Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a former Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 race, said Thursday that any anti-Israel protesters on Florida college campuses could face expulsion for any harassing, offensive or belligerent behavior.
This comes as Ivy League schools like Columbia University, Harvard and Yale have all faced pro-Palestinian protesters overtaking their campuses with encampments and intimidation towards the Jewish population. Schools like Texas, USC and the University of Minnesota have also faced challenges, with Texas and USC having more than 100 people arrested, collectively, between the two on Wednesday.
DeSantis told a group of people at a "Strengthening Florida" event Thursday that pro-Palestinian demonstrators are "taking over bridges, and they’re taking over roads."
"First of all, you don’t have a right to do that," DeSantis said, adding that if someone in a medical emergency who needed to get to a hospital might get stuck in unwarranted traffic at an inopportune time.
"Someone may need to pick up a child somewhere, and you’re just going to commandeer the road because you have this [ideology]?"
The governor recanted when a similar group tried to do that in Miami, and "in 10 minutes they got dragged off the road where they belong."
"We’re not going to tolerate that," DeSantis said, which was followed by a room full of applause.
DeSantis called demonstrators who protest on behalf of Hamas "absurd." He said that chasing Jewish students around, and not letting Jewish professors into certain places, "isn’t free speech. That’s harassment. That violates appropriate conduct."
The governor said anti-Israel protesters at Yale and Columbia "rule the roost, do whatever they want." He said those university presidents are "weak, scared, and they don’t do anything."
"You do that at Florida, at our universities, we’re showing you the door. You're’ going to be expelled when you’re doing that stuff," he said. "And you know what? The minute people start to face consequences, you are not going to see this nonsense going on."
DeSantis later tweeted his speech with this statement attached, echoing his earlier comments.
"At places like Columbia and Yale, Hamas protesters rule the roost, and the universities are too weak and scared to do anything — even as these mobs harass Jewish students and faculty," DeSantis tweeted Thursday.
Anti-Israel agitators at Columbia issue defiant ultimatum, end ‘negotiations’ with school
"If you try that at a Florida university, you are going to be expelled."
Florida is home to three of the country’s most-populated campuses, with the University of Central Florida at fourth in the country with 68,442 students. The University of Florida is fifth in the country with 60,795 students, and Florida International University in Miami has 55,687 students, all according to enrollments from the 2022-23 academic year.
Two Texas schools in the top 10 have had demonstrations and protests this week. Texas A&M University, the second-largest populated campus in the country with 74,869 students, saw a small gathering of pro-Palestinian students Tuesday reading to folks on the College Station campus to raise money to evacuate a family trapped in Gaza. There were no reported frictions or arrests.
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Meanwhile, two hours west in Austin at the University of Texas — the 10th-most populated campus in the country with 52,384 students — there were hundreds of anti-Israel protesters who flooded a campus lawn Wednesday. Many of them clashed with local police officers and state troopers. There were 57 arrests on Wednesday, and 46 of those charges have already been dropped, according to the Texas Tribune.
