Anti-Zionist protesters being arrested at Pomona College on April 5, 2024. They had taken over an administrative building. Photo: Screenshot/Students for Justice in Palestine via Instagram

The faculty at Pomona College in Claremont, California have censured their school for calling the police to arrest nearly two dozen anti-Zionist students who illegally occupied an administrative building to protest Israel’s military offensive against Hamas, the campus’ official newspaper reported over the weekend.

“The faculty condemns the present and future militarization and use of police on the campus,” said a resolution passed with the approval of 92 professors, while 39 voted no and four abstained. “It insists that the college immediately drop criminal charges and reverse the suspensions and all related consequences against student protesters for their actions of civil disobedience.”

The faculty’s volley of criticism came after dozens of students, many of whom were members of the anti-Zionist campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), began occupying Alexander Hall on campus earlier this month. At least 18 of the students commandeered the office of Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr.

According to Starr — the first African American in the history of the school to hold the position — the students spoke impertinently to their superiors and, along with refusing to provide identification, uttered an “anti-Black racial slur in addressing an administrator.”

In total, 20 students, including one who allegedly attempted to stand in the way of a police officer escorting a student in custody, were arrested and later released.

The demonstration was reportedly prompted by the administration’s dismantling of an “apartheid wall” that activists mounted earlier that week — SJP partisans have cited that as the reason the group unlawfully occupied Alexander Hall and disparaged Black administrators.

Since the incident, numerous campus groups have criticized Starr’s method of restoring order on campus, which included levying suspensions against any student who participated in the demonstration. SJP has demanded that Starr resign from her position, and the school’s student government, Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), has accused her of violating the students’ right to due process by “circumventing” a disciplinary process in which students render the final judgement. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, has maintained that the students acted peaceably but did not mention Starr’s accusation of anti-Black racism, which progressives in higher education have previously described as tantamount to violence.

“We ask you to refrain in the future from bringing the police to campus to coercively [sic] suppress student activism,” MESA said in a statement. “Finally, we urge you to publicly and vigorously reaffirm Pomona College’s commitment to respecting the right of your students and all other members of the college community to freedom of speech and assembly, and to academic freedom, including with regard to advocacy for Palestinian rights and divestment by means of peaceful protest and civil disobedience.”

This is not the first time that anti-Zionists have hurled abuse at a Black figure who refused to be browbeaten by anti-Zionist protesters.

Last week, an SJP spinoff group at George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC handed out pamphlets accusing US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield — who was on campus to give a talk encouraging Black youth to pursue careers in foreign affairs — of being a “puppet” because she has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. They also compared Greenfield to Black enslaved persons who had been assigned, against their will, to work as overseers of other enslaved persons on cotton plantations, arguing that she represents “Black bodies as puppets to carry out repression and dissent.” The students also surrounded a Black GW dean, Colette Coleman, screaming that she should resign while one student clapped their hands in her face.

US colleges and universities are taking action against students who hold unauthorized demonstrations in defiance of school rules, reversing a decades-long trend of lax enforcement of rules governing such student protests.

Earlier this month, Vanderbilt University suspended and expelled anti-Zionist students who participated in occupying an administrative building last month. Several had “assaulted a Community Service Officer” to gain access to the building and others “pushed” officials who suggested having a discussion about their concerns, according to the school’s administration. Those students also verbally abused a Black official, shouting, “Shame on You!” at him and insisting that this racial identity demanded his becoming an accessory to their machinations.

On the same day, Columbia University president Minouche Shafik confirmed that up to six student members of an anti-Zionist organization that invited a terrorist to campus have been suspended. According to The Columbia Spectator, their scholarships have been cancelled and they are evicted from campus housing.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.