State College and University Police at Penn State Display Anti-Palestinian Racism at Recent Protests for Palestine
By CJ
Since October of 2023, the Palestinian and Muslim communities of Centre County together with allied workers, tenants, and students have mobilized to protest Zionist “Israel’s” genocide of the Palestinian people. Organizers have hosted several rallies, marches, vigils, teach-ins, and other actions in support of Palestine both on campus and in downtown State College. The State College Police Department (SCPD) and University Police at Penn State have displayed anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia in their efforts to repress these local protests for Palestine. Led by SCPD Captain Greg Brauser and Lieutenant Brian Foster, local police have unevenly enforced borough statues to punish pro-Palestinian protesters, collaborated with known white supremacist and Zionist counter-protesters to antagonize Palestinian protesters and their families, and violated the First Amendment rights to assemble of pro-Palestinian protesters. These are the same police forces who murdered Osaze Osagie, a disabled Black man, in 2019. They also provided security for a white fascist gang, the Proud Boys, allowing their members to pepper spray Penn State students in 2022. Now SCPD and University police are targeting Palestinian protests to maintain white supremacy in Centre County. Based on photos, witnesses, and Right-to-Know requests, the following article examines several examples of SCPD and UP at Penn State engaging in racist and repressive actions towards those protesting the genocide of Palestine.
At a pro-Palestinian protest on October 12, Brauser and Foster directed several SCPD officers to surveil attendees. Witnesses reported that both Brauser and Foster were seen using their personal cell phones to video record protesters wearing keffiyehs or displaying the Palestinian flag. Brauser and Foster were also seen communicating with a white supremacist MAGA counter-protester who identifies himself as “Jim.” This counter protester was heard yelling both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic chants as he physically berated attendees in the presence of Brauser and Foster who did nothing to stop him. As previously reported by The Ember, Jim is the same MAGA zionist who attacked a Palestine vigil hosted by Penn State students on campus in late October, 2023. In recent weeks, Jim has been seen in downtown State College displaying a placard that calls for the genocide of Palestinians. At the October 12 protest, Foster of SCPD singled-out a pro-Palestinian protestor of color to charge with disorderly conduct when Jim was witnessed only feet away engaging in criminal harassment and hate crimes.
The rash of police harassment of Palestinian protestors in State College matches a trend already developing nationally that can be seen with the resignation of UPenn President Liz McGill and Harvard President Claudine Gay, as well as the criminalization of Palestinian and Muslim students along with prohibitions of free speech and assembly (such as the outlaw of Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists, Columbia University banning Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, the State of Florida banning Palestinian groups, and many other such examples). Fueling this has been US Zionist non-state reactionary movements that have actively fueled an atmosphere of hate against Muslims, Palestinians and progressive anti-occupation Jews. Using the language of “safety,” they are attempting to paint any support for the Palestinian narrative as anti-Semitic.
To appease billionaire donors and politicians who provide funding to US universities and schools, all of who have a vested interest in preserving US imperialism in the Middle East, administrators have worked to increase total and preventative surveillance, to profile revolutionary groups and to investigate their activity, and to prepare for new rounds of repression.
Recent Right to Know documents obtained by The Ember demonstrate clearly how the local police forces have responded to protests.
As seen above, one example in how donors and alumnus on “Penn State Parents” and “Mothers Against Antisemitism” organized a mass harassment campaign against a faculty member. This included reporting a professor who had a “Free Palestine” poster on his office door, not just to President Bendapudi but to the State College Chief of Police.
Police Captain Greg Brauser assured this “concerned parent” (never mind that the only person who said something anti-Semitic at Palestinian solidarity protests was a pro-Israel reactionary provocateur) that they are working closely with the pro-Israel Hillel and the University to track activity.
This includes surveilling protestors and left organizations. In the first image, Officer Brian Foster who cited a Palestinian protestor speaks to Greg Brauser about having backup at a court hearing for the said protestor. In the second image, they request for patrol to “document” an event. It can be seen in the third email how they are regularly sending event flyers to one another.
At a protest on November 29, 2023 held at the Allen St Gates, ten or more SCPD cops together with three University police formed a close perimeter around protesters constricting and menacing their assembly. Both SCPD and University police passed out flyers warning that cops intended to arrest protesters and charge them with misdemeanors if they marched in the street. While state law may prohibit blocking traffic in the streets, it does not prohibit marching in the streets or other public venues where people have a right to demonstrate. Legal observers have noted that SCPD and University police have never approached, constricted, and threatened to arrest protestors of other events in State College for marching in the streets. In fact, after Penn State football games, fans often take to the streets in downtown State College to celebrate where they are witnessed blocking traffic. SCPD permits these celebrations, seeing them as acceptable forms of assembly, even as they block traffic, since they advance the Penn State brand. SCPD and UP’s uneven policing of assembly is the product of their anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. It also serves their objective of repressing political struggles that challenge white supremacy and imperialism that police exist to uphold.
US imperialism and Israeli apartheid have directly influenced this trend. Anti-Semitism has always been an ideology of the most reactionary sections of the ruling class— an ideology that emerged first among the feudal classes as depicting Jews as Christ- and Christian-killers, and then later as a form of oppression that scapegoats Jews as capitalists, landowners and financiers that control society on this basis (this has morphed with George Soros and the Rothschild’s being behind every crisis) — but continues on with its most avid practitioners in the Fascist movement. For example, a leader in the US fascist movement is Gavin McGinnes who has been invited to speak at Penn State in 2022 and 2023. McGinnes recently made a racist post entitled 10 Things I Hate About Jews . Captain Brauser of SCPD directed the police security that shielded McGinnes from righteous protests when McGinnes tried to speak on campus in 2022. SCPD and UP cops claim to protect Jewish students yet their leaders like Captain Brauser enable violent anti-Semitic fascists like Gavin McGinnes to come to campus. The intensity of emotions and pain of looking at tough truths around the state of Israel emerging as a result of ethnic cleansing and occupation is not anti-Semitism, but the discomfort brought by protests has been equated with the lack of safety that real anti-Semitism creates by local leaders of the Zionist movement.
The real threat of violence has been bent towards the other side. With Arabs and Palestinians, even before September 11th, there was a trend after 1948 within the ruling class to promote Arabs as congenitally anti-Semitic, evil and intent on destroying the Jewish people. The Nixon administration’s 1972 directive “Operation Boulder” authorized federal and state police to investigate up to 150,000 Arab Americans for alleged “support for terrorist activities,” in spite of the fact that the only documented terrorist activity at that time was by Zionist groups like the Jewish Defense League. In the aftermath of September 11th the apparatus of surveillance of Arab and Muslim communities has reached new heights, with the New York City Police Department’s Surveillance Program which maps and tracks persons of “ancestries of interest” and the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealing the horrific scale of repression brought by the old State on Muslim people. The weight of law enforcement scrutiny has been balanced against Palestinians here, just as elsewhere.
Despite all this, local protestors for Palestinian liberation have expressed that they are not intimidated by the actions of SCPD and University Police. Protestors see local police repression as a sign that police are afraid of protestors’ success in growing the movement for a free Palestine in an area dominated by white supremacist Zionism and US imperialism.