Penn demonstrators defy order to disband encampment as tents remain on College Green

Pro-Palestinian protesters maintained their on-campus encampment Saturday for a third day — with no signs of disbanding — defying the Friday night order by Penn’s interim president to end it “immediately.”

Late on an overcast, chilly Saturday afternoon, only a handful of security officers were near the site with no evidence of any move to evict the protesters, who are demanding that Penn divest itself of any Israel-related investments and provide amnesty for pro-Palestinian students who might be subject to discipline over past protests.

Two student encampment leaders and four professors met with school administration Saturday, including the interim president, to discuss their demands.

“We're disappointed that university administration has not given our demands the time of day,” said an encampment spokesperson. “These demands are not unreasonable.”

Twenty-four hours after Penn's interim president ordered the pro-Palestinian encampment to disband, the dozens of tents remained in place and the third night of the demonstration carried on with a light police presence in the background.

A man played the oud and led some protesters in song, while other students found more removed spots on the College Green to catch up on homework.

Penn faculty were joined by several state and city elected representatives Saturday in urging the administration to respect the rights of pro-Palestinian protesters who set up a campus encampment and negotiate “in good faith with student leaders.”

The elected officials and faculty issued a joint statement noting that student activism and organizing have long been at the forefront of calls for peace and justice. Unlike other protests elsewhere in the country where there has been violence and arrests, the Penn demonstration has remained peaceful, they said.

For the second night in a row, a group of about 15 pro-Israeli counterprotesters gathered at the encampment, setting up U.S. and Israeli flags and phots of hostages.

For Nathaniel Weneck, a junior at Penn, said pro-Palestinian protesters “can get in your face” and “use slurs … especially the ones that are not associated with the campus.” 

A small group of counterprotesters that formed across the way from the Penn encampment left with a police escort around 7 p.m. The group posted photos of hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel in barricades across the College Green.

At moments one counterprotester chanted, “Rape is not resistance.”

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, the group that held a walkout on Thursday as tents were erected on Penn’s campus, added its objections to Penn president J. Larry Jameson’s order to disband the encampment.

They wrote that Jameson and other university leaders have done an “about face” and have not observed due process.

George Lakey, 86, is a retired Penn professor who came by to check how students at the encampment were doing.

“I am impressed by the amount of self-discipline and the amount of organization they have put into this,” the former social movements professor said.

In two statements on Instagram Saturday, both the Penn Arab Student Society (PASS) and the Penn Muslim Students Association (PMSA) expressed support for free speech and abhorrence of violence.

The PASS message included a call for further investigation of who scrawled a piece of graffiti containing an expletive aimed at Zionists on the campus statue of Ben Franklin. The organization said it was the work of an “outside agitator.”

David Lee came to Penn's campus from Emory University in Atlanta to visit his girlfriend.

Upon seeing the encampment, the 21-year-old described the scene as “really peaceful.” A contrast, he said, from what took place this week at Emory, where protesters were detained by the police.

The people at the encampment who were harassing Jewish students and vandalized a statue of Benjamin Franklin were not Penn students, Benjamin Abella, a professor in the department of emergency medicine at the Penn School of Medicine, said he believed.

Abella said several protesters seemed “too old” to be students and believed a number of them were not affiliated with the university.

Student organizer Eliana Atienza, 19, is one of the 60 people who spent last night at College Green.

The sophomore was at the scene when Penn’s interim president ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to disband the encampment.

Graffiti scrawled on the base of the Ben Franklin statue at Penn was “likely” a primary reason for the administration to decide to order the pro-Palestinian student encampment to disband, surmised Benjamin Abella, a professor in the department of emergency medicine at the Penn School of Medicine.

However, Abella added that he couldn’t say for certain that the graffiti was the vandalism that interim President Larry Jameson was referencing Friday night when he announced that the encampment would be closed.

On the third day at Penn encampment protest, the scene is an amalgamation of contrast. On the steps of College Hall, students pose with graduation attires and pop bottles to celebrate their achievement.

Next to the building, on College Green, tents fill the field as about 60 students brace the chill to protest the war in Gaza.

A coalition of Muslim leaders penned an open letter to university leaders urging them to reconsider their approach to pro-Palestinian demonstrators that have erupted throughout the Philadelphia region within the last week.

The letter reiterated concerns that school leaders had failed to provide a supportive campus environment for Muslim and pro-Palestinian students since the Israel-Hamas war began, and said they were feared over an over-the-top response to the fledgling encampments.

The Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors said it was “deeply disturbed” by Penn interim president J. Larry Jameson’s email Friday night, ordering protesters to leave the College Green over what AAUP called “unsubstantiated allegations.”

“These allegations have been disputed to us by faculty and students who have attended and observed the demonstration,” the professors wrote Saturday in an email to Jameson and other Penn leaders. “Your statement mischaracterizes the overall nature of an antiwar protest that necessarily involves strong emotions on both sides but has not, to our knowledge, involved any actual violence or threats of violence to individuals on our campus.”

Scott L. Bok, former board chair at the University of Pennsylvania, recalled the encampment at Penn in 2022. Protesters were calling on the university to help low-income residents who were being displaced from the neighboring University City Townhomes, further dissociate from fossil-fuel companies, and make payments to the city in lieu of taxes.

“University administrators carried on a dialogue with protesters but allowed the tents to remain up for many weeks until the protest quietly ended,” said Bok, who left the board in December amidst the controversy over the university’s handling of antisemitism complaints. “The strategy was to be patient with the students and avoid any sort of unpleasant confrontation, although obviously we would have changed course if there was any violence or threat of violence.”

Students at Bryn Mawr College joined the encampment protest movement in support of Palestinians Saturday morning, erecting tents on the college green.

It becomes the fourth college in the region to have an encampment; tents are also up at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore, and Haverford.

This is not the first time that Penn has had a protest encampment. In 2022, there were two, both involving a student campaign to get the university to divest from fossil fuels and both on the College Green.

There was a shorter one in the spring and then a nearly six-week encampment in the fall. The latter ended when students stormed Franklin Field during halftime of the Penn-Yale football game.

The interim president at the University of Pennsylvania issued a warning Friday night to pro-Palestinian protesters on campus that they must “disband their encampment immediately” because of alleged legal and university police violations.

“The encampment itself violates the University’s facilities policies,” J. Larry Jameson said in a letter to the Penn community.

The encampment at Penn poses a test for interim president J. Larry Jameson, who replaced former president Liz Magill after she resigned following bipartisan backlash over her congressional committee testimony on antisemitism and a semester marked by near-weekly protests over the conflict and bloodshed in Israel and Gaza.

Penn board chair Ramanan Raghavendran declined to comment Friday on what if any role the board has in deciding how to handle the encampment.

The political divide over the war in Gaza was starkly evident this week in Philadelphia as local officials spoke out about student demonstrations at University of Pennsylvania and other local campuses.

State Rep. Rick Krajewski, whose district includes Penn, as well as Philadelphia State Sen. Nikil Saval and State Rep. Tarik Khan, visited the Penn encampment on Thursday, according to a Daily Pennsylvanian report.

Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at at universities across U.S., some of whom have clashed with police in riot gear, dug in Saturday and vowed to keep their demonstrations going, while several school faculties condemned university presidents who have called in law enforcement to remove protesters.

As Columbia University continues negotiations with those at a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the New York school's campus, the university's senate passed a resolution Friday that created a task force to examine the administration's leadership, which last week called in police in an attempt to clear the protest, resulting in scuffles and more than 100 arrests.