is a very large subset of adults in our country who have long had an unsupported faith in the power of talk and reason. I agree, discussion and negotiation can be wonderful—if your interlocutors can reason objectively, share your commitment to negotiate in good faith, and have both the will and the power to enact anything to which you agree. When they don’t, then a different course is called for. Leadership, in part, is about knowing the difference. To use a military metaphor: it is about knowing the nature of the enemy and the nature of the fight—and adapting accordingly. It is not about having a particular disposition or personally-favored set of approaches and then applying them no matter the problem at hand. It is not always about finding consensus. There is a time to talk, a time to act more forcefully, a time to refrain from taking any steps at all. A leader knows the difference. A manager might not.
I don’t believe that the Chicago Police want to forcibly remove the encampment since it does not pose a danger. I can well see why they would be reluctant as well since something could very easily go very wrong with injuries to protestors and to police.
What a mess! This is what inaction gets you.
But cops removed the Art Institute encampment without an injury. And, as far as I know, there has not been a single injury incurred across America in the process of removing these encampment. The cops don’t want to cause injuries, and I assume the protestors have had some training about how NOT to provoke the cops into causing injuries.
The university authorities should have stopped the encampment the minute the first tent showed up.
Protesting is one thing, camping out is completely different.
The University has one weapon it hasn’t used — and it’s the nuclear option: expulsion.
By now, they should have a fair idea of who many of the protesters are. Warnings should then commence. Anyone not out of the quad in 24 hours will be expelled, flat out. Fire the professors.
While they will of course not be able to do this to everyone, UChicago should be able to do this to enough students to strike general fear into others. The hardcore that remains should be relatively easy to ascertain over the next few weeks and will never, ever enter a classroom again. What they’re doing is illegal. Enough is enough.
+1
One factor keeping some encampments going strong is gravitational attraction. The University of Illinois at Chicago does not have an encampment but many of its students are showing up on Jerry’s lawn (so to speak). At my suburban university, we have no protests of any kind, and summer semester started today without incident (or rain, by some miracle), because all our discontented students have gone across town to the flagship university where all the banners are flying etc.
So in addition to expulsion it might be necessary to have a physical closure of the campus and keep it open only to employees, contractors, and enrolled students.
I think you’ll find there aren’t many students left in these encampments now to expel. In Toronto and Montreal at least they are mostly manned by union goons and other professional troublemakers. The Revolutionary Communist Party has been organizing at pro-Hamas rallies since Oct 7. To paraphrase Billy Crystal, communists don’t need a (new) reason, they just need a place. University campuses are convenient swatches of tent-friendly private property, communism’s mortal enemy anyway, where the ownership is left in the trust of the irresolute and the vacillatory, and where a lot of the denizens have been indoctrinated by the public school system to agree with the communists and decolonizers of other people’s property anyway. Unlike with occupations of public property, the State is unmotivated to come down hard and risk political injury to the police. Besides, the homeless already have public green spaces staked out. (The Canadian State has shown it will tolerate repeated blockade of public highways for long periods if it is afraid of what the occupiers might do if riled.)
Once the occupiers start hammering together permanent structures, you are probably seeing the incipient tourist attractions as Jon Gallant warns.
It doesn’t sound good at McGill.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7194871
Also: “ Gaza war: B.C. human rights watchdog backs ‘peaceful encampments’”
https://globalnews.ca/news/10478148/ubc-encampment-human-rights/amp/
Stereotypical Québecois troublemakers. Anarchistes à louer.
The university protest encampments—anti-Israel and also, apparently, anti-Boeing for reasons that are not exactly clear—-hark back to earlier examples of this tactic. The grand-daddy, the True Levellers of 1649, encamped at St. George’s Hill in Surrey in order to dig, which is why they are better known as The Diggers.
The grand-mother might be the Women’s Peace Camp at the Greenham Common RAF station in 1981, set up to protest NATO’s (but apparently not the USSR’s) nuclear weapons. The camp’s history is instructive (see Wiki). It kept being evicted, but kept being reestablished for 20 years, even after its nominal purpose had gone. The last nuclear missiles left the RAF base in 1991, but the protest camp carried on, in opposition to the Trident nuclear missile programme. [These missiles are launched from submarines, but the Peace Camp protesters evidently rejected the idea of camping under water to protest.] The Peace Camp was not dismantled until a decade later, when it was turned into a commemorative site.
Maybe the various current university encampments against Israel and/or Boeing could likewise stay for 20 years, while negotiations with the university administrations proceed, and then end up as tourist attractions.
Yes, tourist attractions. Included in the all-inclusive Untergang des Abendlandes package tour will be former elite university campuses, a glass bottom boat excursion over Miami, a virtual-reality walk through the former Sequoia National Park, and so much more. Seats are limited….
LOL!
Here’s a great explanation of how ill-chosen the universities’ response to these protests is:
https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1787550713792581648
Read the whole thread, it isn’t long.
‘Member the days when America didn’t negotiate with terrorists? Aahhh… good times.