On April 24, 2024, National Review (NR) published an article announcing that, according to leaked documents, students planned to organize a “Gaza solidarity encampment” at Princeton. Pro-Palestinian protestors have set up similar encampments at universities across the country in recent weeks, most notably at Columbia University.
After the NR piece was published, Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun issued a campus-wide message that “occupying or blocking access to buildings, establishing outdoor encampments and sleeping in any campus outdoor space” are both “unsafe” and “inconsistent with the University’s mission and its legal obligation to provide a safe environment for all students and employees.” Later that night, at 1:27 a.m., The Daily Princetonian published a guest opinion piece by President Christopher L. Eisgruber, in which he defended “time, place, and manner regulations,” like those barring encampments, as “fully consistent with – indeed,… necessary to – Princeton’s commitment to free speech.”
According to Aditi Rao GS, protestors began setting up for an encampment around 6 a.m. on April 25 and initially planned to occupy Firestone Plaza. However, Princeton Public Safety (P-Safe) presence allegedly drove them to change locations to McCosh Courtyard. When protestors began assembling tents there at 7 a.m., P-Safe officers quickly intervened, issued warnings, and then arrested two students. While the officers required protestors to disassemble the tents, a sizable number of protestors remained in the courtyard, which sits between the University Chapel and McCosh Hall.
Not long after the arrests were made, Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest announced on X that the arrested students were being evicted from their University housing. Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest is a “campaign calling on Princeton University to divest from Israel” that accuses Princeton of “upholding apartheid.”
Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest also shared a post on X from BreakThrough News which affirmed that despite the arrests and evictions, members of the encampment remained “undeterred.” Protestors also chanted “The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be,” presumably referring to the University’s efforts to shut down the encampment.
Over the course of the day, protestors remained in McCosh Courtyard while classes continued in the surrounding buildings. According to the list of “encampment demands” leaked by NR, the protestors hoped their efforts would push the University to “call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza” and condemn Israel for what they described as a “genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.”
In addition, demonstrators demand Princeton “dissociate and divest its endowment of all direct and indirect holdings in companies that profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign, occupation, and apartheid policies.”
A document also leaked by NR entitled “Assessing & OnBoarding PTON-students” urged recruiters for the encampment to “reassur[e]” volunteers that the protest has sympathetic “faculty members on our side to negotiate with administration” should disciplinary processes be initiated. The document also claimed that encampment leaders have secured “pro bono legal support” and a “trained security team,” though it did not specify where it had gained access to these resources.
Shortly after 11 a.m. in McCosh Courtyard, Princeton Professor Max Weiss, a member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, gave an address based on his current class, “HIS 267: History of Palestine/Israel.” Weiss told listeners that he “walk[ed] out” of his final lecture of the semester with students to attend the protest, although he noted that he told non-participating students that they would face “no repercussions whatsoever.”
Weiss repeated a popular refrain within the anti-Israel movement that “history did not begin on October 7, 2023,” implying that the massacre’s context should mitigate its moral severity. He then recapped the basic history of the Arab–Israeli conflict, implying throughout his talk that Israel and, to a lesser extent, the U.S., bear the blame for enduring conflict in the region.
Weiss also insisted on the protests’ use of the term Intifada, literally meaning “uprising,” and attributed public discomfort with it to “the very sound of the Arab language, the very existence of the Arabic language perhaps.” In the Israeli context, Intifada refers to periods of violence against Jews in Israel in the late 1980s and early 2000s during which over 1,000 Jews were killed. Weiss noted how “suicide bombing became a regular tactic” during the Second Intifada and how the “morality” of this form of terrorism was a “difficult topic” explored in his class.
After Weiss’ speech, protestors introduced Chris Hedges, a journalist who worked as a New York Times foreign correspondent before leaving to host the show “On Contact” with RT America, a Russian state-funded news organization. In March, Hedges moderated an SJP-hosted speech by Norman Finkelstein, who has referred to Israel a “satanic state” from “the boils of hell” and said that he “recoil[ed] at condemning the perpetrators of th[e] atrocities” on October 7. Hedges himself promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish control of America at the event.
Hedges spoke using a bullhorn as a news helicopter hovered overhead. When P-Safe officers attempted to prevent him from using the bullhorn, protestors formed a human barrier around him to prevent the officers from performing their duty. The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies prohibits the use of bullhorns between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays.
As P-Safe attempted to escort Hedges away, students crowded around him, shouting “let him speak” and “P-Safe and the KKK, IDF they’re all the same.” After a series of discussions between Weiss, PSafe officers, and other non-students involved with the protest, Hedges was removed from campus. The University has yet to confirm the reason for his removal with the Tory. During deliberations, a Tory reporter was asked by a volunteer in a neon vest to move away to “de-escalate” the situation.
Around noon, Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest posted on X that over 100 protestors had gathered on the McCosh Courtyard, and the group implored its followers to “[V]enmo us to help us buy supplies.” The list of supplies included materials necessary for an encampment, such as sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, hats, and tarps.
At 1:20 p.m., several protestors hosted a “press conference” with local news media dispatched at the demonstration. When Jewish student Maximillian Meyer ’27 asked one of the protestors if she condemned Hamas, the terror group responsible for the October 7 atrocities, she claimed the question itself implicated “questions of historical trauma” and that “a movement for Palestinian freedom and life is actually deeply intertwined with the safety of Jewish people.”
While the protestor acknowledged that the “atrocities that were committed on October 7 were horrific,” she qualified that it does “not change the fact that… over 34,000 Palestinian lives have been taken” since the attacks. This statistic from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health has not been verified.
During Meyer’s question, a lady in the crowd said that the atrocities of October 7 were “so old,” and a group of older men hailed Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
Meyer told the Tory that the activists’ “convoluted answers” amounted to a “resounding no” to his call to condemn Hamas. “Antisemitism is at an all-time high,” he said, yet the protests were “not just about the Jewish people or Israel,” but about “the entire West and America.”
During the chanting and drumming, protestors held up a sign calling for the “freedom” of Ahmad Sa’adat. Sa’adat is the secretary-general for the Popular Front for the Liberation in Palestine (PFLP), a designated foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Sa’adat is currently serving 30 years in prison after being sentenced by an Israeli military court. He is accused by Israel of masterminding the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
Other protestors waved the flag of Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terror group funded in large part by Iran and Syria. Like the PFLP, Hezbollah is recognized as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. The group was responsible for a 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, as well as deadly attacks on Jewish civilians throughout the world.
Princeton undergraduate Julianna Lee ’25 told the Tory that she found it nearly impossible to hear a significant portion of her lecture in McCosh.
A Jewish student, who wished to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, expressed to the Tory that the noise and calls for Intifada were “very distressing and distracting to me and many other students I know, both Jewish and non-Jewish.” “On the whole, the existence of encampments and the words heard across the country at these gatherings are extremely alarming for the Jewish community,” she continued.
A member of the Chabad student board, who also asked to remain anonymous due to fears regarding her safety on campus, told the Tory that protestors “yell[ed] ‘shame’ in her face.” “It’s a scary time to be Jewish right now,” she expressed.
“What I think makes this scarier is that I can look at these protests, say that I feel intimidated as a Jew, and my very real feelings will be rejected. Anti-semitism is incredibly prevalent in this day and age, and I wish more people would recognize that.”
“Almost every Jewish student I know is intimidated by protests like this,“ a Jewish graduate student told the Tory. Like many other Jews the Tory interviewed, she wished to remain anonymous due to security concerns.
“Every campus protest for Palestine that I know of since October 7 has involved chants for deliberately targeting Jewish civilians,” she said. “At the same time, SJP chapters across the country have issued statements celebrating October 7 and wrongly claiming that international law permits targeting Israeli civilians and taking hostages. How are Jewish students supposed to learn, much less feel at home at Princeton, when outside our doorstep we hear calls to slaughter our family and friends?”
“I wrote to President Eisgruber in the fall, and again in the winter, about what was happening on campus,” a Jewish parent of a Princeton student told the Tory. He, too, wished to remain anonymous for his own safety and that of his daughter, a current undergraduate. He explained that he sent a video of his “own harassment by protestors” to President Eisgruber a few months ago when he came to campus to visit his daughter. “I was screamed at, literally, for being a Zionist,” he said. He hopes the University finally understands his message and “will not allow further escalations.”
Similarly, Jewish alumna Arielle Sandor ’12 expressed to the Tory that she “hope[s] that the University continue to discipline those pursuing the encampment in violation of University policy and that it forcefully puts an end to any and all harassment and calls for violence against Jews at Princeton.”
At around 6 p.m., a protestor told the crowd that the group on McCosh Courtyard planned to stay through the night and “claim” the courtyard space. The Tory observed students remaining in the space at midnight.
Princeton University’s media team did not respond to a request for comment.
Update – 2:25 p.m., Friday, April 26
The Daily Princetonian reported that students remained in the courtyard overnight, taking shifts to leave for sleep. At one point a P-Safe officer roused several students who had dozed off.
As the morning passed, organizers urged passers by to join and gradually the crowd grew. Calls for divestment resumed.
At 12 p.m., organizers announced a “zap session” for demonstrators to focus on petitioning the administration to reinstate the two students arrested on Thursday morning.
About an hour later, organizers began delivering speeches. Throughout the speeches, pro-Israel counter-protestors interrupted from the walkway along the courtyard, asserting that women without hijab or homosexuals would be killed in Palestine, while Israel respects such rights and those of its Arab citizens. In response, the anti-Israel demonstrators began singing and dancing loudly to drown them out.
Chris Hedges appeared in the courtyard wearing a keffiyeh and gave a speech to the students assembled there, this time without a sound-amplifying device. He appeared to have the permission of P-Safe to return to campus.
Readers can follow the Tory’s live coverage of campus protests on X.
Alexandra Orbuch, Darius Gross, Zach Gardner, Ben Woodard, and Santhosh Nadarajah all contributed to this story.
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