Police arrest dozens of pro-Palestine protesters at Yale

Driving the news: Police officers blocked entrances to the campus plaza where the encampment was situated before 6:45am Monday, the Yale Daily News student newspaper reported.

• About an hour later, no students remained in the plaza.
• New Haven police said in a post on X Monday that they had assisted Yale Police in responding to the protest, and that Yale police arrested about 45 protesters for trespassing.
• About 200 protesters have also blocked an intersection in New Haven, and that protest was ongoing at 10 am, the post added.

Zoom in: The protesters in the plaza included Yale undergraduates and graduate students as well as people not affiliated with the school, a Yale University spokesperson told Axios in a statement Monday.

• Those at the encampment received multiple warnings that they "could face law enforcement and disciplinary action" if they didn't leave the plaza, the spokesperson said.
• The spokesperson said that Yale spent "several hours" negotiating with protesters on Sunday, and offered to schedule a meeting with the school's trustees, including Yale's chair of the Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility.
• "The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the Plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind," the spokesperson said.

The other side: Protest organizers said in a statement Monday that during the weekend negotiation university officials did not offer to make any additional disclosures about Yale's investments.

• Organizers said they were given only 10 minutes to consider the university's final offer.
• "Yale, you have intimidated us, criminalized us, militarized our campus, and failed to accept our demands. We will not stop, we will not rest until we have disclosure and divestment," they added in an Instagram post.

Catch up quick: More than 250 students began staging a 40-tent encampment on Yale's campus since Friday night, calling for the university to divest from military weapons manufacturers, the Yale Daily News reported Sunday.

• Yale University President Peter Salovey warned in an email to students Sunday afternoon that the school would pursue disciplinary actions for violations of campus safety policies.
• Some protesters have confronted Jewish students on Yale's campus, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The big picture: Yale is at least the second Ivy League school in a matter of days where pro-Palestine protesters were arrested on campus.

• New York City police arrested more than 100 people staging a pro-Palestine protest on Columbia University's campus last week.
• The Israel-Hamas war has contributed to a rise in both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on university campuses, prompting a wave of investigations by the Education Department.

Editor's note: This story was updated with a statement from a Yale spokesperson, reaction from student organizers and additional details about the arrests.