Sinan Antoon, an internationally renowned Iraqi American novelist and an associate professor at New York University, was among more than 100 protesters briefly detained during a pro-Palestine rally on the Manhattan campus on Monday.
Jadaliyya, an online magazine from the Arab Studies Institute, which Antoon co-edits, said the scholar was arrested while trying to protect students from the police.
Police officers intervened at NYU’s protests around 8:30 p.m., after the university had given demonstrators a 4 p.m. deadline to vacate Gould Plaza, an area on the campus in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood.
Videos showed officers dismantling and discarding tents that protesters had set up in a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in Gould Plaza.
Washington Square News, a student-run newspaper at NYU, reported Tuesday that a police statement indicated that 120 protesters had been arrested, and that all but four of them had been released.
Antoon was among those released, after receiving a summons. Early Tuesday morning, he shared on X (formerly Twitter): “Thanks for all the messages of support and solidarity. Out with a summons. Let’s focus on Palestine and Gaza.”
Aftermath of Arrests at Columbia U.
The protests at New York University were among numerous pro-Palestine demonstrations that have roiled American campuses in the days since more than 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia University last week.
Following those arrests and the dismantling of a similar encampment there, a new encampment has arisen at Columbia and hundreds of faculty members have staged a mass walkout to protest the university president’s handling of the situation.
A similar protest occurred at Yale University, in Connecticut. On Monday evening, authorities arrested at least 47 protesters there. The university had repeatedly urged students to leave and warned of potential law enforcement and disciplinary measures. Columbia and Yale have stated that participating students could face suspension.
These encampments have sparked a broader protest movement among students nationwide, with demonstrations taking place at Brown, Princeton, and Northwestern Universities, the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Emerson College, in Boston.
The New York Times reported that Harvard University had moved to head off large-scale protests on its Cambridge, Mass., campus, by closing Harvard Yard through Friday.
The protests are unfolding against the backdrop of significant casualties in Gaza. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, at least 34,100 Palestinians have been killed and an additional 77,000 wounded since 7 October in Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
Sinan Antoon’s Work and Advocacy
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, scholar, and activist. His scholarly works include “The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014) and a forthcoming book on the Iraqi poet Sargoun Boulus.
Antoon’s essays and creative works in Arabic are featured in major Arab publications, and he writes a bi-weekly column for al-Quds al-Araby. His writings have also appeared in international outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
Antoon has long been involved with Palestine, evident in works like his translation of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “In the Presence of Absence” (Archipelago, 2011), which won the American Literary Translators Association’s 2012 National Translation Award.
Recently, on 11 April, the Arab-American Educational Foundation (AAEF)'s Center for Arab Studies at the University of Houston hosted a book launch discussion for Antoon’s newest work, “Postcards from the Underworld: Poems”.
On April 13, Antoon delivered an insightful talk called “The Ghosts of Mahmoud Darwish: the Return to the Present” at the Arab American Cultural and Community Center, organized by the AAEF center at the University of Houston. This event offered an engaging exploration of Darwish’s enduring influence and his poetry’s relevance in contemporary times.
Antoon is an accomplished writer with two poetry collections in Arabic and two in English, including “The Baghdad Blues” (2007) and “Postcards from the Underworld” (2023). He has authored five novels in Arabic, with translations available in 16 languages.
