At 7am on Thursday, minutes after a fifth-year PhD student at Princeton University’s economics department stepped on campus, he was arrested and detained in a holding cell.

His crime? Being at the site of a protest camp, set up by students demanding the university divest from organisations and companies facilitating or profiting from Israel’s ongoing atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.

The student, a US national of Pakistani origin, told Dawn that he was held by the university police, detained in a holding cell and charged with trespassing.

“[It] felt quite surreal,” he said about the charge, given that he was a university student and had the right to be present on campus at the time.

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