Tuesday on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, demonstrators broke through police barricades to lower the American flag in the main quad and raise a mock Palestinian flag instead. In video posted to X by student media organization The Daily Tar Heel, Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts is shown walking to the quad, surrounded by law enforcement officers, to put the American flag back up. Counter-protesters surrounded the flagpole and chanted “USA,” thanking Roberts for his intervention.
“That flag will stay there as long as I am chancellor,” he told WRAL news in live coverage of the protest. “Tell students that we will keep them safe from a small minority of students who want to disrupt their experience. This university is for everybody.”
In a campus safety alert, UNC posted a short time ago: “Alert Carolina! Adverse Conditions – Critical: UNC in Condition 2; 3-11:59 pm today. Classes canceled. Non-mandatory operations suspended.”
According to the student media outlet Carolina Review, the crowd of protesters set up an encampment Monday afternoon and stayed in the quad all night. They chanted “intifada,” “revolution,” and “from the river to the sea” during the demonstration. The term has become a rallying cry for eliminating the nation of Israel and putting the entire territory, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, under Palestinian control.
Police officers confiscated the Palestinian flag while pro-Palestine protesters and counter-protesters shout at each other.
“These protesters chant while waving Palestinian flags and wearing kaffiyeh scarves to show their solidarity with a cause they clearly don’t understand,” wrote Amy Rosenthal co-founder of the North Carolina Coalition for Israel in a column published on Carolina Journal Tuesday. “How did the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israelis on Oct. 7 generate rallies in favor of the perpetrators, even before any military response by Israel? This is no accident. A combination of faculty bent on disseminating propaganda in lieu of scholarship and weak leadership has created this perfect storm.”
“No one has the right to disrupt campus materially nor to threaten or intimidate our students,” the chancellor’s office wrote in a message issued earlier Tuesday.
This is a developing story.