As UVM pro-Palestinian encampment enters 2nd day, protesters call for action at commencement

BURLINGTON — University of Vermont students called for more protests at next month’s commencement if the university does not cancel its speaker, as a pro-Palestinian encampment entered its second day on Monday.

Protesters said they see the university’s choice of commencement speaker — Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — as oblivious and insulting, given that the U.S. vetoed three resolutions at the United Nations calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. 

“Forty thousand people have been murdered in Palestine, and they invited the woman who allowed that to continue to happen,” one fourth-year UVM student, who declined to give their name to a reporter, told a crowd through a megaphone at a Monday afternoon protest. “We’re going to organize and tell them that we will not stand for this.” 

Pro-Palestinian encampments have sprouted at university campuses across the country, roughly six months after Israel’s invasion of Gaza. 

On Sunday, pro-Palestinian tent encampments sprung up at UVM and Middlebury College. Monday afternoon, tents with Palestinian flags were also visible on the campus of tiny Sterling College, in Craftsbury. 

UVM is in the waning days of its academic year: Classes will end on Friday, and the commencement ceremony is scheduled for May 19.

By Monday afternoon, the encampment at UVM appeared to have expanded, and several hundred people attended a rally near the university’s Andrew Harris Commons. 

Through a megaphone, students, professors and community members called on the university to fulfill the demands of the protest movement, which include amnesty for activists; financial transparency and divestment from Israeli companies and arms manufacturers; cutting ties with Israeli institutions; and the cancellation of the commencement speaker.

Students in keffiyehs waved large Palestinian flags and hefted cardboard signs with slogans like “Free Palestine” and “No war criminals at commencement.” Wafic Faour, a Palestinian American member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, who has been involved in protest movements around Burlington, urged students to wear keffiyehs and bring Palestinian flags to the commencement ceremony. 

Of Thomas-Greenfield, Faour said, “I wish the graduates will walk out if she showed up,” eliciting cheers from students.

Speakers led protesters in chants of “free Palestine” and calls for a cease-fire, as well as the more contentious slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

That phrase refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which includes Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It’s used frequently by pro-Palestinian protesters, who say it is a call for liberation and equality. But others see it as an antisemitic call for the destruction of Israel.

The event marked the second day of organized protest on the University of Vermont’s campus in Burlington, the state’s largest city. Administrators told protesters Sunday that their camp was in violation of university policies and asked them to remove it. But by Monday afternoon, the university seemed to have taken no apparent action in regards to the encampment.

Erica Caloiero, the vice provost for student affairs at UVM, said in a mid-afternoon interview that university leadership was first and foremost trying to maintain communication with students. 

University administrators have said that the tents are in violation of policies prohibiting unauthorized temporary structures and overnight occupation of those temporary structures.

But “my understanding is that students are likely to, or perhaps already have requested, (an) exception to policy,” Caloiero said.

“If that’s the case, we then all have the opportunity to work together even better, to make sure that temporary structures exist in a way that is safe and and allowable,” she said. “But that would take place within the structure of an exception request.”

Asked about the demands to cancel the commencement speaker, Caloiero said, “We’re talking with students about all of the concerns that they put forward.”

Earlier in the day, Adam White, a university spokesperson, sent an emailed statement defending the choice of Thomas-Greenfield. 

“Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is one of the nation’s most accomplished diplomats, and the university has been looking forward to celebrating her outstanding contributions in national service since she agreed last summer to speak at this year’s commencement,” White said in the email.

A few blocks away from the encampment, UVM Hillel had set up another sort of demonstration on its lawn on Monday: dozens of folding chairs, each bearing a picture of a hostage taken by Hamas during its attack on Israel on Oct. 7. 

“As we’re heading into the end of the Passover holiday, we wanted to recognize that there are still so many people that are being held hostage that are unable to celebrate Passover with their family,” Matt Vogel, the executive director of Hillel, said in a brief phone interview. 

“It’s temporary, so to adhere to UVM’s policies we’ll be taking it down every night and then setting it up each day for the week,” he said.