Above photo: Hopkins Justice Collective Instagram.
NOTE: Contact Johns Hopkins University’s Rachelle Hernandez, Vice Provost for Student Affairs, and Branville Bard, Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police, at jhbroadcast@mail624.jh.edu to tell them to respect the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, staff and visitors to peacefully assemble and express their opposition to university policies.
Newly Launched Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone.
On the morning of May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University launched an encampment on Keyser Quad, declaring it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone in solidarity with the people of Gaza and in protest of the university’s ongoing complicity in genocide. Within the hour, demonstrators were met with indiscriminate aggression and physical harassment by armed Johns Hopkins Police and Baltimore Police officers, resulting in the injury of two students and the destruction of personal belongings.
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Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, which Johns Hopkins Police themselves admitted, they issued multiple threats of imminent arrests, engaging in threats and verbal harassment well outside the scope of their putative role of enforcers of public safety. Over 30 officers in total were deployed against students, forcing the dispersal of the liberated zone after student injuries.
Students launched the liberated zone to make our demands clear: Hopkins must cut ties with genocide, end JHPD and ICE on campus, and commit to science for humanity.
Rather than engage with us in good faith, Hopkins called armed officers on the protest, not hesitating to use violence against any sign of dissent. The University’s reaction speaks louder than any official statement:
Hopkins administration would rather send armed individuals to endanger their students than sit down with those asking for basic institutional accountability.
Johns Hopkins Police Department officers violated several of their own policies (see Appendix A for the sequence of events and associated JHPD policy violations). Officers pulled canopies down onto students’ heads, significantly bruising protestors and causing wounds to the mouth.
According to one student participant:
“Cops mangled the metal so that the legs were sticking in all directions and support beams were twisting. The person I was linking arms with got stuck bending over under the canopy trying to get someone else out – their heads were getting caught between metal poles in the canopy roof, and we weren’t able to get them out until JHPD stopped pulling it down for a moment.”
At one point, Johns Hopkins Police Captain Branville Bard had to be restrained by another member of public safety personnel who had to remind him to stand down. At another point, he singled out a protestor: “If you keep this up you’ll be the first one arrested.”
The JHPD’s second encounter with nonviolent student protestors resulting in injuries demonstrates its malicious incompetence in failing its own policies. This makes one thing clear: “progressive policing is a myth. The JHPD claims its existence is based on community trust and transparency, but these values vanish the moment students challenge the university’s profit margin. The layers of bureaucracy were only ever meant as a facade for the reality of an armed, unaccountable private militia acting in defense of institutional violence.
To those who still believe in this method of “safety,” we ask: what are you protecting? Who are you protecting? Students are being brutalized for calling attention to a genocide. As we’ve seen at Columbia and across the country, campus police are increasingly an arm of the Trump Administration’s repression – cracking down not on crime, but on conscience. If peaceful protest is what provokes JHU to call its private police militia, then our demand to abolish the JHPD is not radical. It is necessary.
The Liberated Zone takes the name of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and neonatologist, who was the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital – the last functioning ICU in north Gaza until December 2024. He treated babies under the bombs and saved countless newborns under siege as the last hospitals fell. In January 2025, the Israeli Occupation Forces kidnapped him. To this day, he is subject to torture, abuse, and interrogation – for the crime of saving lives.
Johns Hopkins prides itself on a world-famous hospital system. Yet it funds the very systems that destroyed his. The legacy of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya serves as a reminder: there is no neutrality in genocide. Either you stand with those preserving life, or you stand with those destroying it.
As the Israeli regime moves to bring tens of thousands of soldiers into Gaza and permanently seize Palestinian land while forcing Palestinians into concentration camps, Johns Hopkins remains silent. But it’s not just inaction. Hopkins is aligning with rising far-right repression: cracking down on peaceful protest, censoring student organizations, and rolling back support for marginalized students.
Despite these intimidation tactics, we remain steadfast. Hopkins can attempt to distract the public with claims about “policy violations” and “security,” but none of this changes the fact: there is a genocide happening, and the university is helping to enable it.
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Appendix A:
5:00 am: Students arriving at Keyser Quad noticed one Public Safety officer who started making phone calls upon seeing students. Within the next 5-10 minutes, public safety officers, including at least one BPD-uniformed officer, started to arrive on the scene.
5:10 am: Rex Snider, Sr. Director of Public Safety, charged at us, fuming: “You cannot set up an encampment!” Protestors begin setting up several tents and canopies.
By 5:15 am: Tents and canopies were fully erected. Jarron Jackson, Associate Vice President of Public Safety approached students along with other JHPD officers, saying that university policy prohibits temporary structures erected on campus. Meanwhile, Snider assembled further police support, specifically using the language: “contain them.” By this point, an approximate total of 10 officers- comprised of several JHPD officers, public safety personnel, and at least 1 BPD officer–began to close the distance between themselves and students. As more officers joined, they began to encircle students, in violation of Operational Procedure 486: Assemblies, Demonstrations, & Disruptions of Campus Activities (Procedure IV.E). This also prevented safe egress for protestors, violating OP #486 (Procedures I.G. and I.T).
By 5:20 am: Police Captain Branville Bard arrives, equipped with a handgun, making an explicit threat: “If you don’t take these down, I will take these down.” It is made clear by protestors that students have made multiple attempts to set up meetings with the administration over the last year in a non-disruptive manner.
Around 5:25 am: Bard begins to force himself into the crowd of protestors. A student reaches out to another student who is in his path, and Monique Brown, First Deputy Chief of Operations, accuses this student of assault. Students link arms in a circle for safety. Police then begin to dismantle tents, pulling various structures through the circle to unlink protestors. They pull down a canopy over students’ heads, injuring multiple students.
According to a student there at this scene:
“JHPD didn’t care at all that we were under the canopy shouting at them to stop. As they tore it down from the roof and a corner, cops literally mangled the metal so that the legs were sticking in all directions and support beams were twisting. The person I was linking arms with got stuck bending over under the canopy trying to get out someone else out—their heads were getting caught between metal poles in the canopy roof, and we weren’t able to get them out until JHPD stopped pulling it down for a moment.”
This is in direct violation of several policies: OP #486 (Procedure IV.E) and OP #402: Use of Force (Core Principles V, and Procedure IA) require officers only use force that is reasonable, necessary, and proportional to disperse a demonstration. When a student questions Bard, “Is this truly the protection of free speech you were talking about?” Bard responds to that student: “If you keep this up, you’ll be the first one arrested.” At one point, Bard was physically restrained and de-escalated by another public safety personnel member.
Jackson also admits on recorded video: “I’m not saying this protest is not peaceful.” At this point, two legal dispersal orders had been issued. Bard threatens consequences for student protestors, including arrest for trespass, academic discipline, and employee misconduct.
By 5:40 am: An official third dispersal warning is issued. Student protestors make a collective, verbal decision to disperse. They also request a minimum of two safe egress routes, as stipulated in OP 486 (Procedure IV.E). Bard vaguely responds that protestors can “leave the way they came in. “One administrator agreed to a dispersal in which protestors were not pursued as they left, but as protestors dispersed, law enforcement followed closely, utilizing several routes around buildings to follow students. Protestors demand that the police not pursue as students complied with the dispersal order.
By 6:00 am: Protestors exit campus grounds–together, as one group.
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