More than two dozen pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on Monday night at the University of Washington in Seattle after they occupied an engineering building and set dumpsters on fire.
The protest group, called Super UW, occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building to demand that the university sever its ties with Boeing, as the aerospace company has military contracts which the students say “are used by Israel in their US-funded genocide of Palestinian people”.
“UW students want Boeing off our campus,” the group wrote on Facebook on Monday.
Boeing notably gave the school a $10m donation to build the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in 2022.
Officers with Washington state patrol’s rapid deployment teams along with campus police and Seattle police broke up the occupation of the university’s engineering building, a Washington state patrol spokesperson told CNN.
A university spokesperson, Victor Balta, told NBC News that university police and other law enforcement officers began clearing away crowds of supporters, many wearing black masks, outside the building at 10.30pm before police moved inside at 11pm.
“About 30 individuals who occupied the building were arrested on charges of trespassing, property destruction and disorderly conduct, and conspiracy to commit all three, will be referred to the King county prosecutor’s office,” Balta said in a statement to the network.
He said that the group had created a “dangerous environment” in and around the building, blocked entrances by stacking furniture and setting fire to two dumpsters on the street outside.
The university’s statement also said it “strongly condemns this illegal building occupation” and an unspecified “antisemitic statement” made by a suspended student group. The university added that it would “not be intimidated by this offensive and destructive behavior”.
Super UW said on its Facebook page that it had “launched an occupation of the new Boeing-funded engineering building” and was staging the protest over the aviation company’s defense contracts and arms sales to Israel.
“We’re hoping to remove the influence of Boeing and other manufacturing companies from our educational space, period, and we’re hoping to expose the repressive tactics of the university,” a Super UW spokesperson, Eric Horford, told KOMO News.
The group is calling for the building to be renamed the Shaban al-Dalou Building, after a teenage engineering student who was killed by a bomb in Gaza.
In a post on Medium, Super UW said: “We are taking this building amidst the current and renewed wave of the student Intifada, following the uprising of student action for Palestine after the heroic victory of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, which shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination and brought Palestine to the forefront for all justice-loving people of the world.”
The group notes that they believe the UW administration “prioritizes their ability to rake in blood money over the demands of their students and workers”.
The Super UW protest is a sign that US universities could see a repeat of last year’s pro-Palestinian encampments and building-occupations. The University of Washington was among the colleges with a pro-Palestinian encampment in place for weeks before the university’s president called for it to be dismantled after antisemitic and violent graffiti was discovered on various buildings.
On social media on Monday night, the UW Jewish Alumni Association expressed disappointment that university leadership failed to prevent the demonstration, posting on X that it was “an absolute disgrace. UW leadership has risked everyone’s safety rather than get a grip on its antisemitism problem”.
The Guardian has contacted the University of Washington for comment.
