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The college will encourage more violence if it doesn’t discipline perpetrators, campus rabbi says.
By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon
Anti-Israel student protesters at the University of Minnesota stormed a campus building Monday afternoon using furniture to barricade exit doors, trapping staff inside and demanding divestment from the Jewish state.
Student protesters assembled on a campus lawn before a group stormed Morrill Hall around 4 p.m. Once inside, masked individuals spray-painted security camera lenses and smashed windows, creating significant damage, according to a university statement.
Given the ongoing property damage and because several staff members in the building could not exit through the barricaded doors, the University of Minnesota Police Department was called to the scene and arrested almost a dozen individuals.
“We plan to stay until they forcibly remove us,” Merlin Van Alstein, an agitator with Students for a Democratic Society, said before the arrests. Students with University of Minnesota Divest and the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter were also involved.
A first-year student who watched the takeover and alerted authorities described the experience.
“I thought this was going to be a normal march, but when they started putting chairs and tables at the back, I was like, ‘Oh goodness, what’s going on?’” Tagore Pathak told the Washington Free Beacon. “It has been crazy to see so many students blatantly supporting terrorism. People really need to understand how scary it is to be a college student.”
“I just hope that they do end up facing some accountability and, at the very least, get disciplined by the university. They really do need to be prosecuted because what they did is absolutely criminal,” Tagore added. “You cannot hold people hostage in a building. That’s just something you can never, ever do.”
In a Tuesday email to community members, University of Minnesota president Rebecca Cunningham wrote that the takeover “was not a form of legitimate protest” but instead “a terrifying experience” for those trapped inside.
“These actions crossed the line into illegal activity when they actively threatened the emotional and physical safety of our employees, prevented their free movement, disrupted building operations, and destroyed campus property,” Cunningham wrote. “The safety, security, and wellbeing of our staff, students, and faculty are our highest priority, and we cannot – and will not – allow this type of behavior.”
Rabbi Yitzi Steiner, the co-director of Chabad at the University of Minnesota, told the Free Beacon that dozens of Jewish students took refuge in the on-campus Jewish center during the takeover.
“A lot of students are shaken up. Everybody has different ways of coping with it,” Steiner said. “It’s made them very fearful and created a huge sense of insecurity for them. A lot of it is going to depend on how the university responds.”
“What the Jewish community is really looking for is that the university is going to take action because in the past that’s not really what happened,” Steiner continued. “I think what makes students feel fearful and afraid is that there is no contest, there are no punishments, sending a message that they’ll continue doing what they’re doing and instilling fear into the student population.”
Steiner compared Monday’s violent occupation to the April takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, where the Ivy League school walked back its promise to expel the students involved. The Manhattan district attorney’s office also dismissed criminal charges against a majority of the perpetrators.
“If the university doesn’t take any action, concrete action—I’m not just talking about wagging the finger at them and saying, ‘oh, what you did was wrong or unacceptable’—that would just continue to perpetuate the situation and not send the message to the Jewish community that the university is looking out for them,” Steiner said.
Richard Painter, a law professor at the school, accused the administration of allowing hate to fester and similarly expressed little hope that the perpetrators would be punished.
“The Hennepin County attorney is fairly notorious for letting carjackers off the hook and others, so I’m not hopeful. But the university certainly should expel any students who are involved in this,” he said. “I’m not Jewish, but if I were in the environment right now, I’d be living in fear. These universities are not protecting their students, and they’re letting faculty do whatever they want.”
Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration before launching multiple congressional campaigns as a Democrat, lamented that the students are “getting a message from faculty in the College of Liberal Arts that violence is acceptable.”
On Oct. 13, a group of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies faculty members released a statement supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and called on “students, colleagues, and friends around the country to call for lifting the siege, ending the occupation, and dismantling Israel’s apartheid system.”
Two months later, the college considered an anti-Israel professor in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies department, Sima Shakhsari, for a top diversity, equity, and inclusion position, Jewish Insider reported. Shakhsari denied that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on Oct. 7 and was seen on campus attending an anti-Israel rally, chanting, “Globalize the Intifada.”
In June, Minnesota’s interim College of Liberal Arts dean, Ann Waltner, extended an offer to Stockton University professor Raz Segal to serve as chair of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. On Oct. 13, six days after Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state and slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis, Segal wrote an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide. The move prompted resignations from the center’s advisory board, and the offer was later withdrawn.
The 11 students arrested Monday were Annabel Ruth Russell-Pribnow, Natalie Nicole Rath, Rowan Lange, Kyle Anthony Feldhake, Shane Michael Ross, Svea Anna Morrell, Jackson Clifford Walbridge, Leah Morgan Rego, Jack Louis Nimz, Ava Grace Schaeffel, and Isabella America Harbison. Donate to vital charities that help protect Israeli citizens and inspire millions around the world to support Israel too! Now more than ever, Israel needs your help to fight and win the war -- including on the battlefield of public opinion. Antisemitism, anti-Israel bias and boycotts are out of control. Israel's enemies are inciting terror and violence against innocent Israelis and Jews around the world. Help us fight back!
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