Faculty at the New School have set up a pro-Palestinian encampment inside the institution’s University Center on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, echoing student protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
About seven tents bearing phrases such as “faculty against genocide” and “Jews for Palestine” had been set up in the lobby of the New School’s main hub at 63 Fifth Ave on Wednesday evening. In a press release issued the same day, the group stated it had established the nation’s first faculty-led encampment, which it said was named for Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor and activist killed in an Israeli airstrike late last year. School security personnel restricted entry to those with university IDs.
The faculty encampment’s establishment comes five days after NYPD officers cleared a pro-Palestinian student encampment at the New School last Friday morning after officials at the private university requested police assistance in dispersing and arresting student protesters. That same day, police also cleared encampments at NYU and arrested protesters there. And last month, officers arrested protesters and cleared encampments at the City College of New York and Columbia University.
“We stand in solidarity with students across the city and across the country and demand that universities and municipalities drop all charges against the arrestees, and that all disciplinary actions facing participants in student-led encampments be revoked. We demand that police be kept permanently off our campus,” the press release read.
The faculty protesters said in the press release that interim New School President Donna Shalala’s decision “destroyed what many experienced to be a site of learning, political commitment, and powerful solidarity with the Palestinian people facing genocide.” After the student encampment was cleared last week, over 200 New School faculty members voted to pass a vote of no confidence in Shalala and the Board of Trustees by a majority of 94%, according to the New School Free Press.
Attempts to reach the New School for comment on Wednesday evening were unsuccessful.
Hala Malak, an assistant professor of strategic design and management at the New School’s Parsons School of Design, was at the encampment on Wednesday night. She said the group planned to remain encamped until administrators met its demands, and added that discourse with administrators had been “quite friendly” so far.
“We hope the demands will be met and we won’t have to stay long,” Malak told Gothamist.