MIT students stage anti-Israel Gaza Camp to match Yale, Columbia

The "Scientists Against Genocide" encampment, which was set up Sunday night on the Kresge Lawn, mirrors those established by students at Columbia and Yale last week.

In a post on X, the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid announced the protest, and made it clear that the camp would "remain on Kresge Lawn until MIT meets demands to disclose and cut research ties with Israel, drop charges against student organizers, and call for a ceasefire."

"Why are we tenting?" CAA asked. "We are over SIX MONTHS into the genocide in Gaza. We have let life go on, let business go on as usual, while a genocide has been broadcasted to us for months. MIT is explicit in its complicity."

The group called MIT's actions "unconscionable" and "immoral," suggesting that the school had chosen to embody "a gross disdain for human life and human dignity."

"We charge you in the brutal genocide of the Palestinian people," they continued, "for your explicit role in providing scientific and technological support for the Israeli Occupation Forces and their crimes."

"They use our labor to advance their prestige," the group wrote. "They use our student culture to improve their image. We are so much stronger as a community ... The students of Columbia, Rutgers, and countless other schools, with the resilience of their Gaza solidarity encampments, have shown us what it means to resist the powers of our complicit institutions and fight collectively."

"Following in Columbia's footsteps, we are in an encampment in solidarity with Gaza," explained one keffiyeh-clad student taking part in the protest. "We are the ones who run this campus, who make this campus what it is. We hold the power, so we have to show them that we won't back down until they meet our demands."