Protests Turn Violent at Yale Administrators sit on their hands as a Jewish student is poked in the eye with a flagpole and hospitalized. By Gabriel Diamond
New Haven, Conn.
Anti-Israel protests escalated to violence at Yale University this weekend, and administrators let it happen. Hundreds of protesters flooded the main campus, pitched 40 tents, blocked Yale’s main dining hall, chanted for the annihilation of Israel, and denounced America.
Identifiably Jewish students found themselves surrounded and cornered by protest mobs. Sahar Tartak, a sophomore who has written for these pages, was poked in the eye with a flagpole and needed hospital treatment. On Friday night the mob cheered as students ripped down the American flag in front of a memorial for fallen soldiers and tried to burn it.
Students called Yale trustees and senior administrators “terrorists.” Their chants included “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free.” They cornered a man at the plaza for wearing a T-shirt that read “F— Hamas.”
This protest is in clear violation of Yale’s code of conduct, which explicitly forbids protesters from obstructing building entrances or blocking students’ ability to observe an event. But the administration sat on its hands.
Lt. Chris Halstead of the Yale Police told the Yale Daily News that officers planned to begin clearing the plaza on Friday at 11 p.m., the Daily News reported at 10:55. According to an 11:36 update, Yale College’s Dean Pericles Lewis promised the protest leaders “he will meet with them if they pack up their tents.” They didn’t. An 11:51 update: “According to Halstead and another officer, YPD decided not to proceed with dispersing the crowd in the plaza ‘based on circumstances.’ The officers would not elaborate further on what aspects of the circumstance influenced that decision.”
The invaders slept on the plaza, woke up, and spent Saturday chanting and yelling. Fifty of them marched up Prospect Street to the Yale Divinity School to confront President Peter Salovey and the trustees, there for a Yale Corp. meeting.
On Saturday, the Daily News reported, Mr. Lewis and other school officials told protesters that if students remained at the plaza after 11:30 that night, they “may be subjected to disciplinary action.” That deadline passed, and hundreds more poured in. The paper estimated the size of the mob at “more than 500,” which strikes me as low. Faculty and dormitory leaders allegedly support the students’ unauthorized occupation of campus. “Tonight, all 14 Heads of College agreed that they do not want us removed,” the protest organizers claimed in a Saturday statement.
I spoke with several Yale police officers on the site, asking if and when they would start clearing the plaza or arresting students. Each replied: “That’s up to the higher-ups.” For the police to step in, the Yale administration has to give them the green light, according to the officers. Some officers expressed frustration that Yale wouldn’t allow them to intervene.
Arresting students is a necessary condition for restoring order and quelling violence on campus. But it won’t be sufficient. These students won’t change their behavior unless they pay a real price. Expulsion of even a few of them would set an example for the rest of the protesters.
Mr. Diamond is a senior at Yale University studying political science and a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute.
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