How Princeton University tried to 'scapegoat' a PhD student over pro-Palestine protests

In April 2024, 13 members of the Princeton University community, including 12 students and one post-doctoral researcher, were arrested for participating in a pro-Palestine sit-in at a building on the main campus in Princeton, New Jersey.

At the time, a wave of pro-Palestine protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza was sweeping university campuses across the US, including at Princeton, where hundreds of students had set up an encampment to call on the university to cut ties with companies profiting from Israel's occupation of Palestine and its war on Gaza.

The university's refusal to negotiate with students spurred 13 activists on 29 April to collectively occupy Clio Hall, home to the graduate centre, and force administrators to the table.

The Clio 13 - as they became known - were immediately arrested and temporarily banned from campus. Those living in university housing were reportedly evicted and stripped of access to medical care.

They were also slapped with a four-year academic probation, which will leave a permanent stain on their academic records.

While several other institutions have since dropped charges against students for various alleged offences on campus property, and Princeton initially indicated that the students were unlikely to face more punitive measures than academic probation, the charges against the Clio 13 were not dismissed.

Over the past nine months, the accused have been made to appear in court at least five times.  

But with the case grinding on and slowly unfurling into a potential PR crisis for the university, students and faculty say the university has appeared to shift strategy.

All for one

In late January, one of the accused, Aditi Rao, a PhD candidate in the classics department, was informed by the cohort's lawyer that the local prosecutor was prepared to drop charges against all of the students - except her. 

Rao said it was explained to her that the municipal prosecutor, in consultation with the university, had decided, without providing any evidence, that she alone was responsible for the sit-in in April.

When she refused to plead guilty to "trespassing" at her university or for being the one who orchestrated the protest, her lawyer informed her that the prosecutor had returned with a flipped script.

This time, the prosecutor said the charges against the other 12 would be dismissed, but only if she pleaded guilty. 

"It was really clear what they were trying to do here. First, they were trying to create a lot of tension and discord between us as a collective, to pin us against each other and to leverage my guilty plea against the dismissal of 12 people's charges," Rao told Middle East Eye.

Rao said she also realised the university didn't want the case to become a public spectacle.

"They didn't want this to go to trial. So by coercing me into taking the fall at this point, it would save them the hassle of needing to go to court," Rao added.

With Rao maintaining her innocence and determined to ensure the case did not result in setting a precedent where protesters could be deemed criminal "trespassers", she informed her co-accused that she could not plead guilty to the charges levelled at her. To her relief, her co-accused agreed.

This coming April, all 13 will now stand trial.

Condemnation and outrage

The legal strategies targeting students have prompted outrage amongst students and faculty at Princeton, who say the developments underscore the level of repression faced by students who refuse to accept the university's ongoing "complicity" in Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

Several students and faculty have consistently told MEE of the university's failure to protect faculty and students from "Zionist attacks" from both within and outside the university.

Many of these attacks pre-date the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, with pro-Israeli groups targeting curriculum as well as students and teachers who brought forth literature critically examining Israel's occupation and apartheid policies.

However, since October, students say the level of abuse hurled against students opposing war and what has been called "genocide" by human rights bodies has reached new heights.

"Within the last year, Princeton’s administration has restricted free speech and increased surveillance on campus, including monitoring cell phone calls and summoning students for arbitrary interrogations with campus police," Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD), the campaign calling on Princeton to divest from Israel, said in a statement sent to MEE.

PIAD added that the university had opened disciplinary cases against students and was withholding degrees from students "for participating or simply being in the vicinity of a protest only to then sanction them for not 'cooperating' with coercive investigations".

Faculty observing the developments, too, say that Rao, who often played a prominent role as a graduate student union organiser, appeared to have been targeted as a person of colour.

"It does seem as though the University has been desperate to identify 'ringleaders' they can punish for their role in campus protest and activism over the course of the past year and a half. In that regard, one might explain the state prosecutor’s attempt to isolate and scapegoat a single student - Aditi Rao - as a desperate attempt to pin the blame on a specific individual for a collective act of protest," Max Weiss, a professor of history at Princeton, told MEE.

"It is extremely disturbing that the University and its legal representation seem to be consistently targeting students with experience in and commitments to social justice causes.

"Furthermore, throughout the mobilisation on campus against the genocide in Gaza and the unwaveringly supportive role played by the United States, students of colour have borne the brunt of this academic repression as well as the most unyielding approaches to internal disciplinary matters but also legal action," Weiss added.

Both Princeton University's communication office and municipal prosecutor Christopher Koutsouris did not reply to MEE's request for comment.

Growing calls for divestment

Across the US, one of the primary demands from the student movement has centred around divesting from companies, especially weapon manufacturers involved in facilitating Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

At Princeton, the call for divestment has rapidly become a popular demand from the student body.

In December 2024, undergraduate students at the university voted in a resolution demanding it divest from weapons manufacturing.

The resolution specifically called on administrators "to disclose and divest all direct and indirect holdings in companies involved in weapons development, manufacturing, or trade, with the big five companies [Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and General Dynamics]" as a matter of priority.

Sofia Menemenlis, another student who was arrested in the sit-in last April, said the movement's gains showed that the university was desperately searching for a scapegoat in a losing cause.

"All 13 of us entered at the same time. We stayed for the same amount of time, and we were arrested together," Menemenlis, a PhD candidate in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences programme at Princeton University, told MEE.

Menemenlis said it was absurd that Rao would be placed in a position in which she would be expected to accept guilt for a crime she did not commit just so the university could portray it as the actions of a lone wayward student and not a wider reflection of a growing rejection of university policies.

"It would be dangerous to set a precedent that a student could be punished in this way for speaking and expressing political views on their own campus," Menemenlis said, adding that the arrest and intimidation against students had already created a culture of fear and ambiguity amongst students over the right to assemble and speak freely.

"It's troubling that her case would be pinned to ours in any way. It feels deeply wrong for her to be singled out and punished in this way, and so we stand by her maintaining her innocence, and for the right to peaceful protest on her own campus and for exercising her right to a trial.

"I regret that she was put in this position, but we all stand beside her, even though we would like to have the charges dismissed, of course," Menemenlis said.

Others at the university agreed.

A petition that started in late January, calling for the charges to be dropped, has already amassed close to 1,400 signatures.

Meanwhile, PIAD, the group that helped organise the encampment at the university, accused the institution of singling out Rao to send a chilling message to student activists planning on organising protests on the campus.

Protests against the US-supported war in Gaza mushroomed across the country and around the world in 2024. 

Pro-Israel groups routinely described the encampments that were set up at more than 100 universities in the US as "pro-Hamas" or "antisemitic", a charge that has been emphatically debunked by Palestinians as well as Jewish anti-Zionist students and faculty who took part in the protests.

Nonetheless, several universities authorised law enforcement to enter campuses, dealing with students with immense brutality.

Last week, Palestinian Legal wrote that in light of the new measures introduced by Trump, it had received several reports from students across the country who complained about a new level of repression for pro-Palestine protests. 

As part of a raft of executive orders signed by Trump within his first week in office, the president promised to cancel visas and deport international students who participate in what he described as "pro-Hamas" protests on campuses. 

"These reports of repression from students also follow a recent trend where scores of American universities have adopted new university policies of “institutional neutrality” with lightning speed, often in response to student and faculty organising in solidarity with Palestinians," Palestine Legal said.