It was just over a week ago that a group of pro-Hamas extremists at the University of Washington occupied the brand new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in order to protest the school’s connection to Boeing. I wrote about it when it happened and there was lots of video of what was happening outside the building including vandalism and fires.
BREAKING NOW @UW: Black-clad, masked activists have TAKEN OVER the brand new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB) and are piling furniture outside to blockade it. 👇 1/4 pic.twitter.com/UwQGJoniKw
— UW_JewishAlumni (@UW_JewishAlumni) May 6, 2025
The bigger story was what happened inside. The vandals did an estimated $1 million in damage to the brand new equipment.
The University of Washington’s Board of Regents is set to meet Thursday morning as the school estimates pro-Palestinian protesters caused $1 million in damage during a building takeover earlier this week…
According to UW, protesters not only damaged a campus building on Monday night but also ruined equipment inside — in addition to setting fire to dumpsters outside.
Some images of the damage.
The militants destroyed expensive machinery and trashed offices. pic.twitter.com/OS7rnYStu4
— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) May 6, 2025
A total of 32 people were arrested for that vandalism and the school then announced 21 students had been suspended. The rest of the activists were not students.
The University of Washington has suspended 21 students who were involved in a pro-Palestinian protest and occupation of the campus’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building earlier this week.
Of course the organizers of the vandalism demanded the suspensions be dropped. This is standard operating procedures for these groups.
Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return (SUPER UW) held a rally on campus Thursday, the day after UW announced it was suspending 21 students for the destructive protest.
We think it is shameful that they would be punished in an emergency suspension without due process,” said James Lopez, who identified himself as an organizer of the rally. “I think it is sad that we are focusing on millions of dollars in damage to one building here and not the billions of dollars of damage and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in Gaza.
In any case, the activists decided $1 million in damage wasn’t enough. Over the weekend they targeted the same building again.
The caption reads in part:
ANONYMOUS SUBMISSION from today 5/10/25:
“Open war on war profiteers! Boeing Kills, Boeing Pays!
Inspired by the May 5 student occupation of the “Interdisciplinary Engineering Building” at the University of Washington (see @super_uw ), community members in so-called Seattle attacked and destroyed several windows of the building. Following the destruction of these windows, comrades escaped without incident. This building, meant to design AI-engineering programs for Boeing, was funded in part by a $10 million Boeing grant to the University of Washington, whose century-long partnership has enabled countless war crimes. Boeing is the world’s third largest war profiteer, and they have no business being integrated into an educational institution.
Maybe it was a “anonymous submission” but there’s a good chance it’s some of the same dopes who damaged the building on May 5. The University of Washington should expel all of the students involved and ban from campus anyone else arrested last week . That would be a good start on making sure there’s not another repeat of this behavior.
Here’s a local news report on the damage from the first building occupation.
