CAMBRIDGE — The stretch of Massachusetts Avenue that cuts through the middle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus was a dividing line Friday between dueling protests on opposing sides of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Little more than the length of a football field separated the crowds, but their politics were worlds apart. Protesters on both sides of the street were full throated in their advocacy and steadfast in their belief that the other side was at best ill informed and at worst immoral, as the sun shone on the rallygoers through the afternoon.
There were fleeting moments of tension and verbal sparring between the two groups, but the afternoon passed peacefully, with no arrests or violence, unlike many campus demonstrations elsewhere in the United States in recent weeks.
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On the steps of 77 Massachusetts Ave., pro-Israel demonstrators, amid a sea of Israeli and American flags, rallied against what they saw as an encroaching antisemitism on college campuses. They said there is a double standard in the university’s treatment of a pro-Palestinian encampment that was erected last month just across Mass. Ave. from them on the Kresge Lawn. And they issued a clarion call for the release of hostages held by Hamas.
“This is a time to be Jewish and proud,” Meron Reuben, consul general of Israel to New England, told the crowd of several hundred, who cheered in response.
Across the busy thoroughfare, which police closed to traffic for several hours Friday, scores milled about the pro-Palestinian encampment. Some demonstrators there said they considered Israel to be an apartheid state and called for MIT to cut research ties with the Israeli military.
Volunteers handed out leaflets that encouraged passersby to join the “Scientists Against Genocide Encampment” and to call for the end of academic complicity in what they termed Israel’s “genocidal campaign in Gaza.”
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Among those handing out those leaflets was MIT graduate student Yoki Miliard. Given the death and destruction in Gaza, she said, “We don’t want our labor and work to be tied to that.”
Friday morning, fencing was erected around the pro-Palestinian encampment on Kresge Lawn that soon bore a mishmash of signage that reflected the chasm on campus over the Israel-Hamas war. There were Israeli flags next to “Free Palestine” placards. One sign standing next to the fence that encircled the encampment hailed an Israel Defense Forces soldier as a hero.
Lashed to the fence, there were pro-Palestinian messages scrawled on poster board: “Christians against Israeli apartheid,” and “Zionism: the highest stage of cringe.” Mere steps away, there were placards arrayed in a grassy area showing the faces of hostages held by Hamas. Israeli flags were tacked to trees.
There was a heavy police presence. Multiple times, MIT police shooed television camera operators to the sidewalk, saying they needed to record from there, as the campus was private property.
Tense as it was at times, the scene was in sharp contrast to what unfolded later Friday a few miles north on the campus of Tufts University, where pro-Palestinian protesters had pitched a similar encampment to press their school on the situation in Gaza. Late Friday, the students dismantled their protest site saying negotiations with the university had “failed.” They accused Tufts of offering them a “bad-faith deal.”
As with other protests, the students wanted Tufts to sever any connections to Israel. The school had told the protesters the encampment “must end” and said it had issued no-trespass notices to those camping on its academic quad.
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Tufts spokesperson Patrick Collins confirmed the removal of the tents “was not the result of an agreement with the university.”
“We’re pleased that the encampment has been taken down and that the protest on the academic quad has been resolved peacefully and voluntarily,” Collins said in a statement.
Pro-Palestinian protests have rocked campuses throughout the country in recent weeks in response to the ongoing war in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed more than 34,000 people, according to the local health ministry, since the war began with an attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.
Elsewhere, police have used riot gear, tactical vehicles, and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and occupied buildings. But none of that was in use in Cambridge Friday.
Earlier in the week, more than 100 were arrested during a police crackdown at Columbia University in New York. Early Thursday, officers surged against a crowd of demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, ultimately taking at least 200 protesters into custody after hundreds defied orders to leave.
In Boston, student encampments were broken up at Emerson College and Northeastern University in recent days, with police arresting around 100 people at each location.
During the rally at MIT organized by the New England chapter of the Israeli American Council, multiple speakers rejected the notion that “Zionism” is a dirty word. There were chants to free the hostages held by Hamas, and after the US national anthem was sung, a chant of “USA!” broke out.
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Dvir Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, said the school administration has failed to prevent an “explosion of antisemitic and anti-Israeli sentiments and acts by our most disgusting community members.” He suggested university officials have allowed the encampment to exist because they lack a moral backbone, and he labeled the pro-Palestinian demonstrators as “hate-spewing” and “pro-Hamas.”
Across the street, through multiple barricades, protesters held Palestinian flags and signs reading, “Let Gaza Live!” At one point, a group held a huge banner that read, “Jews say: Ceasefire Now.”
Hana Flores, an MIT graduate student and participant at the encampment, said she and others were upset by claims their pro-Palestinian space was antisemitic.
”The primary goal of the encampment is to demand that MIT cut its research ties with the Israeli military,” she said. “We are not calling for the cutting of ties with Israeli institutions or individuals.”
Flores said there is a large Jewish presence at the MIT encampment, which contradicts counterprotesters’ claims they are anti-Jewish.
”Criticism of the Israeli government is not synonymous with antisemitism; this is something that we all recognize and is very clear,” said Flores, who is not Jewish. ”A lot of the strongest organizers are Jewish people.”
More than 60 MIT faculty members formed a group before the “Scientists Against Genocide” encampment was set up to support students in their demands from the university and help maintain peaceful relations.
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”We support the students’ right to have an encampment to protest the ongoing genocide,” said Sally Haslanger, a member of the MIT Alliance of Concerned Faculty and a philosophy professor. “The camp has been incredibly peaceful.”
In a statement about the ongoing encampment, an MIT spokesperson said, “Efforts to resolve the situation continue,” but also underscored president Sally Kornbluth’s comments last week in which she said, “This particular form of expression needs to end soon.”
Farther down the avenue, spirits remained high at the encampment inside Harvard Yard, where organizers hope to pressure the administration to meet their demands: disclosing and divesting from any investments in Israel and dropping any charges against students related to protests.
Prince Williams, a junior studying history, said Harvard protesters aren’t worried about police action, especially not before finals end May 11.
”Our plan is to stay here indefinitely, push the issue, get them at the negotiating table, and to address our demands,” Williams said. The students expanded the footprint of their encampment inside the yard on Friday and also gave the administration a May 6 deadline to negotiate.
Globe correspondents Maddie Khaw, Suchita Nayar, Ava Berger, and Daniel Kool, and Hilary Burns and Nick Stoico of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press also was used.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald. Alexa Coultoff can be reached at alexa.coultoff@globe.com. Follow her @alexacoultoff.