Statement on the arrest of protesters on college campuses
Over the past weeks, hundreds of students, faculty, and staff at universities across the continent have been threatened, arrested and abused by police when engaging in peaceful protests on university campuses. Among those attacked is long-time Berkshire Conference member, Dr. Annelise Orleck, professor of history at Dartmouth College. Dr. Orleck and her colleagues stood in solidarity with their students who protested Dartmouth’s connections to Israel and the war in Gaza and sought the divestment of the university from those connections. With a show of excessive force, police arrested Dr. Orleck and her colleagues and banned them from a large portion of campus, including administration buildings. This has necessitated the relocation of the annual Pow Wow as the ban included a number of Native American students who are now not allowed to enter the campus green.
The Berkshire Conference condemns the actions of the Hanover and New Hampshire State police and other police departments across the United States and Canada in using violence to disperse peaceful protests at the direction of institutions of higher learning. The Berkshire Conference stands behind our members, their colleagues and students in their right to peaceful assembly and protest. We call on the administration of Dartmouth College and other universities whose campuses have become sites of police violence to drop all charges and restrictions levied against peaceful protestors, issue formal apologies, and to continue discussions with student leaders about how their institutions can address the concerns raised by their communities.
The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Executive Committee
