Some US colleges move graduation ceremonies amid pro-Palestinian protests

Student protests in support of Palestinians amid Israel's war in Gaza interrupted or modified several college graduations this weekend, including commencements that moved entirely off the campuses of Pomona College, east of Los Angeles, and Columbia University, in New York City.

On Saturday, the University of California, Berkeley’s graduation ceremony erupted in pro-Palestinian protests inside the San Francisco Bay Area school’s football stadium.

Videos posted by a KQED reporter and others on social media showed people in caps-and-gowns leading chants and holding keffiyehs and Palestinian flags in the sunshine at the flagship public university’s California Memorial Stadium. The campus-wide commencement for UC Berkeley — long a bastion for American protests and the 1960s free speech movement — began Saturday morning.

"This wouldn't be Berkeley without a protest," Sydney Roberts, president of the Associated Students of the University of California, said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thousands of students and other protesters have been arrested since April 18, when police raided an encampment at Columbia University that kicked off a wave of activism at colleges. The students are protesting Israel’s war in Gaza and demanding that their universities cut financial and academic ties with Israel. At some schools, including Brown University and the University of California, Riverside, school officials have struck deals with students to peacefully end the encampments.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians there, according to officials in Gaza, since Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage.

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Some of the latest arrests came early Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, and late Thursday at the University of Arizona. Police in riot gear detained dozens of people.

Schools move graduations amid pro-Palestinian protests

Pomona College in Southern California announced Friday it moved its graduation Sunday to a Los Angeles auditorium in light of pro-Palestinian campus protests.

Across the U.S., Columbia University moved graduation events off of its main New York City campus this weekend in light of protests. Previously, it canceled its large university-wide celebration that had been scheduled for May 15.

Pomona College — part of the elite Claremont Colleges about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles — had a student encampment form near the graduation ceremony stage earlier in the week. Pomona’s ceremony is now set to be held in the Shrine Auditorium, just across the street from the University of Southern California, which also amended its own graduation, in Los Angeles.

Images posted by the student organizing group, Pomona Divest from Apartheid, showed the stage shrouded in Palestinian flags and a banner for the school to “divest now.” Students also erected tents at the site. On Monday, demonstrators formed their second encampment on Pomona’s Graduation Lawn. The action followed police arrests of several students during campus raids, including those staging a sit-in inside the Pomona College president’s building in April.

Other college campuses have moved to reschedule or cancel ceremonies in light of protests. In Los Angeles, USC canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech, as well as the school's main-stage graduation ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, over safety concerns stemming from controversy surrounding her pro-Palestinian views. During a smaller ceremony for the Viterbi School of Engineering School of Engineering, the Los Angeles Times reported Tabassum, a biomedical engineering graduate, received a standing ovation as she walked across the stage.

Other recent developments:

∎ Students at the Rhode Island School of Design ended a four-day occupation of a campus building after the school's president threatened them with expulsion on Thursday, the Providence Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The students were also directed to undergo a "restorative justice" process that includes listening to people who were affected by the occupation and restoring the building.

∎ Southern California schools Pomona College and Occidental College are facing civil rights complaints lodged by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on Thursday, claiming that they allowed "severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish students" amid student protests since Oct. 7.

∎ A professor at the University of Texas at Austin was arrested and fired this week over a confrontation with state troopers during a pro-Palestinian protest on campus on April 29, Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. Richard Heyman was charged with interfering with public duties and accused of yelling expletives, attempting to "breach" a police line and damaging a police bicycle bell. Heyman's lawyer, Gerry Morris, said Heyman was pushed by a trooper and grabbed the bike to prevent himself from falling.

Weeks in to protests, arrests still being made

About 33 people were arrested at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday, the campus public safety department said. Philadelphia officers dismantled tents and tossed belongings into a trash truck during the crackdown at about 6 a.m., according to the Daily Pennsylvanian. The encampment at Penn had been ongoing for 16 days, according to the student paper.

Another 10 people were arrested on MIT’s campus early in the morning, when police cleared an encampment that had been on the campus since April 21, University President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement, calling the action a “last resort” after failed discussions between university officials and protest organizers. The people arrested were “peacefully” escorted off the lawn, she said, but added that the tensions on campus fueled by the protest were not heading in a peaceful direction.

“I had no choice but to remove such a high-risk flashpoint at the very center of our campus,” Kornbluth said.

In Tucson, police fired tear gas canisters into a crowd of demonstrators and tore down the encampment at the University of Arizona, the Associated Press reported. The school said in a statement that a structure “made from wooden pallets and other debris” violated campus policy, but didn’t say if any people were arrested.

Protests have sprung up in other countries, too. Police moved in on protesters at an encampment at the University of Calgary in western Canada on Thursday, using what they called “non-lethal munitions.” The city said it would release the number of arrests made on Friday.

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Schools plan for graduation amid demonstrations on campus

Some universities are preparing alternate plans or canceling speakers in light of protests on campus.

At Xavier University in Louisiana, Saturday's planned commencement speech by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield was axed after students expressed outrage at her stance on the war, the Associated Press reported. It's at least the second planned speech by Thomas-Greenfield to be canceled amid student protests; she was also removed from the commencement program by the University of Vermont.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead also announced he would no longer be delivering a speech at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on May 18th, calling the university's decision to call police on student protesters "a shameful act." Police arrested more than 130 people at the school and removed an encampment earlier this week.

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The University of Southern California, which sparked outrage last month when it canceled a valedictorian speech and later announced its mainstage graduation was also canceled, hosted an alternate party for graduates and their family members Thursday night at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Last weekend, protesters interrupted graduation proceedings at the University of Michigan and Indiana University Bloomington. At IU’s ceremony, a plane could be seen flying overhead carrying pro-Palestinian messages, and a group of students walked out, Fox 59 reported.

Contributing: Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY; Reuters

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pro-Palestinian campus protests: Graduations moved off campus