Faculty members at The New School in Manhattan this week set up what may be the first professor-led pro-Palestinian encampment on a college campus since the Israel-Hamas war has prompted waves of protests at schools across the country.
The New School’s urban campus in Greenwich Village lacks the open spaces and green lawns of other universities that have been the site of protest encampments, so the professors set up their camp inside the lobby of a university building on Fifth Avenue.
On Thursday afternoon, eight tents were visible on the same spot where some of the school’s students had previously set up a lobby encampment for several days. The university called in the police last week to remove it and arrest the student protesters.
One green-and-white tent had “faculty against genocide” written in red on it. A number of posters were affixed to the building’s windows, including one that read “All Eyes on Rafah,” an area of Gaza where many have taken refuge and where Israel has made incursions and is threatening a ground invasion.
“We call on faculty across all universities to escalate and take risk in solidarity with the student movement, their demands, and the people of Palestine,” the protesting faculty wrote in a social media post. A spokesman for the group declined to comment further on Thursday.
Faculty unrest at the New School, which has about 10,000 students, has been a feature of the historically progressive university in recent years. Around 90 percent of the school’s faculty are part-time adjunct professors, with some earning about $6,000 per course. A strike by part-time faculty demanding better wages shut down classes for three weeks in 2022.
The New School’s faculty encampment sprang up as more than 2,700 people across the country have been arrested or detained in recent weeks for their involvement in similar encampments on college campuses.
New School students had set up the university’s first indoor encampment last month to show their solidarity with Palestinians and publicize calls for the university to divest from companies connected to Israel, among other demands. In support, New School faculty passed a vote on May 2 in favor of the school divesting.
The next day, New School officials called in the police to quash the student-led protest there, leading to the arrests of 45 students.
University leaders have made some concessions, however. On Thursday, the university’s interim president, Donna Shalala, said in a statement that the school had decided against pursuing criminal charges against the students. She also announced that it would reconstitute a committee on “investor responsibility to provide input to the Board of Trustees.” That committee would include faculty and student members.
Members of the New School’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors had earlier passed a vote of no confidence in Dr. Shalala, who has expressed her support for Israel in the past and, in a 2018 interview, said she was opposed to divestment.
The faculty named their encampment after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor and writer who was killed in December 2023 during an Israeli airstrike on northern Gaza. On Thursday afternoon, around a dozen protesters marched in a circle outside the building, the New School University Center. The protesters now refer to it as Bisan Hall, in honor of Bisan Owda, a Palestinian journalist who has been reporting from Gaza.
The demonstrators chanted, “The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be.” It was unclear whether any of those protesters were faculty members.
Later in the evening, several people were arrested outside the school, according to protesters, during an episode in which they said they were sprayed with a chemical and the police wrongfully detained a person thought to have been involved. Police officials said that 13 people were arrested but that they did not have any information about a chemical being sprayed.
Jadyce Wash, 22, a senior fashion student from Patterson, N.J., was leaving the building on Thursday after giving a presentation on bags she had designed. She said she thought it was “amazing” the faculty was standing their ground.”
Ms. Wash, who has not been involved in the protests, said the university’s response to the pro-Palestinian protests were unsatisfying.
“It’s a little intimidating, honestly coming into the building every day and having police on every corner, but I think they should continue,” Ms. Wash said of the faculty protesters.
Dr. Shalala, in her message to the university, said the university had not requested that the police patrol the area, noting that the police “will not enter any university building without our consent.”
Some faculty members have given students the option to attend protests or not attend class during finals week. But a group of students leaving the building were frustrated by the disruption. One first-year student said it felt unfair, both to students and to parents paying money for classes that were then canceled.
The school has also moved some graduation ceremonies off campus.
Trishia Rinaldo, 22, a graduating senior from Honduras who has not been involved in the protests, said it was encouraging to see the faculty encampment. But, she added, graduation was “a touchy subject” because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted her high school graduation in 2020.
“I don’t want to have my graduation canceled,” Ms. Rinaldo said.
