On May 7, 2024, over 130 students, faculty, staff and community members were arrested at a Gaza solidarity encampment on the South Lawn at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The encampment, the second of its kind, was part of a broader movement calling on the university to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

It has now been one year since UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes made the controversial decision to summon Massachusetts State Police to dismantle the protest, a move that brought 109 police vehicles to campus.

The UMass Police Department (UMPD), Amherst police (APD), Hadley police, Northampton police and Massachusetts State Police were confirmed to be present among others.

All departments and the University administration declined to comment. APD also initially denied their presence at the scene.

In emails after the event, Reyes cited one of the reasons he felt the need to dismantle the encampments was because protestors were in violation of the Land Use policy.

This policy is “vaguely worded and [has been] inconsistently applied over the years,” UMass history Professor Christian Appy said.

Appy, the director of the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy, said, “Why would a minor campus rule take precedence over a constitutional right?”

For many faculty and staff, the encampment was not just a protest, it was a turning point. Sigrid Schmalzer, UMass history professor, was arrested during the encampment and recalled the gravity of seeing the crackdown unfold.

“The officer who arrested me was trembling,” Schmalzer said. “That was really scary … I don’t know whether it was fear, adrenaline, whatever it was, it didn’t feel like a safe situation.”

Visual archivist at UMass, Annie Sollinger, was also at the encampment and described the jarring emotional effects she witnessed that day.

“I saw the videos of students being violently arrested and harassed by police in front of the building where I go to work every day, the Du Bois library,” Sollinger said.

The faculty presence was not coincidental. Many expressed a sense of duty to their students.

“Administrators don’t understand how much faculty love their students,” Schmalzer explained. “When a faculty member sees their student brutalized or knows that they’ve taken a big risk and been treated horribly … it makes us want to stand up.”

Several faculty members mentioned that professors were arrested before students. Kevin Young, a UMass history professor, was the first to be arrested, “I think they probably singled [professors] out to get us out of the way.”

“There was no physical violence against us, unlike with the students,” Young said, distinguishing their experience from that of the many student protestors who were brutalized.

The first general faculty meeting in 15 years was held on May 20, 2024, to debate a vote of no confidence in Reyes after the use of militarized police on protesters. The vote of no confidence passed with 473 faculty and staff in favor.

The administration’s response to the encampment sparked outrage across campus, “It was horrifying,” Schmalzer said, referring to the decision to bring in police while negotiations were ongoing.

Appy said the administration’s response cut off the possibility for further discussion. “While Reyes could not unilaterally divest, he could certainly encourage … hearings on our holdings and listen carefully to student and faculty groups.”

The Prince Lobel Report was commissioned to evaluate the university’s response. According to Associate Vice Chancellor for News and Media Relations, Emily Gest, the report cost the University $445,938. It found that that while the Administration’s decision to remove the April 29 and May 7 encampments was reasonable given perceived safety risks and policy concerns, a more flexible and communicative approach could have reduced harm and preserved trust within the campus community.

“We all really would love to be able to trust the administration, but one student spoke up and said, you know, how on earth could we trust you, given what happened last May, for which there’s been no accounting,” Schmalzer said, referencing an open forum held a few weeks ago by the administration to talk about the threats to international people on our campus.

“We do not trust that the university will not collaborate with police, with state violence, because why should we? They did in the past,” Eric Ross, a doctoral candidate at UMass studying the history of nuclear weapons through the lens of genocide and mass atrocity and one of those arrested last year, said.

Faculty and staff point to a lingering climate of fear on campus, “There are credible enough threats to freedom of speech and assembly here that people have felt the need to cancel events,” Schmalzer said, referring to the postponement of the People’s Tribunal.

All faculty and staff cited recent violent threats from outside groups, including mentions of bringing ICE to campus, targeting international students, as well as threats to protestors from the right-wing international Zionist movement, Betar.

“As right-wing terror groups threaten to attack protesters with bullets and baseball bats and as politicians cancel our grants and seek to control our teaching, we cannot overlook the ways that the UMass administration has abetted these attacks on higher education,” said UMass Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine in a letter today.

Young said that this repression has dampened momentum for the Palestinian movement on campus, “The movement has struggled to find its strategic direction after the encampment … there’s a deafening silence about the horrific crimes being committed, primarily in Gaza.”

“I think the arrests last year definitely had a chilling effect. That was the intent, to create a culture and a climate of fear,” Ross said. “They want us to be frustrated. They want us to be burnt out. They want us to feel as though we cannot make change so that we do not demand changes.”

Young noticed that the fear instilled in students by the arrests last year forced organizers to pivot and focus their efforts on public education initiatives, such as teach-ins as opposed to the riskier demonstrations they focused on last year.

Ross sees many connections between the Palestine solidarity movement today and prior historical movements.

“[Protesters today] stand in solidarity, not only with the Palestinian people, but in all of those people who came before us that struggled against injustice and fought for a better world,” Ross said.

Young and Appy also highlighted other protests that have occurred at UMass, like the protests by black students in the 60’s, the anti-Vietnam protests and more that took place at UMass.

Appy also draws parallels between the militarized response at both UMass and Kent State University where four students were killed at a protest.

“Whenever you bring armed forces onto a campus, there is a risk,” Appy said.

Ross called attention to how universities glorify past student movements, particularly with the Vietnam protests. He said that people today who were initially opposed to the movement now pretend to have been on the right side of history.

Ross believes this will be the same when people look back on the movement for Palestinian liberation, “One day, everyone will have stood on the side of Palestinian liberation. But of course, they didn’t.

“Students have often been at the forefront of movements for social change,” Young said. “University is an important training ground for future organizers.”

“It’s going to be the students, I believe, that are going to prevent fascism from taking root,” Ross says. “I think we have to have a degree of revolutionary optimism … that change is possible.”

On May 7, 2025, UMass SJP, FJP and GEO-PSC held a vigil in honor of the anniversary and to remember those lost in Gaza. The memorial was up from 12-7.

Norah Stewart can be reached at [email protected]. Audrey Falkner can be reached at [email protected].