Stony Brook University faculty demands dropping charges against students, professors arrested in pro-Palestinian protest

The Faculty Senate at Stony Brook University voted overwhelmingly Monday to demand that the school drop charges against 29 students and faculty arrested in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest last week.

In a heated meeting that was also attended by university president Maurie McInnis, the senate also voted to investigate a new campus police operation McInnis has created. Speakers noted that the campus police seized the cellphones of some of the protesters and refused to return them, in what some professors characterized as an action more typical of an authoritarian police state.

The senate tabled for a week a third resolution declaring “no confidence in President McInnis’s capacity to perform the ongoing duties of her office in a wise and humane manner.” The resolution to demand charges be dropped is largely symbolic as the group has no direct power over the administration's actions in connection with the protest.

McInnis during the nearly two-hour meeting vehemently defended her handling of last week’s protest, saying university officials were put in an extremely difficult position and did their best to defuse a volatile situation.

“We did not want to arrest anyone,” she said. “We wanted to de-escalate the situation.” She noted that protests at other colleges around the country have ended far worse. Columbia University has canceled its main graduation after nearly 300 people were arrested there, along with City College of New York.

University officials refused to discuss why the cellphones had been confiscated and not returned, saying they involved “open cases.”

In a statement, the university said: "We fully stand by the actions we took before, during and after the events that transpired the evening of May 1st and have clearly and steadfastly stated from the beginning our belief that free speech and the right to protest are bedrock principles of Stony Brook University."

The statement continued: "However, we also have articulated rules of engagement that are intended to protect and preserve the safety of all members of our community" 

One of the professors arrested in the protest, Josh Dubnau, called the vote to drop the charges “powerful.” When it was read aloud, the room burst into cheers and applause.

Meanwhile, one of the main student organizers of the protest, Namal Fiaz, 21, said the arrests will not stop their demonstrations.

In a 90-minute interview, her first since the arrests last Thursday, Fiaz a senior, said her arrest and suspension “mean nothing when there are people dying in Palestine as we speak.”

“The university, the police, can employ any intimidation tactics they want against us. But the bottom line is we’re not going anywhere. I was suspended. I’m not allowed to be physically on campus. I don’t even know if I can graduate. But I don’t care. Because I know that my voice is being heard. We know that we are on the right side of history,” Fiaz said.

University officials said Monday that 20 students have received “interim suspensions,” up from the three they reported last week. They said the students can appeal, and that some have already successfully done so.

The students and faculty were charged with disorderly conduct. Fiaz had an additional charge of criminal trespass since she had been suspended as of 5 p.m. last Wednesday but remained on campus while police started arresting the protesters around midnight.

The resolution on dropping the charges also called on the university to grant amnesty to all the students and faculty, and to pay to have all records of their arrests expunged.

The motion on the campus police force, called Enterprise Risk Management, called for an independent investigation by the senate into the unit’s handling of student protests and “intelligence gathering” of staff, faculty and students.

The campus has been in turmoil since campus police, Suffolk County police and New York State Troopers last week broke up an encampment the protesters set up and made the arrests.

Stony Brook officials have said the protesters were arrested after being repeatedly warned they had to move off the grassy area known as the Staller Steps after nearly two days of occupying it, in part because another group was scheduled to use the area the next day.

Bloodshed in Gaza has provoked protests including tent encampments on college campuses around the nation. The militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack on Oct. 7. Israel’s counteroffensive has killed about 34,500 Palestinians, according to authorities in Gaza. Israel contends it is fighting to eliminate a terrorist organization and that civilian casualties are an unwanted consequence.

Fiaz said she thinks campus police confiscated their phones to try to disrupt their organizing, but she said they’ve already gotten new ones, donated by supporters.

“Even though I am not allowed on campus that hasn’t really inhibited the organizing that I do at all,” she said.

Robert Chase, an associate professor of history at Stony Brook who is an expert on prisons, policing and the civil rights movement, said he saw the seizing of the phones as part of what he calls an increasing “militarization” of college campuses.

Fiaz said the group she founded last fall, Students for Justice in Palestine, is coordinating with scores of other SJP chapters at campuses around the country including at Columbia University as well as the organization’s national leadership.

She said she has even received encouragement and help from the co-founder of the Red Balloon Collective, a radical student organization at Stony Brook that protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s.

Other chapters of SJP have “given us tips. They’ve given us resources. SJP is a very large network and we are all together for the exact same purpose, to divest from Israel. Every single encampment you see on the news has been organized by an SJP chapter at that specific school.”

Fiaz, two faculty members, and seven other students were held in the campus police headquarters for about 7½ hours, handcuffed behind their backs, she said.

The other 19 arrested protesters were taken to New York State Police barracks in Riverhead, Brentwood and Farmingdale, authorities said.

Fiaz said she does not know what her future holds, but she has no regrets.

“In decades they are going to look back on this, just as they did with the Vietnam War protesters, and they are going to call the students heroes for protesting, for making their voices heard,” she said.