LONDON: US police officers on Monday arrested Sinan Antoon, the co-editor of Jadaliyya magazine, during a pro-Gaza demonstration at New York University in Manhattan.
The Arab Studies Institute publication announced in a post on X that Antoon, an associate professor at NYU, was arrested with other faculty members while trying to protect protesting students, who were reportedly calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
BREAKING: NYPD arrested Jadaliyya Co-Editor and NYU Associate Professor Sinan Antoon along with other faculty and students as he/they was/were trying to protect NYU students from the Police. We will not ever be silenced.
— Jadaliyya (@jadaliyya) April 23, 2024
Antoon is an Iraqi-American poet, novelist, literary translator and academic. He was born and raised in Baghdad before moving to the US after the 1991 Gulf War.
The Israeli onslaught on the besieged enclave has since Oct. 7 killed at least 34,000 Palestinians, displaced some 1.9 million, and injured more than 75,800 people, according to Gaza’s health authority.
Confirming Jadaliyya’s announcement, human rights attorney Noura Erakat wrote on X: “NYPD is arresting faculty on their campuses for protecting their students.
“The academy is imbricated with the state and the military industry intent on war in blatant abrogation of its mission and any semblance of independence. What a gross betrayal.”
NYPD is arresting faculty on their campuses for protecting their students.
The academy is imbricated w the state & the military industry intent on war in blatant abrogation of its mission & any semblance of independence. What a gross betrayal. #Gaza #Genocide #Nakba https://t.co/f0tnYhHnNt— Noura Erakat (@4noura) April 23, 2024
On Monday, officers from the New York Police Department moved in on NYU demonstrators after a deadline expired for people to clear an area of the campus, the Financial Times reported.
This came hours after New York’s Columbia University, where more than 100 people were arrested last week, announced it would switch to online classes in an attempt to defuse pro-Palestine protests.
The arrests at the NYU campus are part of a string of US police clampdowns on university students across the country protesting against the war on Gaza.
Local authorities claimed the clampdowns came amid scrutiny over “antisemitism” on US university campuses.
US police also arrested at least 47 pro-Gaza demonstrators at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Columbia University clampdown, the first of its kind in three decades, triggered protests on other US campuses, including at Brown University, Berkeley, Princeton, Northwestern, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Emerson College in Boston.
In addition to calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the protesting students also reportedly called for divestment of the university’s funds from companies linked to Israel.
