Conference of Pro-Palestinian Student Groups at Duke U. Ends Peacefully By ELIZABETH F. FARRELL
Conference of pro-Palestinian student groups at Duke U. ends peacefully
Durham, N.C.
A small group of pro-Israeli demonstrators converged Sunday on Duke University to protest during a rally concluding a three-day conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, an umbrella organization for about 80 student groups that have endorsed a five-point statement of principles.
The protesters held signs and yelled chants accusing the organization of condoning terrorism. But despite the heated words, the violent protests that some had feared did not occur, and the conference was mostly peaceful.
The most notable exception was a bomb threat called in to the police on Sunday morning from a man identifying himself as "one of the people here from Israel here at the conference," according to Duke officials.
The caller said three bombs had been planted in a campus building where a conference meeting was scheduled. A bomb squad from the Durham County Sheriff's Office searched the building and found nothing suspicious.
Rann Bar-On, a graduate student at Duke who organized the conference, said he had expected that the university would receive such a threat. "We had one last year -- it's a standard tactic they use," he said of the conference's critics.
The conference attracted about 400 participants, who called on universities and other organizations to divest their portfolios of stock in companies that do business with Israel.
Event organizers and Duke administrators had expected more out-of-town demonstrators to protest the conference, based on the 92,000 people who signed a petition opposing the conference, and on claims from the Jewish Defense League that it planned to organize busloads of protesters.
"When I came to campus today I thought there would be a lot more activity than there was," Stephen Bryant, the university's assistant dean of students, said on Saturday. "I was surprised there weren't a lot more students around. "We've had a couple reports of potentially disruptive folks that we're keeping our eye on, but nothing has really happened."
Duke administrators agreed in August to let Hiwar, an organization of pro-Palestinian Duke students, serve as host for the conference. Ever since, security concerns and controversy have preoccupied both the administration and the student members of Hiwar.
Some donors threatened to discontinue their support of the university, and many groups and individuals, including Duke alumni and their families, tried to pressure administrators to cancel the conference (The Chronicle, September 3).
Institutions that have allowed the four-year-old Palestinian Solidarity Movement to hold conferences on their campuses in previous years have faced similar controversies and security concerns, but each time the conference proceeded without major incident.
At Sunday's rally, the protesters remained behind chest-high temporary barricades bordering the buildings where conference members convened.
University officials said over the weekend that they did not yet know the final cost of security and planning for the conference, but they estimated it at between $30,000 and $60,000.