Shouts of “free, free Palestine” echo across the marble walls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lobby 7. Adamant voices on the other side of the room counter, shouting, “from Hamas.”
A man in a cream sweatshirt pushes against a line of protesters, police, and protest “marshals” in orange vests shielding a circle of pro-Palestinian demonstrators sitting on the floor. When he breaks through, he rips a piece of cardboard out of one of the seated demonstrators’ hands, yelling at them.
A pro-Israel counterprotester pushes into a circle of pro-Palestinian protesters sitting on the floor of MIT’s Lobby 7.
The man, a pro-Israel counterprotester, then returns to the crowd and begins pushing against the people protecting the seated demonstrators. One of the marshals falls to the ground.
As the video of the incident, which has now gained over 1.7 million views on X, ends, someone in the crowd holds up an Israeli flag. The calls to “free, free Palestine” grow louder.
The November 9 protest at MIT, and the administration’s much-criticized response, exemplify the escalating tensions on campuses since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Many students have been arrested or suspended, a few colleges have banned the groups behind the demonstrations, and many administrators are caught in an angry crossfire, unsure how to move forward.
The 12-hour MIT protest was organized by its Coalition for Palestine, a group of 12 student organizations, and took place in one of the main entrances to the university. When pro-Israel counterprotesters arrived, the situation escalated quickly. After MIT administrators demanded that protesters vacate Lobby 7, students who remained were suspended from engaging in any nonacademic activities. The suspended students felt unfairly targeted, insisting that their speech was being quelled. Others decried the administration’s unwillingness to exact harsher punishments, including full suspension.
The Chronicle spoke with 10 students who attended the demonstration and consulted dozens of videos from the day. What happened in Lobby 7 at MIT shows how quickly student protests can spiral — and how responses from administrators will almost always frustrate all sides, and sometimes fuel more protests.
Tension between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students has been growing on MIT’s campus since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The MIT Israel Alliance, a recently formed group, has been calling on administrators to condemn “an onslaught of antisemitic harassment and hate speech on campus,” according to an email Talia Khan, president of the alliance, sent to Sally Kornbluth, MIT’s president, the day after the November 9 demonstration. Though the alliance did not organize the counterprotest that day, many of its members attended.
Khan, a Jewish graduate student in the department of mechanical engineering, said she understands where the counterprotesters were coming from.
“They were mad; they were frustrated because all of us have been in talks with MIT for weeks, and it’s lip service,” Khan said. “They felt that the only way to get MIT to listen was to lash out.”
We’re always the ones who are getting punished. We’re always the ones told that we’re being the bad guys.
The Chronicle was unable to reach any of the counterprotesters from the November 9 protest.
The Coalition for Palestine organized the demonstration to call for the liberation of the Palestinian people and to protest MIT’s associations with Israel. The organization’s goal is to build a consensus that is willing to say “stop the genocide” of the Palestinian people, said Susanna Chen, a member of the Coalition Against Apartheid, one of the main organizing groups in the Coalition for Palestine.
Since October 7, and especially after November 9, Chen, a graduate student in the department of electrical engineering and computer science, said the university has been treating pro-Palestinian students as a “scapegoat.” According to Chen, the administration has placed blame for rising tensions on campus solely on pro-Palestinian students, despite the fact that many of their demonstrations have been peaceful.
“We’re always the ones who are getting punished,” Chen said. “We’re always the ones told that we’re being the bad guys.”
Last week, Kornbluth released a statement answering questions about the November 9 protest. She called the demonstration “a 12-hour blockade” that was “close on the heels of other disruptive actions initiated by some students.” In an accompanying video, she said her main goal was to keep the campus “safe” and “functioning.” Rather than taking sides, she said MIT must commit to protecting students’ freedom of expression, which puts the administration “between a rock and a hard place.”
This is Kornbluth’s first year as president of MIT — she was previously provost at Duke University. She and her staff have released seven statements so far about the war, including three videos.
“Last Thursday was a low point for our community — because we lost the capacity for listening and learning,” Kornbluth said in the video. “Is that really what we want MIT to be? With students shouting each other down, and pushing and shoving each other, to the point that we had to intervene because we feared a serious altercation? Do we want things to escalate even further, as we’ve seen on other campuses?”
The Coalition for Palestine and the Coalition Against Apartheid, which draws inspiration from protests students led in the 1980s to oppose the apartheid in South Africa, have held or participated in more than 20 events since the start of the war. They have grown in size and become increasingly emphatic.
On October 23, CAA participated in a citywide walk-out. Students collectively set alarms on their phones for 11:30 a.m. and left class to meet in Lobby 7.
A week later on October 30, they conducted a “die-in,” taping the names of killed Palestinians to the backs of chairs in classrooms.
Before a rally on November 2, the group delivered letters to Kornbluth and to staff in the MIT Global Experiences Office demanding the university end its MIT-Israel Lockheed Martin Seed Fund, which supports partnerships between researchers at MIT and in Israel. Protesters delivered the letters to staff offices, leading chants along the way.
On November 8, the CAA announced on Instagram a “shutdown for Palestine” in Lobby 7 as part of a larger global action planned by several national pro-Palestinian groups.
Levi Gershon, events coordinator for the Israel Alliance, said that as the protests have increased, many Jewish students don’t feel comfortable on campus.
“It’s a terrifying feeling to see this radicalism growing, to feed these calls for intifada, for indiscriminate violence against Jews,” said Gershon, a Jewish graduate student in the mechanical-engineering department, “and then to be gaslit into being told that that our fears are imagined, and ‘no, no, these calls are entirely peaceful and you’re supporting genocide in objecting to these calls.’”
Lobby 7 is a large marble room surrounded by stone pillars and two sets of balconies. Its entryway includes three doors and large windows overlooking Massachusetts Avenue. It leads to the Infinite Corridor, which houses offices, labs, and classrooms. Kornbluth’s office is also there.
The area is a “hub” for student protests, Chen said, and organizations have for years held demonstrations there.
The Coalition for Palestine’s plan on November 9 was to sit peacefully, do homework, talk, and play music, Chen said. Since most students use Lobby 7 to get to class and other places on campus, she said they elected “marshals” to ensure that people could easily get past the demonstrators.
The day before, on November 8, Suzy M. Nelson, MIT’s vice chancellor and dean of student life, released a list of updated “free-expression policies” that identified five outdoor areas on campus as “the only approved protest venues.” Lobby 7 was not listed. The approved locations would prohibit protests from disrupting “living, learning, and working spaces,” the statement said, and anyone who fails to comply with the guidelines would be referred to the committee on discipline.
The statement also explained the university’s free-expression guidelines, announced an enhanced police presence on campus, and encouraged students to report harassment and threats.
We came to MIT to do science. That’s what we’re here to do. But MIT is making it such that we feel so terrified for our safety and our well-being on campus that we can’t even focus on that.
These updated policies came after weeks of pressure from Jewish and Israeli students calling on the administration to better regulate student demonstrations, Khan said. On the evening of November 8, students met with administrators to express concerns that demonstrators would prevent students from entering the university through Lobby 7, that protests would attract non-students who might instigate violence, and that the administration doesn’t properly discipline students who violate university policies, Khan said.
According to Chen, the decision to ban protests in Lobby 7 was “not in good faith” and came as a “complete surprise,” especially after the coalition had already planned many other nondisruptive demonstrations in the area.
“It was very obvious it was a means of trying to censor this and shut down this protest,” she said.
With almost 300 people signed up to participate, the group decided to move forward with the demonstration, believing in “strength in numbers.”
Around 7:30 a.m., Chen and a group of about 50 other protesters gathered in Lobby 7. They brought large signs reading “Stop the Fund,” “Free Palestine,” and “No Business as Usual Until Palestine Is Free.” One read “Sally You Can’t Hide” in red lettering. They also quietly played Arabic folk music and did homework.
A counterprotester yelling at a pro-Palestinian protester that “this girl is supporting rape.”
Throughout the morning, hundreds more protesters arrived. Counterprotesters showed up as well, Chen said, but stayed quiet for the beginning of the protest.
Around 9 a.m., though, things took a turn. Pro-Israel protesters began trying to walk through groups of seated demonstrators, knocking some over and pulling signs out of their hands. One video shows a man filming another protester and yelling, “This girl is supporting rape. Look how she’s supporting the rape of a 19-year-old girl by 30 Hamas terrorists.” In another video, the same man gets close to one protester who blocks the man’s face with cardboard, but the man rips it out of the protester’s hand and throws it aside.
Chen says she was called a “bitch” and told that she was going to “get raped by Hamas.” She says the counterprotesters played loud, “heart-pumping” music that echoed through the dome-shaped room. She also said counterprotesters called a specific member of the CAA a terrorist over a speaker system they brought.
The pro-Palestinian protesters had brought a microphone and speaker to address the crowd, but it was taken by police, Chen said, so the music and yelling from the counterprotesters drowned out many of their chants. An MIT spokesperson declined to comment on this situation.
Chen’s recollections could not be confirmed by video evidence found online.
To Chen, the aggression of the counterprotesters was “unexpected” and “insane.” “It was very obvious that they were just trying to make a mess,” she said.
The same counterprotester ripping a cardboard sign out of a pro-Palestinian protester’s hands.
To defend themselves from being stepped on or kicked, around 10 a.m. the pro-Palestinian protesters created two “picket circles,” marching in a circle and chanting “cease-fire now,” “end the fund,” “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the sea to river, Palestine will live forever,” among other slogans. Videos show protesters yelling at one another. One video shows a pro-Palestinian protester apparently trying to knock a camera out of a pro-Israel protester’s hand.
Khan, who works in an office close to Lobby 7, arrived at the demonstration around 10 a.m. She had planned to work that day. “To just see all of these signs and posters yelling about genocide and intifada, and hearing people yell claims about ethnic cleansing and apartheid and just these horrible things,” Khan said, “I couldn’t focus, I just stayed there and watched.”
Gershon arrived at the demonstration around 11:45 a.m. and watched from a balcony on the second floor of the building. “It was swirling chaos,” he said.
As the demonstration escalated, MIT police and other staff members offered to help protesters move to another location, but they declined, according to Kornbluth’s November 14 statement. Around midday, Kornbluth, Melissa Nobles, MIT’s chancellor, and Cynthia Barnhart, its provost, visited the demonstration and “concluded it was urgent to clear the lobby,” according to the statement.
Just before noon, staff from the Office of Student Life circulated slips of paper warning the protesters that they would be suspended for violating campus policies if they did not leave the area by 12:15 p.m. Kornbluth’s statement also says that Nobles told the students over a microphone to leave, but “protesters with bullhorns shouted her down.”
“Yesterday you all received a communication outlining the boundaries for protests on our campus,” the slip said. “With the current disruption of institute activities, a line has been crossed.”
The pro-Israel protesters left within a few minutes of receiving the warnings, according to Kornbluth and students who were at the demonstration. Khan, who was observing the protest from a balcony overlooking Lobby 7, said she warned members of the Israel Alliance to leave the area. “We told everybody, ‘Listen to this letter. We’re not about to get suspended here. We need to follow the rules.’”
Many of the protesters from the Coalition for Palestine questioned the legitimacy of the warning “due to the abrupt nature of the delivery and the unprofessional tone in the letter,” according to a November 13 press release.
Kornbluth said in her November 14 statement that handing out the written warnings was the “most reliable” way to communicate with students because of how “overwhelming” the chanting and shouting had become. The warning was written “in extraordinary haste,” she said, and seemed like the “best path” rather than using physical force to clear the area.
“For the campus community to be safe for everyone, we need to enforce the rules — especially in the face of deliberate decisions to break them,” she said.
Still, pro-Palestinian protesters decided it was important to maintain a “strong and unified position,” said Safiyyah Ogundipe, president of the CAA. While many pro-Palestinian protesters have been reluctant to show their faces or share their names, most members of the Coalition for Palestine intentionally reveal their identities, she said, to show their strength. “By being strong in that way, it kind of already takes away some of the power that the doxxing, for example, would have,” explained Ogundipe, a senior studying mechanical engineering.
To the protesters, the warnings seemed like an “intimidation tactic” meant to end the demonstration, rather than an actual threat, she said.
After the pro-Israel counterprotesters left, the pro-Palestinian protesters continued marching in two circles at the front and back of the lobby. They hoped the marching would encourage people to stay or join the demonstration, and, as more students arrived, the administration would be less likely to follow through on suspending them, Ogundipe said.
In the moment, she thought, “If we continue to keep the energy up, it’s going to be very difficult for them to actually act on this threat to a group of at least 60 some students, if not more.”
Members of local pro-Palestinian groups joined the demonstration as well. After police learned that non-students were at the “unauthorized protest,” the administration decided to close the doors to the lobby at 5 p.m., said Kimberly Allen, an MIT spokesperson, in an email statement to The Chronicle.
MIT’s alert system sent out an advisory to the campus community asking them to avoid the lobby and find “alternate routes.” MIT Hillel and several concerned faculty members specifically warned Jewish students to avoid the area, according to a statement from the Israel Alliance.
Pro-Palestinian protesters who stayed in the lobby said they were unable to re-enter the area if they left to get food or use the restroom. Supporters gathered on the balconies and used makeshift pulleys to lower food and other supplies to the students. Others organized a rally on the steps of Lobby 7. Chen estimated that more than 300 protesters were there, including on the balconies and steps.
Throughout the evening, protesters were in communication with administrators, including Nelson, Nobles, and David Randall, senior associate dean of student support and well-being, about the terms of the suspension.
students lowering supplies (1).mp4
Ogundipe said they asked that administrators retract the suspension warning, especially since the protest was intended to be nondisruptive and only escalated when counterprotesters arrived. Students were also frustrated that the administration acted hastily and didn’t follow the “proper channels” of disciplinary action, such as going through a disciplinary committee to issue suspensions.
Though Ogundipe and most of the protesters are domestic students, she said some of the international students who participated were worried about what would happen to their student visas if they were suspended. Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers have called to revoke visas from students who support Palestine or critique Israel’s actions.
“It’s not this simple threat that they can just use to disperse a crowd,” she said. “It’s something that was causing anxiety amongst some of our students.”
In a statement Kornbluth released that night, she said she’d decided to change the students’ suspension to only include “nonacademic campus activities” after hearing “serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues.”
Kornbluth also said in her November 9 statement that the administration would follow up on additional complaints they’d received about individual conduct from protesters and counterprotesters.
By 9:00 p.m., when the demonstration was initially supposed to end, around 100 protesters remained at the demonstration. They packed up and headed home.
The next day, videos and accounts of the protest went viral. Several conservative media outlets, including the New York Post and Campus Reform, reported that the protesters blocked Jewish students from going to class. Protesters denied this claim, and both Khan and Gershon said they did not know of any specific instances of Jewish students being blocked from going to class.
In Kornbluth’s November 14 statement, she addressed the rumor, saying that some students were “impeding access to the Infinite Corridor” and that it was “no surprise” others were afraid of passing through the area.
“We are not aware of any ongoing issues facing our students in moving around our campus generally,” she added. “However, we are aware that some of our Jewish students are fearful.”
The CAA had planned a day of teach-ins on November 10 in one of the classrooms on campus, but they were prevented from hosting it that morning by a group of MIT police officers. The administrators later told the students that the teach-in violated the terms of their suspension. Allen, the MIT spokesperson, declined to comment on this incident.
In the email Khan wrote to Kornbluth after the protest, she outlined several demands, including banning the CAA as well as any other group that “violates MIT rules and incites antisemitism against Jewish and Israeli students,” disciplining the leaders of the CAA and removing them from campus for a period of time, enforcing MIT rules equally, and denouncing the actions of the CAA and declaring support for combating antisemitism.
Khan’s letter now has over 1,600 signatures.
It’s really shameful, we believe, to be using calls for Jewish safety as a way to shut down criticism of Israel.
In Kornbluth’s November 14 video, she didn’t explicitly focus on Khan’s demands, but she did announce an universitywide “commission” to combat antisemitism at MIT. Though the commission’s main focus is antisemitism, she said it will also “include efforts to address prejudice and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims.”
She also discussed the administration’s response to the demonstration and the student suspensions.
“I want to make crystal clear that our response to last week’s protest is absolutely not a comment on the content of the views expressed,” Kornbluth said. “Our response is the result of students having deliberately violated MIT’s policies against disrupting the functioning of our campus.”
For students on all sides, though, Kornbluth’s statement wasn’t enough.
Khan sees a “double standard” in the administration’s response to the demonstration. While everyone from the Israel Alliance left as soon as the suspension slips were handed out, she said the pro-Palestinian students opted to stay despite knowingly violating the rules.
“If you’re saying when and where” free speech can be used, “it has to be applied equally,” she said. “You can’t say, ‘OK, you guys can’t use your free speech, except we’re gonna talk to you guys after and figure out something that works.’”
Khan and Gershon also expressed safety concerns about what demonstrators have said during pro-Palestinian events. They hear chants like “globalize the intifada,” “resistance is justified,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as terrifying calls for the elimination of Jewish people. And the administration, Khan said, isn’t doing enough to protect them.
“We came to MIT to do science. That’s what we’re here to do,” Khan said. “But MIT is making it such that we feel so terrified for our safety and our well-being on campus that we can’t even focus on that.”
Pro-Palestinian students also feel under attack. Many mentioned rising incidents of Islamophobia on campus.
“It’s just unsafe. People have gotten their hijabs snatched. I’ve been told I was going to get raped by Hamas too many times to count,” Chen said. “People have been called terrorists when all we want is peace. All we want is peace.”
Sam Kaufman, a member of Jews for Ceasefire, said the university’s decision to suspend students was “outsized” and “inappropriate,” considering the role Lobby 7 has played in many campus protests.
“It’s really shameful, we believe, to be using calls for Jewish safety as a way to shut down criticism of Israel,” said Kaufman, who is pursuing a master’s degree in the department of urban studies and planning.
Still, Ogundipe said the November 9 protest has, in some ways, strengthened the Coalition for Palestine. Several student groups released statements condemning the university’s response and supporting students involved in the demonstration. The editorial subcommittee of MIT’s faculty newsletter released a statement objecting to the administration’s response, and a group of 118 faculty members signed a letter addressed to Kornbluth expressing concerns over free speech on campus.
To Ogundipe, it’s important for people on campus to see that the coalition isn’t backing down. “I’m not gonna be run off of my own campus,” she said.
“It’s become its own day,” Ogundipe said. “Ten years from now, people will still be calling this the ‘November 9th protest,’ the ‘Lobby 7 protest.’”
