Student organizers at Johns Hopkins University are launching another year of protests to demand complete divestment from companies and organizations with ties to Israel.
On Thursday, a few Baltimore nonprofits and other student groups joined the Hopkins Justice Collective for the first rally of the school year on the main lawn — the same place they held an encampment for nearly three months this spring.
“Though the tents and tarps came down in May, the student intifada has only begun,” said a student representative from the justice collective, who declined to give a name out of safety. “We will not rest until our demands are met for a complete demilitarization of the university system, including the boycott and divestment of companies engaging in genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Now it is time to escalate.”
Students broke down their collection of tents at the end of last school year after coming to an agreement with university leaders that they would not punish any student participants — and they would consider protesters’ list of demands by June 2025.
Speakers at this week’s rally echoed those demands, calling for Hopkins to end its contract with the Department of Defense, which funnels up to $10.6 million into the applied physics lab for research and development.
“The applied physics laboratory designs weapons, software and techniques of war that are used by imperialist militaries around the world,” the HJC student leader said.
In an emailed statement, a Hopkins spokesperson said students are free to express their “strong views and opinions” as long as they comply with university guidelines.
“We ended the encampment in May with an agreement, and we are entering this semester with the expectations that the students will honor that commitment,” the statement read.
The protesters on Thursday also demanded full disclosure of the university’s divestments into weapons companies like Lockheed Martin, and the abolishment of the Johns Hopkins Police Department.
“When Johns Hopkins maintains a private police force to prop up its expansion into the city of Baltimore and to even threaten its own students and workers for agitating on campus, that is a labor issue,” said Amish C., a graduate student from Teachers and Researchers United who didn’t give a full name because of safety concerns. “There can be no business as usual for a university here when there are no universities left in Gaza.”
