More than 40 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested Monday morning at Yale University, the school announced.

Yale said in a statement that 47 students were arrested at Beinecke Plaza and will be referred for disciplinary action, potentially including suspension.

The school said it made repeated efforts over the weekend to talk to protesters, offered them meetings with trustees and warned of arrests before the Monday morning action.

“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community,” Yale leadership said.

The students occupying the plaza are demanding that the Yale Corporation disclose its investments in and divest from military weapons manufacturers. They say Yale holds thousands of shares in index funds “with exposure” to defense contractors and weapons manufacturers who are helping “facilitate the genocide in Palestine,” according to a statement the student activists put out Monday.

Yale is “sending bombs to level every university, every school in Gaza, and I’m not willing to stand silent while that happens,” said Tacey Hutten, a student protester who was arrested Monday. “And based on what I’ve seen the last couple of days, this campus isn’t either.”

The protesters, who had been camped on the plaza since Friday night, say they will continue their advocacy until the University divests from military weapons manufacturers. That doesn’t seem likely in the near future, however; Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility last week declined to take action on the university’s investments in military weapons makers.

The committee “concluded that military weapons manufacturing for authorized sales did not meet the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment, because this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security,” the advisory group wrote in a statement last Wednesday.

On Saturday, Yale President Peter Salovey chimed in to support the committee, writing in a message to Yale community members that the advisory group reached its determination “after hearing from student presenters and engaging in careful deliberation.”

He also warned that student protesters were defying university officials’ directives by erecting tents and staying out on the plaza past allowed times. He wrote that Yale would “pursue disciplinary actions.”

By 10 a.m. Monday, the arrested protesters had been released and coalesced at College and Grove streets, where New Haven police were blocking traffic to ensure their safety, New Haven police spokesman Christian Bruckhart told The Washington Post. He added that most, if not all, of the protesters appeared to be university students.

Hutten, 20, awoke at 6 a.m. Monday to a friend’s urgent message: Police had surrounded Beinecke Plaza to protest what they condemn as the university’s role funding weapons to fuel the conflict in Gaza.

Hutten, a sophomore, had spent every night at Beinecke since Friday evening, huddling in beanbag chairs and blankets against the cold and snacking on pizza and chai donated by local businesses, many of them Arab- or Palestinian-owned. She had joined in chants of “From the river to the sea” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” — unwilling, she said, to continue her daily life as a student when the university she attends was helping kill tens of thousands in Gaza.

She was thrilled to see temporary art pop up throughout the plaza, she said, as demonstrators took advantage of donated art supplies to scrawl slogans, posters and drawings on a low-slung wall at the center of the plaza.

There were “a lot of signs in different languages coming from different groups, different identities and backgrounds,” Hutten said. “Everyone has been offering a piece of himself to the movement. It’s been beautiful.”

But now, law enforcement officers were telling Hutten, her friends and fellow protesters — numbering at least in the dozens, she said — to clear out or they would be arrested.

Hutten, who said she was working as a safety marshal, walked around the encampment trying to make sure everyone was safe and feeling good. As law enforcement approached, Hutten said, other student activists locked arms and chanted. Some began crying.

Police officers gave one warning, which many students failed to hear, Hutten recalled: They said something like, “You need to disperse now. Anyone who remains on this plaza will be subject to arrest.”

Nobody moved, Hutten said. Soon, she felt officers grabbing her arm and back and pulling her up some stairs. She was one of the first people arrested, she said. But she felt little as she was led away — certainly not surprise, because she had come to expect such tactics from Yale, which she said is unwilling to engage in earnest with students’ demands.

She said she felt no panic because she had decided she didn’t care if she forfeited future job or career opportunities. Protesting was the right thing to do, she said.

Police sorted Hutten and more than 40 others into buses and drove them about a mile away, she said. Everyone was told they were facing charges of “criminal trespassing” and that they would have to attend court dates set for May.

Then police released the demonstrators without a requirement to post bail, and almost everyone returned to a large intersection near campus, Hutten said. She said protesters had spread the word of possible arrests early that morning through social media posts and text messages and that hundreds of students soon showed up to offer support — even though Yale is “not a 6 a.m. campus,” she said.

Hutten said the arrests failed to intimidate her and fellow protesters.

“Not only are we not deterred, we may even be more engaged now,” she said. “We’re resolute. I’ve been involved in this struggle for a couple of months now and plan to be for the rest of my life.”

The action came days after the arrest of more than 100 people protesting the Israel-Gaza war on Columbia University’s campus, which sparked solidarity protests at other colleges including Yale.

At Columbia, pro-Palestinian students criticized the administration, which last week asked the New York Police Department to enter campus and break up the encampment, a day after school leaders were questioned on Capitol Hill by lawmakers who claimed the protests were antisemitic. Some Jewish students said protesters’ rhetoric had become more extreme, describing demonstrators ordering them away from their encampment and even flashing a Hamas logo at them.

Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, called on Columbia and New York City to step up efforts to protect Jewish students, while urging them not to quit the school. “We do not believe that Jewish students should leave @Columbia,” the group posted on X. “We do believe that the University and the City need to do more to ensure the safety of our students.”

On Sunday, President Biden condemned antisemitism on college campuses. Biden’s statement, which was part of a lengthy Passover greeting he issued from the White House, did not name Columbia or Yale directly but cited “harassment and calls for violence against Jews” in recent days.

“This blatant Antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,” the statement said.

Richard Morgan, Susan Svrluga, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Kyle Melnick contributed to this report.

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