Students at Johns Hopkins University are joining their peers at colleges nationwide who are calling on school leaders to divest from companies with Israeli ties — and support Palestinian liberation.

Hundreds of protesters gathered on Hopkins’ main lawn and marched through central campus on Wednesday evening, chanting “free, free Palestine” and “Hopkins, Hopkins, you can’t hide; you’re supporting genocide.” Baltimore police officers and Hopkins security officials lined their path, watching over the field.

Students at major colleges and universities — like Yale, Columbia University and Vanderbilt — have been protesting for weeks, often setting up encampments on campus. Hundreds nationwide have been arrested by local police.

Fatima, a Muslim student at Hopkins using a pseudonym for safety, said university administrators sent an email reminding students that encampments are against school policy. She said officials sent the email “out of fear.”

“It's honestly a shame to see that these types of movements and protests that are calling for freedom, justice, and liberation can scare some people,” she said. “And instead of trying to think about, ‘Wow, maybe these people are saying something right. Maybe we should divest,’ they try to crack down on students.”

A university spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the university has “long standing policies and guidelines to support demonstration and free expression.”

“Our priority this evening was to accommodate a peaceful protest while maintaining a safe environment for our community,” the statement said. “These guidelines were developed collaboratively with our students and reflect a mutual commitment to ensuring the flow of open, vibrant expression that is so essential to our academic community, and to preventing harassment, discrimination, or intimidation.”

Protest leaders urged attendees to not talk to any administrators or police officers during the demonstration.

Protesters want divestment, plan further action 

Fatima, who is also one of Wednesday’s protest organizers, said the goal was to refocus attention on Gaza.

“The situation that the people there are enduring is just getting worse and worse, and we were just astounded by the collective silence,” she said. She specifically pointed to the discovery of over 300 bodies buried under the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza Strip this week.

The Gaza Health Ministry reports that at least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7.

“These staggering figures aren't just numbers; they were individually breathing humans, as real as you and I,” Fatima said in the protest’s opening remarks. “We are deeply disturbed by the silence of people in power across the world, from the U.S. government to the Johns Hopkins administration.”

Simha Fleischmann, a Jewish Hopkins student and protest organizer, listed three specific demands for university leaders.

The first is to divest from 2-3 weapons companies with ties to Israel like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The second is to sever the university’s partnership with the University of Tel Aviv. And the third is to stop the formation of a Hopkins private police force.

Some anonymous student speakers also called out the university’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which has a contract with the Department of Defense.

Fleischmann said protest demands are constantly changing to reflect what students are asking for. Multiple student groups are working together to plan demonstrations, like the Hopkins Justice Collective and the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

“We didn't know if we would really have the numbers to do something larger scale or do a stronger direct action,” Fleischmann said. “So today was really a test to see…who's going to show up now who didn't show up in October? And we're really encouraged to see that momentum building.”

They said student groups are meeting next week to plan further action.

“We are closely watching the encampments happening,” they said. “There's no encampment right now. I don't see any tents. But we're hearing those requests. And we're planning something that is going to keep people safe, while we can still make our specific demands…elevated and heard.”

Counter-protesters urge attention to hostages, safety

Two counter-protesters stood in the crowd holding an Israeli flag. Both of them requested to be anonymous out of safety concerns.

The student holding the flag said she felt a need to remind people about the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.

“Why don’t they mention these people?” she said. “They are for solidarity…but they don’t see any discussion. They’re here. They just shout.”

Another said she was shocked by the arrests happening on college campuses.

“I didn't think that it was possible that things would get so hostile on a college campus in the United States,” she said. “I can't imagine that we've reached a time where the Jewish students have to be sent home because they're not safe. And I think that that speaks for itself that that is the situation that we're in.”

Both students said they feel relatively safe on campus. But the second student fears that Hopkins is “edging towards” the climate at other colleges like Columbia and Yale “with what's going on here.”

Fleishmann said that as a Jewish student, they’ve faced more backlash from Jewish peers on campus than any external antisemitism.

“I think what's been happening to visibly Muslim students on this campus has been a lot scarier than anything that's ever happened to me, or that I've heard of happening to self-identified Zionists on this campus,” they said.