Instructors at the New School Establish Nation’s First Anti-Israel Faculty Encampment
The New School indicates that it would be looking at the prospects for divestment, saying in a statement that it ‘will soon be announcing a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.’
Some two dozen faculty members at the New School at Manhattan set up America’s first faculty-led encampment Wednesday, about a week after the university called police to clear student encampments at the school.
The group of professors and lecturers have holed up in an academic building in the school’s Greenwich Village campus in support of their students and in support of the school’s divestment from Israel.
On May 3, police in riot gear were called to clear student-led encampments from academic buildings at the school, an incident that saw more than 40 students arrested, though the school has declined to bring charges.
One New School faculty member told New York’s Spectrum News NY1 that “Faculty knew that we had to step up — not just to make sure that this could not happen again, but so the students’ demands that they fought so hard for, risked their lives and their careers and futures for, was not in vain.”
In a statement Thursday, the New School indicated that it would be looking at the prospects for divestment, saying that it “will soon be announcing a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.”
Though the encampment style protests began at Columbia University, they’ve since spread to other universities at New York and around the country.