Johns Hopkins protesters pack up, but graduation demonstrations persist elsewhere

Pro-Palestinian protests at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have dismantled a tent encampment, joining other demonstrators in decamping the campsites as campuses empty out for summer break.

In a statement Sunday, the Hopkins Justice Collective said it had agreed to take down the protest enclosure as part of a deal in which the school agreed to expedite hearings over the possibility of divestment from Israel, and to grant all protesters amnesty.

The encampment is gone but we're still here. We aren't giving up, @JohnsHopkins. pic.twitter.com/nuAYUxpHYs

— Hopkins Justice Collective (@hopkins4justice) May 13, 2024

Up the seaboard in Boston, Emerson College’s graduation Sunday night was beset with repeated pro-Palestinian protests, including chants that interrupted several speakers’ addresses, video shows. Some displayed messages for a camera situated on stage, but the livestream quickly shifted to a different view, preventing them from being seen for long. Chants during some of the speeches were difficult to decipher.

As students marched past administrators for their degrees, some students took off their graduation robes and left them on stage. Others emblazoned “free Palestine” on their mortar boards.

One woman, staring at a camera broadcasting a livestream to the public, unzipped her robe to show a kaffiyeh, the black and white checkered scarf commonly worn by Palestinians, and flashed a watermelon painted on her hand.

At one point the protest had to be halted for several minutes as a graduate with hands dyed red attempted to shake hands with school president Jay Bernhardt, who initially refused, the Boston Globe reports.