Image credit: Andrew Leyden (Shutterstock)

"University and law enforcement authorities around the world must respect and guarantee the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest. Academies must remain a place for open debate, criticism, and dissenting thought, not a stage for police violence or hate speech. If our students, future writers and journalists and their spaces for criticism are not free now, the speech in our societies will be based on fear." Burhan Somnez, President of PEN International.

9th May 2024: PEN International strongly opposes the use of police force against students, academics and media workers as well as ongoing arrests during peaceful pro-Palestine protests on student campuses.

Since mid-April 2024, a wave of pro-Palestine protests has swept across college campuses across the US and internationally. The student-led protests, which began at New York’s Columbia University, have now spread to at least 60 universities across the US, including those at Yale, Harvard, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Similar protests are now taking place at campuses in other countries, including Australia, the UK, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, Germany, Canada, France and India.

The primary demand from protestors is for universities to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, amidst ongoing calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. The vast majority of these student protests have been peaceful.

In the US, attempts to quell protests have led to the suspension of students, arrests of protestors, the forced eviction of protest encampments and threats of negative academic consequences in at least 34 university campuses, resulting in at least 1600 arrests (280 alone at Columbia University). There have been at least six incidents of excessive use of force by police officials against journalists covering the demonstrations, including arrests and physical assaults.

Reports of increasing heavy-handedness by police are also emerging from Europe, including at FU Berlin, University of Amsterdam (where riot police were called in to clear protestors, and demonstrators were forcibly moved) and France’s Sciences Po.

Some protests have been marked by antisemitic acts targeting Jewish students who stand in solidarity with Palestinian efforts, and other protesting students. PEN International notes, that since 7 October 2023, reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia have risen on university campuses in which students have faced verbal attacks, intimidation, and differential treatment based on their identity or affiliation. PEN International stands firmly with its Charter, and believes in the need to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.

PEN International unequivocally condemns all forms of hate speech including antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian acts and speech. These acts must be fairly investigated and individually assessed to avoid eroding the full exercise of the right to protest at universities, and the safety of all people.

PEN International asserts the importance of respecting the right peaceful protest without any form of discrimination, which is necessary to safeguard freedom of expression and assembly, as embedded in international human rights law and standards. Academic institutions and law enforcement must adhere to the principles of human rights and legislation, allowing for free expression, and safe and unrestricted discourse in any format and platform. This includes ensuring that spaces for debate, including journals, books, literature, events, and all forms of art and their platforms in universities, remain free from censorship or imposition of single political positions.

Everyone has the right to peaceful assembly, and any action to prohibit or disperse such gatherings should be a measure of last resort, undertaken with careful consideration of the principles of necessity and proportionality, and only when there are no alternative methods to safeguard a legitimate objective that outweighs the right to assemble.

Note to editors:

For media queries, please contact Sabrina Tucci, PEN International Communications and Campaigns Manager, [email protected]