As Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Homewood Campus enters the second week of protests about the Israel/Gaza war, negotiations are set to take place Tuesday afternoon at between the multiple groups protesting and university officials.
The protest began at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24, at which students and community members expressed solidarity and support for the people of Gaza and demanded JHU divest from weapons manufacturers who supply the Israeli government. The event was coordinated by the Hopkins Justice Collective (HJC), the Hopkins and Bloomberg School of Public Health Students for Justice in Palestine, Hopkins Students for Palestine, the Baltimore branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Hopkins Coalition Against War.
On that evening, the group marched across campus and chanted slogans, including “How many more will die next? JHU must divest!” and “Ronald Daniels, you can’t hide, you’re complicit in genocide.” The march concluded at the Beach (a lawn area at the main campus’ entrance) and speakers expressed support for the students demonstrating for Palestinian liberation and safety.
Like other prominent university campuses, the Hopkins demonstration grew to include tent encampments and continued around the clock. Their official demands were eventually posted on HJC’s Instagram account and taped to the University’s entrance. The groups demand five concessions:
- Divest from companies that provide arms to Israel.
- Disclose the university’s investments and “academic complicity” in what they term Israeli Apartheid, including the school’s financial ties to Israel, its lobbying efforts on military spending, and more.
- Boycott Israeli Universities, explicitly Tel Aviv University, which they accuse of “upholding systems of educational apartheid.” Their general language demands “that JHU cease all partnerships with the Israeli educational military-industrial complex.”
- Demilitarize by divesting from the U.S. Department of Defense funding for military programs and weapons through the Applied Physics Lab (APL).
- Denounce by publicly acknowledging “the current genocide and ongoing occupation of Palestine since 1948, including the over thirty-five thousand confirmed dead, hundreds of thousands unaccounted for, and millions displaced, and call for a permanent ceasefire, through a written statement…. [and] an end to the silence on the genocide of Palestinians and the silencing of pro-Palestine speech.”
The protesting groups’ activities over the course of the week have included de-escalation training for activists, study strikes, poetry readings, educational programing, religious ceremonies including Shabbat services and Muslim daily prayers, and rallies. They require masks for COVID but also use pseudonyms to avoid identification. On their Instagram pages, the groups have asked JHU alumni to withhold donations and circulated a petition demanding the school end Hopkins’ Hillel chapter’s trip to Israel.
JHU’s student publication, the JHU News-Letter, has released multiple updates per day that provide links to both JHU and HJC press releases, emails, and statements. These threads include interviews with students and university officials, videos, and detailed descriptions of the protestors’ activities, including daily chants.
On April 30, the News-Letter reported that students and others chanted slogans that many Jewish people consider threatening, inciting violence, and antisemitic:
- “Long live the intifada!”
- “JHU we see you, you invest in genocide too!”
- “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
- “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever!”
- “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!”
- “Resistance is justified where people are occupied!”
The News-Letter reported that on May 2, the chants were:
- “BPD, KKK, IDF, you’re all the same!”
- “End the occupation now!”
- “We want justice, you say how? End the occupation now!”
- “Long live Palestine!”
- “Long live Gaza!”
- “Let Gaza live!”
- “From the belly of the beast, hands off the Middle East!”
- “The people united will never be defeated!”
- “No justice, no peace, no Zionist police!”
Charlie Margulies, president of the Jewish Students Association at JHU, told Fishbowl that many students, Jewish and otherwise, have been frustrated by the noise and disruption caused by the protests, with many of them calling 3-1-1 to register concern. Marguilies expressed frustration for how long the encampment has been allowed to go on.
“They are trespassing and breaking University policies. The school is in a difficult position because of Baltimore city’s efforts to keep Baltimore Police out of the situation as much as possible. However, we are students of Johns Hopkins, and Hopkins still has the obligation to keep us safe and enforce its policies regardless.”
He continued, “We absolutely want Hopkins to be a place where there is productive dialogue, but with the current state of the encampment, it is most pressing that students’ safety is ensured and the people chanting antisemitic and hateful speech are held accountable.”
The university and the groups have released dueling narratives of their discussions and the state of negotiations over the course of the week. But Megan Christian, Director of Issues Management and University Communications for Johns Hopkins University, has confirmed that university officials are meeting with student group representatives at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7. HJC also confirms this in an Instagram post.
The HJC Instagram post states they were ready to come to the table on May 3, and Christian told Baltimore Fishbowl that the University offered to meet with them over the weekend, but protesters insisted on waiting until May 7 to meet.
“We offered repeatedly to meet with the protesters on an urgent basis this past weekend,” wrote Ray Jayawardhana, Provost, and Laurent Heller, Executive VP for Finance and Administration at JHU in an email to Hopkins faculty and staff. “Regrettably, the protesters have refused any meeting before Tuesday afternoon and made clear their intention to continue the encampment for several weeks. Regardless, we will continue our efforts to work toward a peaceful resolution.”
HJC responded that they preferred to begin negotiations via email, which they claim the University refused. In a press release, they wrote, “Since the beginning of the encampment, we have repeatedly asked that the University send us negotiation offers by email, which they have consistently refused to do.”
Regardless, a meeting is planned for 3 p.m. Tuesday. Throughout the protests and encampment, JHU has maintained that it appreciates and acknowledges the “intentions and efforts” by the protest to behave in a safe manner and respects their activism ad right to protest. In their email to faculty and staff, Jayawardhana and Heller wrote, “the university is following our usual procedures regarding the Student Conduct Code. We support the right to protest, but it must be in accordance with the established rules and guidelines of our community.”
Baltimore Fishbowl reached out to the Hopkins Justice Collective and the Students for Justice in Palestine at Johns Hopkins University for comment, but did not receive a response to our interview request from a media representative.
