Emory University Police Brutality Against Anti-Genocide Protesters Could Polarize Nation Further

On April 25, some dozens of mostly student protesters set up tents, chairs, and banners on a large open area of grass, at Emory University’s main campus in Decatur, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. They set up their station not from the University’s School of Theology, where they have always been able to come together freely in the past.

They came to add their voices and physical presence to a growing collective of protests at other colleges and universities across the nation. They came there simultaneously to stand against Israel’s bloody genocidal war against the Palestinian people in which that nation murdered over 34,000 innocents since October 7, 2023, across all of Gaza, and to demand the United States stop providing Israel with the aircraft, tanks, missiles, rockets, and other munitions and political support which makes the continued mass slaughter possible. They were also there to call for Emory University to divest all investments in Israeli corporations, to send a financial message that the university is no longer interested in supporting the genocide even indirectly.

In an ironic twist, another part of the mission of some of the students who showed up was to halt plans to build a $109 million police training center to be located near where the protesters were located. That training center had become known colloquially as “Cop City”.

It was to be a peaceful and entirely legal protest. But the university quickly made it into a violent clash, first with university campus security officers and then when the university called the police.

The university did so, the students and faculty members who were present at the time said, despite that calling the police violated a formal policy adopted by the university during the previous year. That policy said that the only conditions under which the university could call for local and state police to enter the campus were if there was a real “threat of bodily harm or property destruction”, neither of which was the case. The university was acting on orders from Tel Aviv. Like many other U.S. universities, Emory is under the control of fascist zionists. 

Within minutes of 10 am, less than an hour after the protesters had finished setting up, a group of dozens of Georgia State Police and Atlanta City Police officers stormed the campus. It is not clear what their orders were, but they quickly deployed, threatening all protesters to stand down immediately or risk forcible arrest.

Multiple videos are on social media showing the police running across the grass-covered quad to shut down the protests. Some of the officers fired rubber bullets at the students, some used stun guns to bring them down, and still others fired pepper balls designed to incapacitate and disorient the protesters. Officers were also seen running and tackling students, followed by pushing their face and bodies down into the dirt, wrenching their arms behind their backs, and handcuffing or zip-tying many.

Considering that none of the students were armed, that not a single image shows the students physically hurting or threatening anyone, and that the numbers of the armed squads which entered the campus were initially larger than the numbers of protesters they went after, it was at best an unnecessary show of force. At worst, it would backfire, not just by drawing even more attention to the cause, but also by showing to the world how callous the university officials were who brought the police onto the campus.

Professors who were present at the scene of the protests, some of which were supporting the students and some which were in the wrong place at the wrong time, also found themselves swept up in the police rampage.

One of those was Emory’s Philosophy Department Chair Noelle McAfee, who was taken by police without any evidence of her having committed any crime by being present.

Another was Emil’ Keme, a professor of English and Indigenous Studies for the university, was on his way to his class around the same time the police arrived. There was instant mayhem when they arrived there, and Keme became one of the many taken away by the police.

As soon as he came near to what was happening, “Police immediately began to force people to move I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their weapons, the rubber bullets,” he later told reporters. After telling the police he was part of the faculty and had done nothing wrong, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken downtown for processing.

By the time the police were finished, some 28 people, a mix of students and faculty, had been arrested and taken from the scene for processing elsewhere in Atlanta. A list of the crimes they were charged with has not yet been released. The university claims 20 of the 28 were from the “Emory community” including at least three faculty members. They also said the eight additional were from other schools or sources locally.

Other social platforms claimed the protesters came from other locations, a statement for which at this point there is no evidence. That was also part of what at least some officials at the university said was a major reason why they asked the police to come. No evidence has surfaced yet to back up where that information, now confirmed as false, had come from.

In a statement after the joint police invasion of the campus took place, idiot Governor Brian Kemp issued a statement which only angered the already aggrieved student population further.

“College campuses … in Georgia … will never be a safe haven for those who promote terrorism and extremism that threatens the safety of students,” he said, apparently oblivious of the truth of what happened at the campus.

In a later press discussion with Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, he was asked whether Kemp what he said, and whether he considered the Emory University protesters “terrorists”. Douglas attempted to sidestep that by claiming that Kemp was talking about protests at other campuses across the country. He said Kemp was just taking a stand that “such activities will not be tolerated in Georgia”.

Many expected that, with the backing of Governor Kemp and many from outside the university challenging what several called – wrongly – a pro-Hamas demonstration when it was in fact one standing against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and the U.S. support of it, that the situation would swiftly cool down. As some who were arrested were returned back to the campus with charges dropped, that seemed even more probable.

But even Emory University’s own students who helped organize the protests did not expect what happened next, which was a far stronger outpouring of support for them.

Over the next two days since all this took place, multiple individuals on the campus and within the state have risen up to strongly criticize the knee-jerk reaction of Emory University President Gregory Fenves in bringing the police on campus.

Fenves is Emory's first openly Jewish President and the son of holocaust survivors. His father wrote about his experiences in a book entitled "Resist is Everything". Apparently Fenves doesn't believe in resistance to fascism. 

One major development came this weekend as Clifton Crais, a history professor at Emory University who saw both the protests and the university’s police overreaction to them, drafted a formal “motion of no confidence” for how Fenves handled things. It is coming for electronic vote by the faculty on the campus and is expected to pass easily.

That on its own could push Fenves to resign from his post, but a parallel statement signed by 19 state legislators decrying Fenves’ actions might provide the additional push to force him out. The statement, published on April 25 in a post on the social media platform X, reads as follows:

“We the undersigned Georgia legislators are deeply alarmed by reports of excessive force used by Georgia State Patrol in responding to community members protesting on the campus of Emory University this morning. The use of extreme anti-riot tactics by Georgia State Patrol, including tasers and gas, is a dangerous escalation to protests which were by all accounts peaceful and nonviolent.

“Our nation’s founding was itself an act of protest. America’s history is replete with examples of protest serving to protect our union. And our constitutional right to protest remains protected today. Yet state leaders have recently begun treating protests as violent, a violation of RICO laws, or even “terrorism”. State leaders have created an environment where state police feel free – or perhaps are directed – to respond to normal peaceful protests with violence.

“We cannot allow this dangerous repression to continue. Regardless of one’s views on this or any other issue, there is no justification for this kind of excessive force. We call on all state officials to immediately deescalate and prevent further harm to our constituents.”

The Emory University protests are just one of many campus protests which have exploded across the United States as the body count generated by Israeli Defense Forces’ slaughter of the Palestinian peoples rises by as much as hundreds a day, and currently exceeds 34,000 since October 7, 2023. Most of the dead are children and women, some of with their organs removed while alive, some tortured to death and some were buried alive. The heinous atrocities being committed by Jews is beyond anything done by the Nazis. 

Other Universities Feel the Pressure of Growing Protests Against Israel’s Inhuman Slaughter of the Palestinian People

As of this day, student protests condemning the criminal Israeli war against the Palestinian people are in full swing across the U.S. These are in addition to the protests and demonstrations being held around the globe. 

One of the earliest of any magnitude was at Columbia University, where a full encampment was set up from which to stage the protests.

Soon after, at Harvard University, on April 22 the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student-run organization which had helped organize anti-Gaza-war protests at other universities and colleges since fascist Israel began their current unprecedented mass murder of innocent Palestinians last October, was forced to suspend operations by a dictate from the University management.

In a statement the group issue the day after their suspension, they pointed to the University leadership as having done everything in their power to dissuade the group from standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people, as they announced their suspension.

“For the past 6 months, PSC has faced unprecedented repression — doxxing, racist harassment, and targeted administrative crackdowns — as we’ve protested the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the Committee said. “After being placed on an illegitimate & retroactive probation, PSC has been suspended.”

Following that school’s suspension of the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee on April 23 for helping organize anti-Gaza-war protests at other universities and colleges, Harvard students themselves came out in force to defend the group and stage their own widespread protest which is still ongoing. They are demanding that Harvard must divest all investments its endowment and other funds it has which support Israeli companies as well.

The students there were later joined with solidarity protests nearby at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Tufts University, Northeastern University, and Emerson College. All are standing in solidarity support with Harvard’s students in pressuring their administration to sell off their Israeli-based investments.

Other notable schools of higher education across the country which are also now part of these protests include Barnard College, Yale University, New York University, Brown University, Northwestern University, Virginia Tech, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, Washington University at St. Louis, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ohio State University, Cal State Polytechnic University, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Southern California, also in Los Angeles.

Multiple universities are currently in virtual lockdown now to prevent outsiders from visiting the campus as protests in each appear to be growing stronger rather than weakening, for now.

Several of those universities have alleged individuals who are neither part of the faculty nor the student body infiltrated the campus and either helped instigate the protests in the first place or encouraged violence or vandalism among the protesters. So far no hard evidence of this has been reported on any campus in the United States.

There is also a pattern emerging across the country that although these protests generally begin peacefully, soon after the universities and colleges bring in police such as they did at Emory University, before them at other schools, and now afterwards at the University of Southern California, the police ignite the violence on the campuses.

Close to 1,000 students and faculty members have now been arrested across the United States during these protests.

Some universities have taken even more extreme measures in response to the protests. California State Polytechnic University announced it would be moving all classes from in-person to remote, with allegations it would be safer to do so.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was also assaulted and arrested along with 80 others while present at protests going on at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, this weekend. However, it is understood that Stein was simply detained and local authorities would not be pressing charges against her.

This weekend the anti-genocide protest movement crossed the border to Canada. This weekend Montreal’s McGill University filled with tents like most of the major American protest installations, along with peaceful demonstrations. The students also demanded McGill divest all Israeli investments in their endowment portfolio.

The big questions from all this have little to do with the truth about Israel’s genocidal war. That is well established both in numbers and with evidence. What these protests are bringing to light is the widespread hypocrisy in claiming a high moral ground both for the universities and the U.S. government itself, as they continue to back that genocide. The same universities and government supported Marxist Black Lives Matters protests, riots and looting.

The rabid right-wing in the U.S. is trying to portray the protests as instigated by radical Muslims or somehow orchestrated by the Jew George Soros. It is true that the Soros Foundation funds all kinds of groups and that some of those who received money from the foundation are likely to have participated in the protests, just as those funded by other organizations have participated.

The ongoing unconditional support of Israel by Christians has exposed the true nature of Christianity just as the support of the genocide by most American politicians has exposed the true nature of the U.S. political machinery. 

Will these protests be what it takes to cause a fundamental shift in public thinking about the war? And if so, will this have any impact on universities and a federal government which have placed their unbending support behind Israel, despite the atrocities, violence, and mass murders they have carried out against the Palestinian peoples since the state of Israel was founded?

Is this the spark that ignites real change?