Stony Brook faculty group calls for charges to be dropped against students and professors arrested during pro-Palestinian protests

Stony Brook University’s Senate faculty voted overwhelmingly Monday for the school to drop charges against 29 students and faculty who were arrested last week in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest.

In a heated meeting that included university President Maurie McInnis, the Senate also voted to investigate a new campus police operation that McInnis initiated. Speakers noted that campus police confiscated some protesters’ cellphones and refused to return them, which some professors called an action more typical of an authoritarian police state.

The Senate tabled a third resolution a week ago declaring: “No confidence in the ability of President McInnis to wisely and humanely discharge the ongoing duties of her office.” The resolution calling for the charges to be dismissed has largely passed symbolic in nature, as the group has no direct power over the government’s actions related to the protest.

During the nearly two-hour meeting, McInnis vehemently defended her handling of last week’s protests, saying university officials were put in an extremely difficult position and did their best to defuse the precarious situation.

“We didn’t want to arrest anyone,” she said. “We wanted to de-escalate the situation.” She noted that the protests at other universities across the country had turned out far worse. Columbia University has canceled its main graduation ceremony after nearly 300 people were arrested there, along with the City College of New York.

University officials refused to discuss why the cellphones were confiscated and not returned, saying they were “open cases.”

School officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decisions.

One of the professors arrested at the protest, Josh Dubnau, called the vote to drop the charges “powerful.” When it was read, the room erupted in cheers and applause.

Meanwhile, one of the protest’s main student organizers, Namal Fiaz, 21, said the arrests would not stop their demonstrations.

In a 90-minute interview, her first since last Thursday’s arrests, Fiaz, a senior, said her arrest and suspension “mean nothing when people are dying in Palestine at this moment.”

“The university and the police can use any intimidation tactics they want against us. But in the end, we’re not going anywhere. I was suspended. I am not allowed to be physically on campus. I don’t even know if I can graduate. But I do not care. Because I know my voice is heard. We know we are on the right side of history,” Fiaz said.

University officials said Monday that 20 students had received “interim suspensions,” compared to the three they reported last week. They said students could appeal and some had already done so successfully.

The students and teachers were accused of disorderly conduct. An additional trespassing charge was filed against Fiaz since she was suspended at 5 p.m. last Wednesday, but remained on campus while police began arresting protesters around midnight.

The resolution dropping the charges also called on the university to grant amnesty to all students and faculty and to pay to expunge all records of their arrests.

The campus police motion, called “Enterprise Risk Management,” called for an independent Senate investigation into the unit’s handling of student protests and “information gathering” from staff, faculty and students.

The campus has been in turmoil since campus police, Suffolk County police and New York State Troopers broke up an encampment set up by protesters last week and made the arrests.

Stony Brook officials said the protesters were arrested after they were repeatedly warned they had to leave the grassy area known as Staller Steps after occupying it for nearly two days, including because another group was leaving the area the next day should use.

The bloodshed in Gaza has sparked protests, including tent encampments on university campuses across the country. The militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack on October 7. According to the authorities in Gaza, around 34,500 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s counteroffensive. Israel claims it is fighting to eliminate a terrorist organization and civilian casualties are an undesirable consequence.

Fiaz said she believed campus police confiscated their phones to disrupt her organization, but she said they had already received new ones donated by supporters.

“Even though I’m not allowed on campus, it hasn’t really hindered my organizing work,” she said.

Robert Chase, an associate professor of history at Stony Brook University and an expert on prisons, policing and the civil rights movement, said he views the confiscation of the phones as part of what he calls the increasing “militarization” of college campuses.

Fiaz said the group she founded last fall, Students for Justice in Palestine, coordinates with numerous other SJP departments at locations across the country, including at Columbia University, as well as with the organization’s national leadership.

She said she even received encouragement and help from the co-founder of the Red Balloon Collective, a radical student organization at Stony Brook that protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.

Other SJP chapters “gave us tips. They gave us resources. SJP is a very large network and we all have exactly the same goal: withdraw from Israel. Every single camp you see on the news was organized by an SPJ department at that particular school.”

Fiaz, two faculty members and seven other students were held handcuffed behind their backs at campus police headquarters for about seven and a half hours, she said.

The other 19 arrested protesters were taken to New York State Police barracks in Riverhead, Brentwood and Farmingdale, authorities said.

Fiaz said she doesn’t know what her future will hold but she has no regrets.

“Decades from now, they will look back on this, just as they did the protesters in the Vietnam War, and they will call the students heroes for protesting and making their voices heard,” she said.