On Thursday morning, members of UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) held a press conference on the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) raid early Tuesday morning that cleared UCUP’s encampment from the quad. The encampment, titled the “UChicago Popular University for Gaza,” was removed nine days after its inception on April 29.

Undergraduate and graduate student organizers spoke about the aftermath of Tuesday morning’s raid, including their experiences of the raid, the importance of a continued focus on the war in Gaza, and the prospect of disciplinary action against protesters. The press conference was also livestreamed on Instagram and uploaded the same day.

The University’s Committee of the Council, a body that oversees University issues including educational policy, met on May 7, the morning of the raid, for a pre-scheduled meeting. The committee was told that no students are currently facing the “emergency interim leave of absence” procedure outlined in a leaflet handed to students following the raid, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

Hassan, a third-year in the College and an organizer with UCUP, spoke at the press conference about the importance of remaining focused on the war in Gaza. Hassan highlighted the fact that every university in Gaza has been destroyed, a central point of UCUP’s messaging substantiated by UN reports.

“Israel, using American-made weapons, has bombed every university in the Gaza Strip,” Hassan said. “One of our central demands was for UChicago’s administration to acknowledge the scholasticide in Gaza, the destruction of all universities. Instead of agreeing to this simple, necessary acknowledgement, two days ago, UChicago’s administration sent in police in full riot gear to brutally destroy our Popular University.”

Rayna Acha, a fourth-year in the College and an organizer with UCUP and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UChicago, spoke about the connection she sees between Palestinians and Black Americans.

“The plight of Palestinians is one understood by Black people on the South Side, by Black people in the hood, and all of us are students of the Popular University. We are all students of the Popular University,” Acha said. “This is not just between the University of Chicago and its investments. This is an issue of collective liberation.”

Katja Stroke-Adolphe, a self-described “anti-Zionist Jewish organizer” and Law School student also spoke at the press conference, describing her experience with UCPD during Tuesday morning’s raid.

“I was walking on the side of the quad when a cop in riot gear threw me to the ground, face down, on the pavement. The dean of students claimed in an email that protesters left ‘without incident.’ I ask you how UCPD in riot gear raiding people sleeping in their tents, grabbing, shoving, and hitting people, throwing me to the ground, how any of this is ‘without incident,’” she said.

A video posted by SJP on X shows a UCPD officer pushing someone to the ground during Tuesday’s raid.

Christopher Iacovetti, a Ph.D. student in the Divinity School and an organizer with UCUP and SJP, spoke to the Maroon after the conference about potential disciplinary consequences for protesters in the encampment. While he was not aware of any disciplinary action currently pending after Tuesday morning’s raid, he noted that University administration “[tends] to move extremely slow on these things.”

“Just yesterday, we had a first hearing for the disciplinary process resulting from the November sit-in [of Rosenwald Hall],” Iacovetti said, referring to the UCUP action that ended in the arrest of 26 students and two faculty members. All legal charges were dropped, but internal University disciplinary processes are ongoing.

Hours after protesters were removed from the quad by UCPD on Tuesday morning, they were handed leaflets detailing potential consequences.

“Failure to immediately leave will result in disciplinary action as outlined in the Student Manual. You will also be immediately placed on emergency interim leave of absence from the University. A student who has been placed on emergency interim leave of absence must promptly vacate University housing, leave campus, cannot participate in student and academic program activities, or use any University facilities, and may not return until the student has been authorized to return from the leave and reenroll,” the leaflet read.

Iacovetti believes that the delay in disciplinary processes is a tactic by the University, which he thinks is trying to “hang these [disciplinary] processes over our heads as long as possible to make us feel nervous about doing other things.” While the UCPD raid ended with no arrests, emails from University President Paul Alivisatos and Dean of Students Michele Rasmussen sent the morning after the raid indicated that there would be consequences for protesters.

Alireza Doostdar, associate professor in the Divinity School and a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) at UChicago, spoke to the Maroon on Thursday afternoon about FJP’s continued support of UCUP in reopening negotiations with the University.

“There were faculty who reached out to the provost’s office and to others, trying to see what was going on and whether there would be a possibility to really encourage the administration to return to negotiations in good faith, and I think a lot of that also either did not receive a response or the response that was received was not very substantive,” he said.

Anton Ford, associate professor of philosophy and another FJP member, also spoke to the Maroon on Thursday afternoon about his criticisms of Alivisatos’s statements on “institutional neutrality” and of the Chicago principles, which he called “undemocratic” in an op-ed published in the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this week.

“At other universities, like at Columbia, when their president made the same decision [to call police on student and faculty protesters], their council was able to make a decision about whether to censure their president,” Ford said. “I don’t know if they can call it a vote of no confidence in particular, but investigating and criticizing their president—we can’t do that.”

Ford highlighted actions Alivisatos has taken over the past year that he sees as undermining Alivisatos’s stated commitment to “institutional neutrality.”

“I don’t think that [Alivisatos] can meet with the consul general of Israel in the middle of an international trial for genocide and be part of a diplomatic mission, on the part of the Israeli state, to strengthen ties between Israeli institutions of higher education and our own. I don’t think you can do that and be neutral. That’s not what neutrality looks like,” Ford said.