Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was sitting in her second-floor office at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, preparing to hold a hearing. It was featured on a television news program on Friday afternoon, when three pro-Palestinian protesters wearing masks and sunglasses stormed the building and were ordered to leave.
Ms. Heitkamp, the institute's director and the only remaining employee in the building, refused to go, slowing what appeared to be an attempt to take over the building, the latest tactic in demonstrations over the war between Israel and Hamas that have taken place on the University of Chicago campus and across the country.
“They wanted me so badly to leave,” Ms. Heitkamp recalls. “I told them, ‘I’m not leaving. This is our building.’ And I planted my feet.” “I'm a stubborn old woman,” she added.
Ms. Heitkamp, who represented North Dakota as a Democrat in the Senate, said she tried to engage in dialogue with the protesters about their goals and why they were targeting the institute, even as she heard others smashing furniture in other rooms.
“I was trying to find common ground,” she said. “They kept saying, 'Aren't you worried about your safety?'
She said the confrontation ended when campus police officers suddenly arrived and some protesters, who had brought with them a long supply of bread and water, fled from the windows.
The protest group said in a statement on Friday that it occupied the building to protest the University of Chicago's ties to Israel. Video from a bystander showed protesters climbing the second-floor windows to leave the building, while the crowd below cheered.
After the demonstrators were evacuated from the building, other demonstrators remained outside, chanting, screaming and beating drums. They were about two blocks from where police cleared a protest camp last week.
Protesters attempted to block the entrance to the building, damaged property and ignored orders from law enforcement officials to leave, university spokesman Jeremy Manier said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, the institute held a board meeting in the building that included David Axelrod, the organization's founder who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
Mr. Axelrod and Ms. Heitkamp issued a statement later in the day, saying: “We recognize protest as a time-honored part of the democratic process. Occupying buildings, destroying property, and infringing on the rights of others is not.”
Ms. Heitkamp said she never felt threatened by protesters who showed up at her office, nor did she feel held hostage. “They knew who I was, they called me Senator,” she said. “They really wanted me to leave.”
“I tried to explain that we are a place for dialogue at the IOP,” she said.
“We are neutral,” she said, adding: “Our role at the university is to create a space for mutual dialogue.”
The Policy Institute is located two doors down from University of Chicago Hillel and across the street from Rohr Chabad, where some students were eating Shabbat dinner when the demonstration began. As the protest continued, counter-demonstrators raised Israeli flags in full view of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Rock music blared from a nearby house, in an apparent attempt to drown out the protest chants.
A sign pointing to the Political Institute building was covered with a cardboard sign reading “Permanent Ceasefire Now,” and a set of demands were posted on the building. Among the demands was “to abolish the university.”
A group of protesters at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday evening also attempted to occupy a campus building. University Police and Philadelphia Police made several arrests and cleared the building, Fisher Bennett Hall. The hall is located across the street from College Green, the site of the encampment that police evacuated last week.
Reporting was contributed by Mattathias Schwartz, Bob Chiarito, Jeremy W. Peters and Natalie Pompilio.
