Achi news desk-
Demonstrators chanted anti-war messages and waved Palestinian flags during a University of Michigan commencement on Saturday, as student demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war clashed with the annual pomp of the graduation season at American universities.
The protest took place at the start of the event at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. About 75 people, many wearing a traditional Arabic baking cap along with graduation caps, marched up the main aisle towards the finishing stage.
They chanted “Regent, Regent, you can’t hide! You are financing genocide!” While holding signs, including one that reads: “There are no universities left in Gaza.”
Competing message planes flew overhead. One of them shouted: “Get rid of Israel now! Free Palestine!” The second read: “We stand with Israel. Jewish life is important.”
Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest did not seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, attended by tens of thousands of people, some waving Israeli flags.
State police prevented the protesters from reaching the stage and university spokeswoman Colleen Mastoni said public safety officers escorted the protesters to the back of the stadium, where they remained until the end of the event.
“Peaceful demonstrations like this have occurred at UM commencement ceremonies for decades,” she added.
US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro paused several times during his remarks, saying at one point, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please bring your attention back to the podium.”
Before swearing in the armed forces graduates, del Toro said they would “defend the freedoms we hold so dear,” including “the right to peaceful protest.”
The university allowed protesters to set up a tent on campus, but police helped break up a large gathering at an event related to Friday night’s graduation, and one person was arrested.
Michigan was among the schools that engaged in protests during its commencement ceremonies this weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston. Many more are planned in the coming weeks.
At Indiana University, protesters called on supporters to put on their hats and walk out during President Pamela Whitten’s remarks Saturday night. The campus in Bloomington, Indiana, has designated a protest area outside Memorial Stadium, where the ceremony is scheduled to take place.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses across the country in recent weeks in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools reached agreements with the protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disrupting the final exams and commencements.
Many encampments were dismantled and protesters were arrested in police operations.
The Associated Press has documented at least 61 incidents since April 18 in which arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 2,400 people were arrested on 47 college and university campuses. The data is based on AP reports and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
In Princeton, New Jersey, 18 students began a hunger strike in an effort to push the university to divest from companies associated with Israel.
Senior hunger striker David Chmielevsky said in an email on Saturday that the latest protest began on Friday morning with participants consuming only water.
He said the hunger strike will continue until university administrators meet with students regarding their demands, which include amnesty from criminal and disciplinary charges for the protesters.
Other protesters are participating in 24-hour “solidarity fasts,” he said.
Princeton students set up a protest tent and some held a sit-in this week in an administrative building, which led to about 15 arrests.
Students at other colleges, including Brownville, launched similar hunger strikes earlier this year before the latest wave of sit-ins.
In other developments on Saturday, police broke up a demonstration at the University of Virginia. Campus police called it an “unlawful assembly” in a post on social media platform X.
Footage from WVAW-TV showed police wearing tactical gear removing protesters from an encampment on the Charlottesville campus. Authorities did not say how many people were arrested.
Meanwhile, near Boston, students at Tufts University peacefully dismantled their protest tent without police intervention on Friday night.
Officials at the Medford, Mass., school said they were pleased with the development, which was not the result of any agreement with protesters. Protest organizers said in a statement that they were “angry and very disappointed” that negotiations with the university had failed.
The protests stem from the Israel-Hamas conflict that began on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking about 250 hostages.
Israel, vowing to destroy Hamas, launched an attack on Gaza that killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled territory. The Israeli attacks destroyed the enclave and displaced most of the residents of Gaza.
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Marcelo reported from New York. AP Correspondents Ed White in Detroit; Nick Perry in Boston; and Adrian Sainz in Memphis contributed to this story.
