This is the second part of a multi-part series about Penn's Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Read the first part here, and check back at thedp.com for more inside information about the discussions behind the encampment's 16-day duration. 

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In the days before police swept the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus last spring, Penn offered to pause all disciplinary cases against protesters and committed to engaging with their demands if they ended their demonstration, according to negotiation documents obtained exclusively by The Daily Pennsylvanian.

The documents — which the DP acquired through a series of open records requests under Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know law — paint a portrait of a University simultaneously making concessions to protesters involved with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on College Green while drafting plans to arrest them with the help of Philadelphia Police. At the same time, interviews with faculty suggest that Penn rebuffed calls for de-escalation and declined to engage a third-party mediator in negotiations, potentially due to pressure from the United States Congress and members of the University Board of Trustees.

"Our goal is to move beyond a posture of demand vs. counter-demand and towards solutions that assist in building a bridge to an inclusive institutional future that is in line with our highest goals and ideals," Provost John Jackson wrote in an email to demonstrators on May 2.

After previously revealing that Philadelphia city officials opposed Penn's pleas to address the encampment, the DP examined the behind-the-scenes discussions about the demonstration among administrators, faculty, and students — including how negotiations broke down over 16 days and at least four meetings.

A student representative of the encampment did not respond to a request for comment. A University spokesperson declined multiple requests for comment for this story.

The encampment begins — and fault lines emerge

The fault lines that ultimately caused negotiations to break down became apparent two days into the encampment, when organizers reported that administrators viewed their demands as "unreasonable" during a meeting on April 27. While organizers informed University administration of their three main demands — the divestment of Penn’s endowment from companies with ties to Israel, the disclosure of investments, and the defense of pro-Palestinian students — the University responded by claiming that "financial transparency is bad business sense," organizers claimed in a statement.

On April 30, demonstrators announced a second meeting with Interim Penn President Larry Jameson and other negotiators to discuss the group's demands. The following morning, the encampment reaffirmed its commitment to staying put and said it would not negotiate unless Penn ended disciplinary proceedings, ensured there would be no police presence, and addressed their safety concerns. 

While the campus community remained in the dark about the encampment's future, with Jameson ceasing public statements on the matter for over a week, the Faculty Senate and its members met over the status of negotiations. Jackson appeared virtually at an emergency Faculty Senate Executive Committee on April 29 to discuss the encampment, during which an “overwhelming majority of faculty wanted de-escalation,” Political Science professor Tulia Falleti, who at the time was chair of the Faculty Senate, said. 

Falleti added that, of roughly 40 faculty members present, 20 spoke in favor of negotiation strategies and de-escalation tactics, and only one faculty member dissented. She later resigned as chair in protest of the University's response.

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Negotiations become a game of ‘demand vs. counter-demand’

Encampment negotiators reiterated those "baseline" demands in public and private, including in a May 1 email that outlines conditions for "substantive discussions" and appears to respond to a previous offer by Jameson and Jackson. In that email, organizers stipulated that Jameson attend all negotiations, and that the University withdraw disciplinary letters against encampment participants, commit to keeping police out of the encampment, and cease "threats to evict outsiders in the name of safety.”

The latter demand likely referenced Jameson and Jackson’s repeated calls for the encampment to be limited to Penn affiliates with PennCards. Jameson later told 2016 Fels graduate and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker that “many of the current self-identified leaders of the camp" were not Penn-affiliated, asking the PPD to help "secure" campus to only PennCard holders.

In their May 1 email, encampment organizers also demanded “clear lines of separation” between the Committee on Open Expression and the office of the vice provost for University Life, and for Penn to “re-establish the integrity” of the COE by separating it from involvement with Penn's disciplinary process and top administrators. Organizers acknowledged that these demands would require "administrative restructuring," while their other requests, like the withdrawal of disciplinary letters, could be accomplished immediately. 

"We want to emphasize that we would really like to proceed with discussions about the many ideas we have that would help build this institution into a place of critical engagement and global education," organizers wrote.

Less than 24 hours later, Jackson made several significant concessions to the encampment, albeit not meeting all of the protesters’ five conditions to reopen negotiations or the three main demands at the heart of the encampment's existence. The provost detailed an offer to pause all encampment-related disciplinary cases until the University could appoint a faculty-led committee — which would include student representatives — to revisit Penn's disciplinary process, including clarifying the Open Expression Guidelines and "the relationship between the Committee on Open Expression and University Life.” 

His offer, however, was conditional on the end of the encampment.

“This process review will take time, and we cannot have the encampment persist while we undertake such a review,” Jackson wrote.

He also expressed openness to a discussion about the "role of outsiders" in the protest, but reiterated that the University's central concern was about its inability to maintain safety with "unknown individuals residing on campus overnight and indefinitely.”

As discussions break down, Penn prepares for disbandment

Only two hours later, Penn emailed Parker's office with plans for a forcible disbandment of the Penn encampment “when the decision is made that the encampment is a threat to the safety of the community.”

That same night, Parker responded to Penn’s request and urged the University to seek a peaceful resolution rather than resorting to arrests. 

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“[I]t is in the best interest for all parties to continue to engage in dialogue to avoid escalation as we have seen in other college campuses across the country,” Parker wrote, citing peaceful encampment resolutions at Rutgers University, Brown University, and Northwestern University. 

Jameson, however, did not change his tack. He continued to push the city to intervene in the encampment by sending several pieces of additional evidence to Parker on May 3 — including the negotiation emails obtained by the DP. He also addressed a May 5 letter to Parker, in which he detailed more than 20 incidents of alleged violence and harassment at the encampment.

The University's inclination to prepare for arrests was coupled with a disinterest in involving third-party mediators in its negotiations with the encampment. 2013 Engineering graduate and Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Krajewski, who represents Penn and was present at multiple days of the encampment, indicated his willingness to act as a neutral arbitrator in negotiations between the University and students on May 5. His offer was conveyed to student organizers and administrators through multiple channels, according to Andrew Vaughan, a School of Veterinary Medicine professor and Faculty Senate member who was in direct contact with Krajewski.

But administrators opposed Krajewski's involvement until he reminded them that he represented Penn, Vaughan recalled. At the same time, encampment demonstrators may have deliberated over involving external parties, he suggested.

“I suspect there was a difference of opinion as to whether [the encampment] wanted any involvement from any outside entities other than themselves," Vaughan said.

Citing Penn’s “desire to advance and expedite conversation,” Jameson told Parker that Penn decided to “pause” engaging a third-party mediator in negotiations out of hope for the protesters to meet directly with himself and Jackson.

Wharton professor Eric Orts — a member of the 2023-24 Faculty Senate Executive Committee, who noted he was speaking to the DP in his personal capacity — said that student organizers “refused” to negotiate with anyone except for Jameson, citing an instance where he tried to facilitate a meeting between Jackson and a senior finance administrator. Encampment leadership turned the meeting down, Orts said.

An ‘unwinnable situation’ prompts Penn to call in the police

At a rally on College Green on May 5 — the same day that Jameson was in contact with Parker — student organizers announced that Jameson had stipulated he would only continue negotiations if half of the tents erected at the encampment were taken down. The organizers firmly declined to do so. 

The following day, Jameson sent his first message to the Penn community regarding the demonstration since April 26, noting that the University was continuing to propose additional negotiation meetings.

Jameson also wrote that he was collaborating with City officials and law enforcement, who advised that Penn focuses on de-escalation given the open nature of the University's campus. But Jameson simultaneously pledged to pursue stronger disciplinary action against protesters, warning that some students might face consequences severe enough to prevent them from graduating.

On the morning of May 7, an encampment spokesperson said a new negotiations meeting with administration “felt in good faith.” The meeting, which the spokesperson said lasted for three hours and included eight people, provided the encampment's negotiators an opportunity to present a list of demands to the University. 

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Later that day, Penn referred nine students for disciplinary action due to their involvement in the demonstration. The next day, the encampment expanded to the other side of College Green due to “administration’s continued bad-faith negotiations in our meeting this afternoon.”

That night, Penn spoke with City officials about clearing the encampment by force — and formally requested assistance on the morning of May 9.

The University was unable to agree to the encampment’s primary demand of divestment due to Pennsylvania’s laws against boycott, divestment, and sanctions — which prohibit certain types of divestment — according to Orts. He said that proposed compromises, such as continuing discussions on financial transparency, did not move forward because the students considered divestment a nonnegotiable issue, putting the University in an “unwinnable situation.”

How Penn combated pressure from faculty, trustees, and politicians 

Political science professor and Faculty Senate member Anne Norton criticized Penn for refusing the demonstrators’ request for open conversations without designated representatives. She described this refusal as part of a broader pattern of behavior by the University, which she described as an “authoritarian institution.”

“My sense [is] that they were making efforts to oblige the students to choose representatives or send representatives, as opposed to simply coming down to the camp like a good democratic person would, and instead behaving like authoritarians who could summon their subjects at will — I think that was bad faith,” Norton said.

In contrast, Orts said that administrators were “much more willing” to engage in negotiations than the student protesters.

“It was very difficult to talk with the student representatives themselves and the faculty advisors, who were the two English professors who [were] in the news [in May],” Orts said.

English professors Dagmawi Woubshet and Chi-Ming Yang were two of four faculty members detained by police for attempting to block police vans holding arrested student organizers when the encampment was forcibly dismantled by Penn and Philadelphia Police officers on May 10. The names of the other two faculty members detained have not been publicized in any media.

The DP could not confirm the identities of all faculty members present for the negotiations.

Norton suggested that, based on her experiences, the administration likely compelled faculty members involved in disciplinary matters to keep proceedings strictly confidential — or risk the students being punished. She contended that the lack of communication about negotiations to the broader Penn community was not due to a failure on the part of the faculty involved in negotiations, but rather “a failure of the administration to be transparent in its dealings.”

History and Sociology of Science professor Harun Küçük — who had no direct involvement in the negotiations — said that he believed that the encampment’s demands were limited by what the Board of Trustees was willing to concede, including on the topic of divestment. Küçük said that, while faculty decisions typically pass through the Board of Trustees without much resistance, he suspected that they are examining University decisions more closely in the current campus environment. 

Vaughan suspected that financial concerns played a significant role in how the University approached negotiations.

“It would be naive to not think that keeping the trustees and sources of money happy — donors, happy — was not a huge player in all of this,” Vaughan said.

Küçük said he also believed external political pressure played a significant role in the dismantling of the encampment, with the House Committee on Workforce and Education’s ongoing investigation into Penn raising concerns about congressional sanctions. 

“There are lots of extralegal ways to put pressure on the University. And my impression is that a lot of that was used at different levels and branches of government,” Küçük said.

Board of Trustees Chair Ramanan Raghavendran declined a request for comment. Political pressure on Penn's response to the encampment included Pennsylvania Gov. and ex-officio Board of Trustees member Josh Shapiro, who on May 9 publicly called on Penn to disband the encampment. 

The following morning, Penn Police officers, with the assistance of the Philadelphia Police Department, arrested 33 protesters, including at least nine Penn students. In a University-wide message explaining the May 10 sweep, Jameson acknowledged attempts at dialogue but said that the University could “could not allow further disruption of our academic mission.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to better reflect History and Sociology of Science professor Harun Küçük's comments about the pressures facing Penn administration during the encampment.