Police cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment that took over parts of George Washington University’s campus early Wednesday, hours before Mayor Muriel Bowser and city police brass were scheduled to testify before Congress about their handling of the demonstrations.
Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said nearly three dozen demonstrators were arrested, some after they became violent. Officers cleared the encampment at GWU’s University Yard and a nearby protest that erupted in response to the predawn raid.
Congressional Republicans canceled an afternoon hearing questioning why Ms. Bowser and D.C. police leaders refused to intervene in the protest camp for two weeks.
Some GWU parents gathered by midday to talk of pulling their children from the school and to bash D.C. leaders over their heavy-handed tactics, but police said the provocative encampment had reached its tipping point.
“They began very peacefully, but over the past few days, we began to see an escalation in the volatility of the protests at GW,” Chief Smith said.
She said a protester pushed and took something from a campus police officer, and her department learned of a hoard of potentially makeshift “offensive and defensive weapons” at the camp.
Chief Smith said the campsite was becoming a gathering point for outsiders and that counterprotesters were sneaking into the camp to stoke conflict.
She said 33 protesters were arrested in the crackdown, which began around 3 a.m. when officers descended on the encampment at the grassy University Yard area.
Police told the protesters to disperse or be arrested on unlawful entry charges.
Authorities said a handful of people were booked on charges of assaulting officers as police teams tried to corral the campers and maintain order at a protest near the intersection of 20th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.
Officers were punched, and at least three people were hit with pepper spray, police said.
Ms. Bowser said Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, was more interested in the District maintaining order on campus than having her and Chief Smith testify on Capitol Hill.
Although the hearing was canceled, Republican leadership celebrated Mr. Comer for forcing the District’s hand with the emergency session.
“While it should not require threatening to haul D.C.’s mayor before Congress to keep Jewish students at George Washington University safe, I applaud Chairman Comer’s steadfast leadership,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said in a Wednesday statement. “Through the House-wide effort to crack down on antisemitism, we are going to learn why security forces and campus administrators have refused to do their first job: keeping students safe.”
House Republicans took interest in the encampment when a report suggested that Ms. Bowser and MPD leaders opted for a hands-off approach to the protests to avoid the chaotic scenes at other universities.
Los Angeles police dispatched officers in riot gear to dismantle an encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, a site of open fights between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators.
In New York City, police arrested more than 280 people who barricaded themselves inside a building on Columbia University’s campus. One of the reported leaders of Columbia’s camp had said people should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
In Oregon, police pushed out dozens of protesters who took over a library at Portland State University. Authorities said they found makeshift weapons inside the building.
Close to 2,000 people have been arrested nationwide for their roles in the encampments, according to NBC News.
Earlier this week, the mayor reiterated her unwillingness to have police break up the ongoing protest of the Israel-Hamas war.
She defended demonstrators’ rights to peacefully protest, even after a weekend plea from GWU President Ellen Granberg that said the camp was unlawful from the jump.
Ms. Granberg wrote that the camp stopped being “peaceful or productive” after campers overran a metal barrier surrounding the commune, intimidated GWU students with antisemitic images and rhetoric, and chased people out of University Yard over their perceived beliefs.
GWU said in a Wednesday update it was grateful for MPD’s help in clearing the encampment. The university said final exams will resume as scheduled.
Across town near the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ headquarters in Southeast, a number of GWU parents and faculty spoke out against the early morning police action.
Dr. Amr Madkour, a practicing gynecologist affiliated with the university and a professor who teaches GWU medical students, said the protest gave him hope for his family in Gaza.
He said students are standing up for the oppression of the Palestinian people as well as “the oppression of their own institutions.”
“They have put everything on the line, from their careers to their very livelihoods, their safety, and they have done so with a selflessness that we all should be inspired by,” Dr. Madkour said. “And yet, we see the response has been lies. They have been smeared, they have been maligned.”
Hala Amer said she is considering pulling her son from GWU over its handling of the protests.
She also mentioned a letter sent Wednesday morning to the university’s board of trustees by parents expressing their support for the student protesters’ demands and calling for the resignations of Ms. Granberg and Provost Christopher Alan Bracey.
CAIR officials said they expected the letter to have at least 100 parent signatures by midday.
More than 25,000 students attend GWU.
American University professor Zoltan Gluck, who supported the camp, urged the university to take the letter seriously by pointing out that 80 parents represent more than $6 million in tuition.
Fellow American University professor Barbara Wien said she visited the camp daily and has a son finishing his postgraduate degree this semester at GWU.
She said the camp became unpeaceful only when outside agitators, some of whom she said were former Israel Defense Forces soldiers enrolled at the school, riled up the protesters. Ms. Wien rejected police claims of potential weapons at the encampment.
“I don’t know why the police are saying that. I don’t know why GW was saying that,” Ms Wien said. “I was in the student tents. I was all over the encampment since the 26th of April. I never saw one weapon. Don’t repeat that lie.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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