The University of Washington suspended 21 students who were arrested during anti-Israel protests at the Seattle campus earlier this week, according to the university, a marked shift from the school’s reaction to previous anti-Israel activity. 

The suspended students, who are also now banned from all UW campuses, were among more than 30 demonstrators, including non-students, arrested for occupying the university’s engineering building on Monday night — causing more than $1 million worth of damage. Masked demonstrators blocked entrances and exits to the building and ignited fires in two dumpsters on a street outside. Police moved into the building around 11 p.m. 

The following day, the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said it would open a review into the university, which UW said includes a review of its federal grants and funding, similar to the investigations that the administration has ongoing with several elite universities including Harvard and Columbia.

The University of Washington was among the colleges across the country that last spring played host to long-running anti-Israel encampment protests. It took two weeks until the university’s president, Ana Mari Cauce, called in police to dismantle the campus’ encampment in May 2024 — after antisemitic and violent graffiti was discovered on several buildings. 

At the time, the university entered into a resolution with student demonstrators, in which Cauce wrote that Israel’s war in Gaza had led to “extraordinary loss of lives and widespread starvation of Palestinian civilians — including children.”

Six months later, the Washington State Legislature’s Jewish Caucus met with Cauce and other university leaders to discuss campus issues around Israel’s war in Gaza. One Jewish legislator, who requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting, told Jewish Insider on Friday, “While still concerned with the safety of students, we did feel the university was responsive. We were assured the oversight and actions on the part of the university would continue.”

The group also told Cauce that “the university connecting with one Jewish organization was not reaching individual Jewish students. … Communication was insufficient.” The legislator said they were aware of several Jewish students who had left the school and “would not be returning, fearful for their safety.” 

After Monday’s events, Cauce quickly denounced the “dangerous, violent and illegal building occupation and related vandalism” and condemned “in the strongest terms the group’s statement celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.” (The protesters’ manifesto had called Oct. 7 a “heroic victory” that “shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination.”)

Miriam Weingarten, co-director of Chabad UW with her husband Rabbi Mendel Weingarten, expressed gratitude to the school for its swift response to the latest incident, which she called “appalling and horrific.”

Weingarten told JI that she had “thought campus was back to being a safe place — mostly, not 100% — but didn’t imagine this was going to come back.” She said she was “very grateful to the university for how they took a stand this time” and hopes the school will “pull through until the end to completely uproot the antisemitism that has been shown on this campus because it is totally unacceptable.”

Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, likewise called Monday’s events “appalling” in a statement but said they were “sadly, not shocking after the last year and a half.” 

Kane “welcome[d] the actions of the University of Washington’s leadership in partnership with law enforcement” and applauded “that a University spokesperson called the statement from one of the groups behind last night’s vandalism what it was—antisemitic,” saying that “there is power in naming.” 

He said further that the university’s response “is a critical step for the UW in living up to the commitments it made last year to address antisemitism on campus.”

Cauce announced last year that she will be stepping down as university president in June 2025 and will be replaced by Robert Jones, currently the chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.