Assistant professor of art history Ali Alibhai rushed to protect student protesters from what he saw as a militarized police force armed with weapons and willing to harm the protesters gathered at the encampment on May 1. His efforts to de-escalate and protect students were quickly quashed as police attacked, arrested and later chained him.
Alibhai’s first and last interaction with the encampment was at 4:00 p.m. After finishing up the final day of his graduate art history class at 3:54 p.m., Alibhai exited the ATEC building and was soon surrounded by the chants of students as he walked around the Chess Plaza. Alibhai said he heard demonstrators start chanting, “There is no riot here! Why are you in riot gear?” The sounds from law enforcement — the banging of batons against shields, the whirring of a helicopter and the thudding of heavy boots — overwhelmed him as he noticed a sea of heavily-armed officers marching toward the students. The attire of law enforcement reminded Alibhai of fascist soldiers during World War II.
“When you are a professor, you become very protective of your students,” Alibhai said. “I want my students to succeed; I certainly don’t want them to get shot on campus, and this was the idea that was going through my head. These officers are ready for violence — they were dressed up in their black and brown shirts, and it looked like a scene from the 1940s brought to campus.”
Alibhai stood adjacent to the SSB between the student protesters and the encroaching law enforcement. Five officers immediately piled onto Alibhai as a wall of police separated him from the crowd. The last thing he saw, as officers assaulted him and attempted to flip him onto the ground, was his phone screensaver which was a photo of his daughter. A police officer hit Fox 4 reporter Blake Hanson’s camera with bolt cutters as Hanson filmed Alibhai’s arrest. Alibhai, like others arrested at the encampment, was publicly chained and escorted into a police van, where detainees spent over 30 minutes in the hot unventilated vehicle. Detainees would not be told on what ground they were arrested until they arrived at Collin County Jail, approximately two hours after the initial arrest.
“I thought to myself that I need to get between the soldiers and the students to try and deescalate this,” Alibhai said. “But they kept on coming towards me. It was just me in the center and I remember yelling: ‘They’re just kids! They’re just kids! What are you doing! They’re kids! You can’t do this!’”
Alibhai said that at Collin County Jail, the detainees were treated wildly differently based on which law enforcement officer they interacted with and that the facility was designed to be inhospitable. Alibhai said the only clock visible to detainees was broken, bathroom use was restricted and urine covered the floors and detainees were kept dehydrated throughout the entire booking process. Some officers showed compassion, Alibhai said, one female officer offered head coverings to female Muslim detainees whose hijabs were removed upon arrest. While being checked into jail, all 21 detainees had to provide personal information like their gender, race and religion.
“The funny thing is that in the official records they gave us afterwards, we were all identified as Middle Eastern despite what we had filled out earlier,” Alibhai said. “Since I come from a South Asian background, I had ticked Asian on the form, so the misidentification was a surprise.”
Male and female detainees were separated after checking in. Alibhai said the male detainees bonded with other inmates and engaged in academic and interpersonal conversations with many of the other inmates. One inmate in particular stood out to Alibhai: a former University of North Texas anthropology student who studied the Mandé people of West Africa. In the summer of 2020 Alibhai taught AHST 6321: Africa and the Frontiers of Islam and Byzantium, which went into depth about the Mandé people, and he and the inmate were able to bond over this academic subject. Alibhai said he and the students encouraged the inmate to reconnect with his interest in anthropology because of how passionate he was, offering to help him with his goal once they were released. The inmate spoke about his experiences being stuck in the U.S. prison system from minor drug offenses, and how the prison system is designed to keep people trapped inside of it so prisons can profit.
“A student came up to me while we were jailed and said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful being here and getting to bond with everyone here? You are in a place where you are stripped of every human dignity, and yet you still find the most beautiful parts of humanity here,’” Alibhai said. “And I thought that was the lesson of the night. The students were funny and kept all of the inmates positive while sharing their academic interests with everyone.”
Alibhai said that experiencing jail firsthand and speaking to other inmates who have repeatedly been through the prison system emphasized how unequally justice is served in the U.S. Alibhai has not received a clear message from administration regarding May 1 as of the publication of this article. Alibhai said that if he is able to continue working at UTD, he would like to start a program where humanities professors go to local jails and prisons and give lectures on their fields of expertise. Alibhai said that students shouldn’t let the violence of May 1 overshadow their voices when they speak up for the people of Palestine.
“None of this would have happened if they hadn’t militarized our campus,” Alibhai said. “Our students are peaceful, and they have been peacefully protesting for the last seven months … Students live in a world where everything is at your fingertips, and every day you see the tragic images, day in and out, coming out of Gaza. What is more disruptive to a campus, a couple of tents, water and reading and study sessions, or the violent university response to it?”
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