Penn Trustees Meeting Is Cut Short After Students Protest Over War in Gaza

A board of trustees meeting at the University of Pennsylvania was disrupted on Friday by a group of pro-Palestinian students protesting the school’s involvement with Israel, prompting the trustees to adjourn the meeting about 10 minutes after it started.

Holding up their hands, some painted red to signify blood, the group of about 12 students started to protest shortly after J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, began addressing the university’s board of trustees. It was his first public meeting with the trustees since taking office in December.

“Endowment transparency now! Divest from genocide!” the students chanted.

The protesters, representing a group called Freedom School for Palestine, said their action was a response to Penn’s relationship with Israel, citing a study-abroad program, a recent faculty trip to Israel and “donations to the I.D.F.,” referring to the Israeli military. A Penn spokesman denied that the university makes donations to the I.D.F.

“We condemn the board of trustees’ support for the genocidal Israeli state, and we call on Penn administration to support Palestinian students, drop disciplinary charges against pro-Palestinian demonstrators and divest from genocide,” the group said in a statement. It added that it was pushing for the university’s $21 billion endowment to rescind investments in Israeli companies or other entities aiding the war in Gaza. It was not clear whether Penn had investments in the country.

The protest on Friday was the latest disturbance buffeting the nation’s top universities since Hamas attacked Israel in October. The campus movement that began as general protests against continuing Israeli retaliation in Gaza has recently shifted its focus to university endowments, with demonstrators demanding that schools pull investments that would support the war.

At Brown University, about 19 students protesting the war waged a hunger strike earlier this year, demanding that its board take up a divestment resolution. The idea behind movements for divestment, which have also historically targeted fossil fuels, tobacco and apartheid in South Africa, is to encourage university endowments to foster the public good and be instruments for change.