Emory University President to faculty, staff, and students calling for his resignation over encampment handling: 'I'm not considering resigning'
Emory University’s President, Gregory Fenves, was interviewed by the university’s student-run newspaper over pro-Palestine protests and the university’s response to disruptions on campus.
“Tents and encampments can be problems because you don’t know who’s in it, you don’t know what’s in it.”
Emory University President Gregory Fenves said he’s “not considering resigning” following pressure from faculty, students, and staff over his handling of the anti-Israel encampment.
Fenves sat down in a Q&A interview with The Emory Wheel to discuss his plans going forward as the university’s president, as undergraduate students voted that they have “no confidence” in response to his handling of protests last spring.
42 percent of students participated in the vote that came after the school’s organized anti-Israel encampment was broken up by law enforcement officers, which led to the arrests of several students.
In the interview, Fenves was asked about how he would mitigate islamophobia and anti-Semitism on Emory’s campus, to which he said that Emory must focus on how to “balance the free speech rights, open expression rights, with having a community that can debate [and] discuss difficult issues is the challenge that society faces, and we should try to model that behavior at the University.”
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Re-stating that the university will “always try to foster dialogue,” Fenves said that he doesn’t believe encampments help dialogue on issues, stating that “[e]ncampments say ‘This piece of the University is mine,’ from my point of view. And as I’ve spoken also, encampments have a safety concern.”
Further speaking about encampments, Fenves said they “can be problems because you don’y know who’s in it, you don’t know what’s in it.”
Fenves added that Emory’s Police Department dealt with “an unprecedented level of vandalism to buildings” as a result of the encampment and that the university “had concerns about the safety that week that the encampment was later established.”
Fenves was also asked repeatedly why he hasn’t dropped charges for students and protesters arrested during the encampment, to he stated four times that the decision to drop charges was not up to him, but to the Office of Solicitor for DeKalb County.
Looking ahead at the rest of the semester, Fenves added that he has goals to lead Emory by making sure that all policies the university needs are in place.
“Student well-being is something at the top of our attention” Fenves stated
