AMERIKA
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters detained across US colleges
Students protests against Gaza war that began at Columbia University on April 17 spread to other schools, with University of California emerging as another sticking point
Serdar Dincel |02.05.2024 -
ISTANBUL
Amid ongoing demonstrations at universities across the US in solidarity with Palestine, US police have arrested hundreds of students this week as university campus administrators seek to repress pro-Palestinian encampments and protests.
The demonstrations started on April 17 at Columbia University to protest Israel's offensive in Gaza, in which more than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 injured since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
They quickly spread to other campuses including Yale and Harvard.
The University of California, Los Angeles, emerged Wednesday as another sticking point between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the police as law enforcement, some wearing riot gear, entered the campus.
The police asked demonstrators to clear out the area to avoid arrest, which they refused.
A Stony Brook University official noted that 29 people "including students, faculty members and others from outside our campus community" have been arrested at around 12:15 am (0515GMT) on Thursday "for violating various legal statutes and university policies," the Axios news website reported.
Multiple students protesting the Gaza war were detained at separate demonstrators at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire State Police said on X.
A police statement early Thursday indicated that 90 people were apprehended at Dartmouth College "for multiple offenses including criminal trespass and resisting arrest," According to Axios.
The New York Police Department stated that officers detained on Wednesday evening several people at Fordham University, a day after they apprehended 282 pro-Palestinian supporters at the Columbia University and the City College of New York.
The police Wednesday took into custody 17 pro-Palestinian supporters at Dallas's University of Texas campus.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison said in an online post that the officers arrested Wednesday 34 people during an anti-Gaza war protest that reportedly wounded four officers. Professors were among those arrested, according to the Washington Post.
The police involving SWAT teams removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at New Orleans' Tulane University and arrested 14 on Wednesday.
College campus protests against ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza have remained under way across the US since students established an encampment at New York’s Columbia University campus in mid-April.
The protests have served as a flashpoint for the wider movement to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion last year which killed some 1,200 people.
Israel has since waged a relentless offensive on the Palestinian enclave killing tens of thousands of Palestinians amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.
Israel has also imposed a crippling siege on the seaside enclave, leaving most of its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.
More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel is also accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Students protests against Gaza war that began at Columbia University on April 17 spread to other schools, with University of California emerging as another sticking point
Serdar Dincel |02.05.2024 -
ISTANBUL
Amid ongoing demonstrations at universities across the US in solidarity with Palestine, US police have arrested hundreds of students this week as university campus administrators seek to repress pro-Palestinian encampments and protests.
The demonstrations started on April 17 at Columbia University to protest Israel's offensive in Gaza, in which more than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 injured since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
They quickly spread to other campuses including Yale and Harvard.
The University of California, Los Angeles, emerged Wednesday as another sticking point between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the police as law enforcement, some wearing riot gear, entered the campus.
The police asked demonstrators to clear out the area to avoid arrest, which they refused.
A Stony Brook University official noted that 29 people "including students, faculty members and others from outside our campus community" have been arrested at around 12:15 am (0515GMT) on Thursday "for violating various legal statutes and university policies," the Axios news website reported.
Multiple students protesting the Gaza war were detained at separate demonstrators at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire State Police said on X.
A police statement early Thursday indicated that 90 people were apprehended at Dartmouth College "for multiple offenses including criminal trespass and resisting arrest," According to Axios.
The New York Police Department stated that officers detained on Wednesday evening several people at Fordham University, a day after they apprehended 282 pro-Palestinian supporters at the Columbia University and the City College of New York.
The police Wednesday took into custody 17 pro-Palestinian supporters at Dallas's University of Texas campus.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison said in an online post that the officers arrested Wednesday 34 people during an anti-Gaza war protest that reportedly wounded four officers. Professors were among those arrested, according to the Washington Post.
The police involving SWAT teams removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at New Orleans' Tulane University and arrested 14 on Wednesday.
College campus protests against ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza have remained under way across the US since students established an encampment at New York’s Columbia University campus in mid-April.
The protests have served as a flashpoint for the wider movement to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion last year which killed some 1,200 people.
Israel has since waged a relentless offensive on the Palestinian enclave killing tens of thousands of Palestinians amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.
Israel has also imposed a crippling siege on the seaside enclave, leaving most of its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.
More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel is also accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Woman sees hope in Columbia protest, Mayor Adams calls her outside agitator
Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the spectre of “outside agitators,” dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian says she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience./ Photo: AA
Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Tuesday night, arresting more than 100 people as they cleared an occupied school building and tent encampment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he received a piece of intelligence that shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.
“Outside agitators” working to “radicalise our children" were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor said. And one of them, Adams said repeatedly in media appearances Wednesday morning, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism.”
But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn't on Columbia's campus this week, isn't among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.
Nahla Al-Arian, 63, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Adams had misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor and prominent Palestinian activist.
A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian said she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience.
“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Nahla Al-Arian said. “They are the ones who influenced me. They are the ones who gave me hope that at last the Palestinian people can get some justice.”
Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the spectre of “outside agitators,” dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
Nahla Al-Arian said she has lost dozens of relatives to Israeli airstrikes in recent months and wanted to see the encampment up close, so she stopped by briefly on April 25 while visiting New York City on an unrelated trip with her two daughters. She said she sat briefly on the lawn but did not speak directly with any protesters, whom she described as “busy and beautiful.”
“I sat and I felt happy to see those students fighting for justice for the oppressed people in Palestine,” she recalled. “Then I was tired, so I left.”
It was a photo of her kneeling alone beside a tent, taken by her daughter and shared on X by her husband, that quickly stoked allegations of a terrorism link to the protest.
'Beautiful act of solidarity'
But the claim spread widely, fueling a narrative — vehemently disputed by student organisers — that Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement has been co-opted by external forces.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe," Adams also said his suspicions about external influences on the students had been confirmed after police identified a woman in the protest “organisation” whose “husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level.” At a news conference later in the day, Adams suggested that Columbia students had been taught by outsiders how to barricade themselves to repel police attempts to remove them, saying, “These are all skills that are taught and learned.”
Police declined to provide details about what groups may have been involved or to say how many of the 109 people arrested at Columbia Tuesday night were not connected to the university. Even before the students entered Hamilton Hall, police officials claimed, without providing evidence, that an outside group was helping to fund and organise the encampment.
In a statement, the group behind the encampment, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, defended its right “to include people from outside the Ivy League or the ivory tower in this global movement.”
“‘Outside agitator’ is a far-right smear used to discredit coalition building and anti-racism,” the statement continued.
Laila Al-Arian, a journalist who joined her mother at the encampment on April 25, said the mayor’s comments dredged up painful memories of her father’s years-long legal battle, which included lengthy time spent in solitary confinement. Adams, she said, "was appealing to people's most base racist instincts" to treat Muslims as dangerous outsiders.
“My mother wanted to see this beautiful act of solidarity up close,” she added. “For people to use my father to smear these students, who may not have even been alive when all of this was happening, is shameful in so many ways.”
Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the spectre of “outside agitators,” dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian says she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience./ Photo: AA
Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Tuesday night, arresting more than 100 people as they cleared an occupied school building and tent encampment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he received a piece of intelligence that shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.
“Outside agitators” working to “radicalise our children" were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor said. And one of them, Adams said repeatedly in media appearances Wednesday morning, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism.”
But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn't on Columbia's campus this week, isn't among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.
Nahla Al-Arian, 63, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Adams had misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor and prominent Palestinian activist.
A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian said she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience.
“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Nahla Al-Arian said. “They are the ones who influenced me. They are the ones who gave me hope that at last the Palestinian people can get some justice.”
Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the spectre of “outside agitators,” dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
Nahla Al-Arian said she has lost dozens of relatives to Israeli airstrikes in recent months and wanted to see the encampment up close, so she stopped by briefly on April 25 while visiting New York City on an unrelated trip with her two daughters. She said she sat briefly on the lawn but did not speak directly with any protesters, whom she described as “busy and beautiful.”
“I sat and I felt happy to see those students fighting for justice for the oppressed people in Palestine,” she recalled. “Then I was tired, so I left.”
It was a photo of her kneeling alone beside a tent, taken by her daughter and shared on X by her husband, that quickly stoked allegations of a terrorism link to the protest.
'Beautiful act of solidarity'
But the claim spread widely, fueling a narrative — vehemently disputed by student organisers — that Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement has been co-opted by external forces.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe," Adams also said his suspicions about external influences on the students had been confirmed after police identified a woman in the protest “organisation” whose “husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level.” At a news conference later in the day, Adams suggested that Columbia students had been taught by outsiders how to barricade themselves to repel police attempts to remove them, saying, “These are all skills that are taught and learned.”
Police declined to provide details about what groups may have been involved or to say how many of the 109 people arrested at Columbia Tuesday night were not connected to the university. Even before the students entered Hamilton Hall, police officials claimed, without providing evidence, that an outside group was helping to fund and organise the encampment.
In a statement, the group behind the encampment, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, defended its right “to include people from outside the Ivy League or the ivory tower in this global movement.”
“‘Outside agitator’ is a far-right smear used to discredit coalition building and anti-racism,” the statement continued.
Laila Al-Arian, a journalist who joined her mother at the encampment on April 25, said the mayor’s comments dredged up painful memories of her father’s years-long legal battle, which included lengthy time spent in solitary confinement. Adams, she said, "was appealing to people's most base racist instincts" to treat Muslims as dangerous outsiders.
“My mother wanted to see this beautiful act of solidarity up close,” she added. “For people to use my father to smear these students, who may not have even been alive when all of this was happening, is shameful in so many ways.”
Columbia unleashes police on Student Spring protesters, 100+ arrested
Columbia University president Minouche Shafik calls police on students, following sustained pro-Palestine protests by students who inspired demonstrations in many campuses, some of them violently suppressed, giving US its own version of Arab Spring.
"Free, free, free Palestine," chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled "Let the students go". / Photo: AFP
New York police have taken more than 100 students, staff and activists into custody, according to multiple reports, after Columbia University called in police to end sit-in by students who pioneered a pro-Palestine campus encampment movement — or Student Spring protests — which has engulfed universities across US and beyond.
The scene unfolded shortly after 9 pm [local time] late on Tuesday as police, wearing helmets and carrying zip ties and riot shields, entered the Ivy League university.
Officers breached Hamilton Hall, an administration building on campus, to clear out the structure. The hall has been symbolically renamed by protesters as "Hind Hall" in memory of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was reportedly shot dead by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza.
A long line of police officers were seen climbing into the building through a second-story window, using a vehicle with a ladder to gain access to the upper floor.
Dozens of other officers swarmed over the nearby protest encampment, as onlooking students standing just outside the campus jeered them with shouts of "Shame, shame!" Before long, officers were seen leading handcuffed protesters to police vehicles outside campus gates.
"Free, free, free Palestine," chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled "Let the students go".
Columbia University's president asked New York police to remain on the prestigious institution's campus until May 17, a letter showed.
The letter signed by Minouche Shafik requested police "help to clear" the protest sites on campus, and "retain a presence on campus through at least May 17, 2024 to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished."
At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered Columbia, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by "outside agitators" who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs on a student visa, disputed assertions that outsiders had initiated the occupation.
"They're students," he told the Reuters news agency.
Earlier, the University threatened to expel students.
"We will remain here, drawing from the lessons of our people [in Gaza] that stay put, and hold their ground even under the worst conditions," a protester wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh headscarf and who declined to give her name told reporters outside "Hind Hall".
President Joe Biden's White House sharply criticised the seizure of Hamilton Hall, with a spokesman saying it was "absolutely the wrong approach" as police patrolled street entrances to the prestigious New York university.
The occupation at Columbia — where student protesters had shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon a tent encampment on Monday or be suspended — unfolded as other top US universities stepped up efforts to end the protests.
Police swept through some campuses, leading to confrontations and arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life.
REUTERS
Students at Columbia University hang a sign out the window renaming the building “Hind Hall.” The name is in honour of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed by Israeli army in Gaza and whose phone call for help gained international attention.
The office of the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, meanwhile, expressed concern about "heavy-handed steps" taken to dismantle protests on US campuses.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters that "it is up to the university authorities to have the wisdom to properly manage situations like the ones we have witnessed."
The nationwide campus protests began in response to Israel's relentless bombing in besieged Gaza since October 2023.
More than 34,535 Palestinians — 70% of them babies, children and women have been killed so far. Over 77,704 are wounded while close to 8,400 people are feared buried under the rubble of bombed buildings.
Israel and its supporters have falsely branded the university protests as anti-Semitic. Organisers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
SOURCE: AP
Arrests, evictions continue on US campuses
- Police tore down a protest encampment at the University of Texas on Wednesday, arresting more than a dozen people, as unrest over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza simmered on US campuses.
Officers also detained several people at Fordham University in New York and cleared an encampment set up inside a school building, officials said, and law enforcement were on standby at Columbia University across town after mass arrests the previous evening.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology protesters dug in, blocking an avenue near the center of the campus in Cambridge during the height of Wednesday afternoon’s rush hour commute.
And dozens of police cars patrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles in response to violent clashes overnight when counter-protesters attacked an encampment of pro-Palestinian students.
The University of Texas Dallas saw police remove an encampment and arrest at least 17 people for “criminal trespass,” the school said.
Demonstrators have gathered in at least 30 US universities since last month, often erecting tent encampments to protest the soaring death toll in the Gaza Strip.
But the sight of helmeted officers at two of America’s most prestigious universities left some students dismayed.
“I don’t think we should have a heavy police force on campus,” UCLA student Mark Torre, 22, told AFP as he surveyed the scene from behind metal barriers.
“But more and more, day by day, I think it’s a necessary evil, to at least keep safety on campus.”
At Columbia and at the City University of New York, where police cleared out demonstrators overnight, some students decried the police behavior.
“We were assaulted, brutally arrested. And I was held for up to six hours before being released, pretty banged up, got stomped on, got cut up,” one CUNY student who gave his name only as Jose told AFP.
A medical student offering treatment to detainees as they were released described a litany of injuries.
“We’ve seen things like severe head traumas, concussions, someone was knocked unconscious in the encampment by police, someone was thrown down the stairs,” said the student, who gave her name as Isabel.
About 300 arrests were made at Columbia and CUNY, Police Commissioner Edward Caban said.
Mayor Eric Adams blamed “outside agitators” for ratcheting up tensions. Columbia students have denied outsiders were involved.
University president Minouche Shafik, who has come under fire over her decision to call in police, said the turn of events “filled me with deep sadness.”
“I am sorry we reached this point,” she said in a statement.
– Wave of unrest –
The protests have posed a challenge to university administrators trying to balance free speech rights with complaints of criminal activity, anti-Semitism and hate speech.
The administration of President Joe Biden — whose support for Israel has outraged many protesters — has also tried to walk that line.
“We believe it’s a small number of students who are causing this disruption, and if they’re going to protest, Americans have the right to do it in a peaceful way within the law,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Biden’s rival in the November election, Donald Trump, voiced his full-throated support for the police response at Columbia.
“It was a beautiful thing to watch. New York’s finest,” he told a rally in Wisconsin.
“To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
– ‘Unlawful assembly’ –
Late Tuesday, police entered Columbia’s campus and climbed into Hamilton Hall — barricaded by protesters — via a second-floor window before leading out people in handcuffs. They also cleared the large tent encampment.
In Los Angeles, counter-protesters sprayed chemical substances onto the pro-Palestinian encampment and attempted to tear down wooden boards and metal barricades before police eventually arrived.
On Wednesday, students on loudspeakers called for demonstrators to keep going at a camp blocking the entrance to one of the school’s main libraries, which bore graffiti reading: “Free Gaza.”
Elsewhere, police moved in at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and arrested several protesters, TV footage showed.
At the University of Arizona, police said they used “chemical irritant munitions” to disperse “an unlawful assembly.”
The Gaza war started when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,500 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Shruti Rajkumar
Wed, 1 May 2024
While all eyes in the nation are fixed on the police response to pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, this week, demonstrations are spreading beyond the Ivy Leagues and universities on the East and West coasts.
Students at several colleges and universities in the Midwest have orchestrated pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including encampments and protests, joining students at numerous schools across the country in calling for divestments from companies that do business with Israel. Part of their demands include increased transparency about university ties to Israel and a public denouncement of Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a genocide.
On Oct. 7, the militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 240 people were taken hostage. In retaliation, Israel has repeatedly launched strikes on the Gaza Strip, resulting in more than 30,000 deaths so far, the displacement of nearly the entire population and a growing famine. The deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military have prompted a mobilization of college students across the U.S. and the world.
Protests at Ivy League schools and larger institutions in major cities have been met with forceful pushback from university officials, many of whom have called in law enforcement to crack down on the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian rallies at many universities in the Midwest have been able to continue without much police escalation or incidents.
On Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators, including faculty and students, gathered on Ohio State University’s campus for a protest in which they chanted, prayed and waved Palestine flags. According to The Columbus Dispatch, the gathering remained peaceful and nonviolent with minimal confrontation with police officers, a contrast to a smaller demonstration at OSU last week that resulted in 36 arrests.
Students at the University of Nebraska, University of Kansas and Iowa State University also held protests at their campuses on Wednesday, which remained peaceful and calm throughout the day without any major police intervention, localnews outletsreported.
“Our positionality in the Midwest is important in this movement because there is a shared fallacy that non-white bodies do not exist,” KU Students for Justice in Palestine said in a social media post. “Midwest is often dismissed as a region of little significance in elections; however, our voices today align and express the same disgust for the ongoing financial support that the U.S. provides toward the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather Wednesday on the campus of Ohio State University. Protesters returned after 36 people were arrested last week. Andrew Spear/Getty Images
Similar reports were given of a protest at the University of Missouri earlier this week, in part because of “lessons learned” by the college nearly 10 years ago.
In 2015, students camped out at the university to protest its failure to address the culture of racism on campus, KMIZ-TV in Columbia, Missouri, reported. Black student athletes also refused to play until then-President Tim Wolfe resigned. Mizzou saw lower applications from prospective students for years following the protests.
After the 2015 protest, the University of Missouri changed its policies to prohibit camping on school grounds. On Monday, campus protesters were expected to follow school policies as well as city ordinances.
“Yesterday we felt was a very large success for everyone involved,” University of Missouri spokesperson Christian Basi told KMIZ-TV. “The student groups were able to hold their protests. They were able to have their march. They were able to utilize the routes that they wanted to take. At the same time, the university was able to continue its operations.”
At the DePaul University in Illinois, students have gathered for a second day at their Chicago encampment, which has not faced police intervention. According to WLS-TV in Chicago, university officials are making a concerted effort not to have their college join the list of schools where violent clashes have occurred, and local police are aiming to keep the campus calm.
“With our universities here, people are protesting peacefully. We’re not engaging them in a way that is going to inflame what they are trying to do,” Chicago Police Department Supt. Larry Snelling said, according to WLS-TV.
Many right-wing pundits and some news outlets have cast the protests at Ivy League schools and other universities on the coasts in recent weeks as being violent, pointing to graphic scenes of police interventions and unrest.
CNN reporter Dana Bash faced backlash on Wednesday for claiming that protesters “lost the plot,” and she compared the fear that Jewish students feel on campus to the treatment of Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s.
“Destruction, violence and hate overtake college campuses across the country with Jewish students feeling unsafe at their own schools. It is unacceptable, and harkening back to the 1930s in Europe,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Yesterday we felt was a very large success for everyone involved. The student groups were able to hold their protests. ... At the same time, the university was able to continue its operations.Christian Basi, University of Missouri spokesperson
It is unclear whether violence was instigated before or after police intervened at the protests across the country. Some reports indicate that there were clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters.
Many students, faculty and witnesses have claimed that they were attacked by police and counter-protesters, accounts that appear to be corroborated by photos and videosonline.
Some politicians have called out the police escalation at universities and in cities across the country, pointing out how de-escalation plans have been successfully carried out at protests in other areas.
“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and univ presidents,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote Tuesday on X. “Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) also voiced her support for student protesters.
“The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor Adams is abhorrent and barbarous,” she wrote on X. “The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end.”
All the colleges where Gaza protests are taking place
Katie Hawkinson and Kelly Rissman
Wed, 1 May 2024
Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments have popped up at dozens of universities across the US this month.
Much of the national spotlight is focused on Columbia University, where student protests and encampments have been ongoing for nearly two weeks. On Tuesday night, 109 people were arrested at Columbia after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall.
Now, some professors are banding together to support student protesters as well as to condemn the university’s response and on-campus police activity.
Also on Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed Columbia upheaval on “outside agitators” but provided little evidence to support that claim.
Columbia has suspended some students for their involvement in protests and also threatened expulsion.
Pro-Palestinian protesters are, by-and-large, asking their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Their calls come amid Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which is believed to have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The ongoing attacks come in the wake of 7 October, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 people hostage.
Here’s a look at the universities where students are staging demonstrations — and how administrators and local police have responded.
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall. Pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the building on Columbia University’s campus early Tuesday morning (Getty Images)
Columbia University in New York City, New York: The “Gaza Solidary Encampment” began at Columbia University on 17 April. University President Minouche Shafik called the New York Police Department to campus on 18 April. On Wednesday, 109 protesters were arrested by officers. A coalition of professors are backing student protesters and condemning police activity on campus.
University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California: An encampment at the school was attacked on Tuesday night, which the school paper called a “life-threatening assault”. The school has since cancelled classes due to the “distress caused by the violence that took place on Royce Quad.”
City College of New York in New York City: More than 170 protesters were arrested at campus on Tuesday night, according to the NYPD. It’s not immediately clear how many of those arrested were affiliated with the school.
George Washington University in Washington, DC: Students established a pro-Palestinian encampment on 25 April. More than 200 people — including students from several area schools — have joined the camp since. No arrests have been made but at least one demonstrator has been escorted away by campus police, a university spokesperson told NBC Washington on 29 April.
University of Texas, Austin in Austin, Texas: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators began planning an encampment on 24 April after a protest on campus. Police arrested 57 people on trespassing charges that same day, the Austin American-Statesman reports. At least 100 additional people were arrested on Monday in connection with the pro-Palestinian encampment on 29 April, the outlet reports.
Pro-Palestinian protesters stand with linked arms surrounded by Texas state troopers and police at an encampment at the University of Texas, Austin on 29 April. Officials have made dozens of arrests at the school in recent days (Austin American-Statesman)
The California State Polytechnic Institute, Humboldt in Arcata, California: Law enforcement arrested some 35 people at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt on 30 April, after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves inside the dean’s office. The students had occupied Siemens Hall since 22 April.
Tulane Univeresity in New Orleans, Louisiana: Pro-Palestine protests began on 29 April at the New Orleans campus. On Monday, six people — including one student — were apprehended. As of Wednesday, police arrested 14 more demonstrators, only two of whom are Tulane students. In a statement on 1 May, the school’s president wrote, “Free speech and the freedom to protest are sacred to us...However, we remain opposed to trespassing, hate speech, antisemitism and bias against religious or ethnic groups.”
Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia: Pro-Palestinian student protesters established an encampment on 29 April. That evening, multiple students were arrested by police in riot gear, local outlet WRIC reports.
New York University in New York, New York: Pro-Palestinian protesters established an encampment on 22 April in a university plaza. Officers arrested some 150 protesters the same day.
New York University (NYU) students and faculty participate in a pro-Palestinian protest at Washington Square Park on 23 April. Police arrested some 150 people the previous day (Getty Images)
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Students began staging Pro-Palestinian protests and erecting an encampment on 23 April. Police arrested nine students that same day. Protesters erected another encampment on 29 April. Officials ordered the students to disperse that evening but have yet to enforce the demand as of 30 April, local outlet Fox 9 reports.
University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California: Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police on 24 April after students erected an encampment on campus. Officers arrested more than 90 people. The next day, the university cancelled its in-person commencement scheduled for 10 May over the protests.
Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts: Pro-Palestinian student protesters began an encampment in a public alleyway on 21 April. Local police arrested more than 100 protesters on 25 April, . On 28 April, Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt said the school will not take disciplinary action against those arrested, local outlet MassLive reports.
Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio: On 23 April Pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a protest and began pitching tents on the school’s campus, The Columbus Dispatch reports. That night, law enforcement began making arrests. As of 30 April, officers have arrested 40 people connected to protests on the school’s campus since — about half of those arrested were affiliated with the school.
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia: Pro-Palestinian protesters began erecting an encampment on 25 April, Fox 5 Atlanta reports. Police then arrested dozens of people, only 20 of whom were students.
Police arrest a demonstrator during a pro-Palestinian protest at Emory University on 25 April. Police arrested some 20 students at the Georgia school (AFP via Getty Images)
University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin: Dozens were arrested after three days of protesting when police cleared the encampment on Library Mall, according to an email sent from the school’s Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. The email said 30 protesters were cited, including some faculty and staff, who allegedly obstructed law enforcement efforts to remove the tents. Four police officers were injured on Wednesday when police while emptying the encampment, ABC News reported.
Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana: Pro-Palestinian student protesters began demonstrations on 22 April. Since 25 April, 56 protesters have been arrested for pitching tents on campus, local outlet WRTV reports.
Auraria Campus in Denver, Colorado: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators launched a protest on 26 April on Auraria Campus, which houses facilities for three different Denver-area universities. Officers have arrested 44 people in connection with that protest, local outlet KDVR reports.
Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona: Several students and members of the public established an encampment on 26 April, local outlet 12News reports. Officers arrested 72 people on 26 and 27 April. Most of those detained were not affiliated with the university.
Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts: Pro-Palestinian protesters began demonstrations on 25 April, CBS News reports. Officers arrested 98 people on 27 April, including 29 students and six people employed by the university, CBS News later reported.
Pro-Palestinian protesters stand in front of a police barricade at Northeastern University on 27 April. Police arrested 29 students and six university employees (AFP via Getty Images)
Washington University in St Louis in St Louis, Missouri: On 13 April, students staged a pro-Palestinian sit-in protest on campus. Roughly a dozen people were arrested, local outlet KSDK reports. On 27 April, students held another protest and encampment. Officers arrested some 80 people at that protest, including former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, KSDK reports.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Pro-Palestinian protesters began demonstrating on campus on 26 April. Officers arrested some 30 protesters on the morning of 30 April, Axios Raleigh reports.
Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia: Pro-Palestinian protesters erected an encampment on 26 April. On 28 April, officers arrested more than 80 people involved in the demonstration, The Washington Post reports. 53 of those detained were students.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland: Protests began on 29 April, when 100 people, some of whom were students, established an encampment. On Tuesday, school officials said they would allow students to continue protesting, but not between the hours of 8pm and 10am. However, Hopkins Justice Collective said it did not agree to these terms, CBS News reported. So, demonstrators camped out overnight, prompting the school to warn that the “consequences of violating our policies and creating unsafe conditions include academic discipline, which is determined by University officials, and trespass, which is handled by local law enforcement.”
Students have also staged protests or encampments at the following schools:
Yale University; Michigan State University; University of Mary Washington; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of South Carolina; the Fashion Institute of Technology; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Florida State University; University of Connecticut; The New School; Harvard University; Brown University; University of Delaware; Northwestern University; Cornell University; University of Pennsylvania; Stanford University; City College of New York; Indiana University; University of Rochester; Rice University; Swarthmore University; University of North Carolina; University of New Mexico Albuquerque; University of Georgia; Princeton University; Tufts University.
Where are the US college campus protests and what is happening?
Jonathan Yerushalmy and Helen Livingstone
Columbia University, New York
The protest movement was sparked at New York’s Columbia University when students pitched tents in the middle of campus and began rallying in support of Palestinians in Gaza on 17 April.
Police first tried to clear the encampment a day later, when they arrested more than 100 people. That move motivated Columbia protesters to regroup.
On Tuesday night hundreds of police entered Columbia’s campus at the request of the university president after protesters occupied an academic building. Less than two hours later, all protesters had been removed from Columbia.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said 282 arrests had been made at the Columbia and City University of New York, or Cuny, campuses.
City University of New York
About 170 of the total 282 arrests were blocks away at the Cuny campus, reports said, with the total number of students involved unclear.
In a statement, the university said the calling in of police on Tuesday night was a “public safety approach [that] was a response to repeated acts of violence and vandalism.”
Video footage showed officers forcing some protesters to the ground late on Tuesday and shoving others as they cleared the street and sidewalks. The City news site said an unspecified number of staff and faculty stayed home from work on Wednesday in solidarity with the protesters.
Fordham University, New York
Police officers in riot gear began arresting protesters on Wednesday evening, the New York Times reported, adding that demonstrators “did not appear to resist”.
The university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had organized a small encampment in the Lowenstein Lobby building to urge Fordham to divest from Israel on Wednesday morning.
The university paper, the Fordham Ram, reported that all students participating in the encampment had been arrested and suspended by 6.30pm. The university said it had called in the police with the “utmost regret” but added that it had requested a police presence until 22 May.
The city’s pro-Palestine movement reassembled across four different locations on Wednesday evening, including at a joint Columbia and City universities gathering at the Cuny campus in Harlem.
University of California, Los Angeles
In the early hours of Wednesday, UCLA was the site of some of the worst violence seen in the protests so far, when counter-protesters “forcefully attacked” a pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus.
Fifteen people were injured during the UCLA confrontation, including one person who was hospitalised, while multiple news reports said security guards and law enforcement officials at the scene initially retreated or failed to intervene.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called the violence “unacceptable” while Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass called for a “full investigation” into the incident.
On Wednesday, hundreds of people were reportedly still queueing to enter the encampment in the evening, with authorities reportedly declaring an unlawful assembly there and preparing to clear the encampment.
University of Wisconsin, Madison
In Madison on Wednesday, a scrum broke out after police with shields removed all but one tent at the university’s encampment and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said.
More tents sprang up within hours. More than 30 people were initially detained, but police said only four were charged, with battering law enforcement.
University of Arizona, Tucson
Police at the University of Arizona in Tucson fired “non-lethal” chemical weapons at protesters and arrested four people in the early hours of Wednesday, the Arizona Daily Star reported, to break up a protest camp that had been set up on Tuesday. At least one protester was hit with a rubber bullet.
The university’s president, Robert C Robbins, said police’s “minimal use” of pepper balls and rubber bullets in breaking up the protest was warranted and claimed that officers had been “assaulted with projectiles”.
Student leaders disagreed with the police tactics, saying: “the use of force against peaceful students has never and will never deserve to have a place on our campus”.
University of Texas, Dallas
The University of Texas in Dallas confirmed that 17 protesters had been arrested on its campus as of Wednesday evening, after police moved in at the request of university officials.
According to local media, the police operation involved dozens of state troopers in riot gear. The entire encampment was dismantled within about 20 minutes and additional law enforcement remained on the campus until about 6pm.
About 100 protesters are reportedly continuing demonstrations on another part of the campus.
Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana
Fourteen people including two students were arrested early on Wednesday when police were called in to clear a two-day encampment, the Tulane Hullabaloo news site reported. University officials said they supported “free speech and the freedom to protest” but were opposed to trespassing, hate speech and antisemitism.
Diana Ramirez-Simon, Jonathan Yerushalmy, Edward Helmore and Erum Salam
Tue, 30 April 2024
Dozens arrested at Columbia University as New York police disperse Gaza protest
Dozens of students have been arrested after hundreds of New York City police officers entered Columbia University on Tuesday night to clear out an academic building that had been taken over as part of a pro-Palestinian protest.
Live video images showed police in riot gear marching on the campus in upper Manhattan, the focal point of nationwide student protests opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Police used an armoured vehicle with a bridging mechanism to gain entry to the second floor of the building.
Officers said they used flash-bangs to disperse the crowd, but denied using teargas as part of the operation.
Before long, officers were seen leading protesters handcuffed with zip ties to a line of police buses waiting outside campus gates. NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves said he had no immediate reports of any injuries following the arrests.
“We’re clearing it out,” police yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building.
Related: ‘This machine bonks fascists’: US student protester’s water jug becomes symbol of resistance
“Shame! Shame!” jeered many onlooking students still outside on campus.
One protester at Columbia, who only gave their name as Sophie, told the Guardian that police had barricaded protesters inside buildings before making arrests. “It will not be forgotten,” she said. “This is no longer an Israel-Palestine issue. It’s a human rights and free speech and a Columbia student issue.”
The police operation, which was largely over within a couple of hours, follow nearly two weeks of tensions, with pro-Palestinian protesters at the university ignoring an ultimatum on Monday to abandon their encampment or risk suspension. On Tuesday, Columbia University officials threatened academic expulsion of the students who had seized Hamilton Hall, an eight-story neo-classical building blocked by protesters who linked arms to form a barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
The university said in a statement on Tuesday it had asked police to enter the campus to “restore safety and order to our community”.
It said: “After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice. Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
The university reiterated the view that the group who “broke into and occupied the building” was being led by individuals who are “not affiliated with the university”.
It added: “The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing.”Interactive
New York congressman Jamaal Bowman said he was “outraged” by the level of police presence at Columbia and other New York universities. He said on X: “The militarization of college campuses, extensive police presence, and arrest of hundreds of students are in direct opposition to the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy.”
Bowman has called on the Columbia administration to stop the “dangerous escalation before it leads to further harm” and allow faculty back on to campus.
Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, has requested that police retain a presence until at least 17 May “to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished”. Earlier, Shafik said efforts to reach a compromise with protest organisers had failed and that the institution would not bow to demands to divest from Israel.
Separately, the New York Times reported dozens of arrests at City College of New York, part of the City University of New York system (CUNY), when some students left Columbia and moved north to the campus where a protest sit-in was still in effect.
One protester who offered their name as OS, told the Guardian: “We need to keep protesting peacefully and the truth needs to come out. This is a genocide happening in front of us, and the people in power are allowing this to happen.
“It’s scary to speak out because so many people are losing their tuition or being fired from jobs.”
An NYPD official confirmed that CUNY had requested that police enter the campus to disperse protesters.
An encampment at the public college has been going since Thursday and students had attempted to occupy an academic building earlier on Tuesday.
At a Tuesday evening news briefing, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.
Neither Adams nor the university provided specific evidence to back up that contention.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s school of international and public affairs on a student visa, disputed assertions that outsiders had initiated the occupation. “They’re students,” he told Reuters.
Hamilton Hall was one of several buildings occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protest on the campus. This week, student protesters, displayed a large banner that reads “Hind’s Hall”, renaming it in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza City who was killed by Israeli forces earlier this year.
Columbia journalism professor Seyma Beyram, said on X that she and her journalism school colleagues were trapped on one block surrounded by police barricades. “All I can document right now are students getting put on one of the buses.”
On Tuesday night, Columbia’s student radio station reported that Jelani Cobb, the dean of the journalism school, was threatened with arrest if he and others in the building came out. “Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled: “Let the students go.”
At CUNY as the police moved off, one student said: “We de-escalated , and now the police are leaving. We’re proud of standing up for something. All we’re saying is we’re not happy university tuition fees are being used to fund wars, and we want to see what we can do about it, but without violence.”
At least one thousand supporters of the campus protests assembled at 1 Police Plaza to greet detained protesters as they were released by police one by one.
Many greeting them said the night’s events had not dulled their determination to continue, or had in fact increased it. “The solidarity and energy of the movement is strong,” said one Barnard student waiting for their friend to be released. “This will not end until our purposes are achieved.”
Members of neturei karta, the fringe anti-Israel orthodox group, also assembled. “I believe in freedom of speech and the cause of Palestine is a righteous cause, and criticism of Israel is not antisemitism,” said Rabbi Dovid Feltman.
Reuters contributed to this report
NYPD make arrests at Fordham University
Videos
New York police arrest 300 pro-Palestinian protesters from campuses
Jonathan Yerushalmy and Helen Livingstone
Wed, 1 May 2024
Police arrest protesters during pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the City College Of New York (Cuny) on Tuesday night.
Police arrest protesters during pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the City College Of New York (Cuny) on Tuesday night.
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested across US campuses on Wednesday, raising tensions after a weeks-long protest movement over the Israel-Gaza war that has put student demonstrators at odds with university leadership.
Demonstrators have set-up encampments on about 30 campuses across the US and are demanding that academic institutions stop doing business with Israel or companies that are connected to the Israeli military’s war in Gaza.
The exact number of arrests remains unclear but is believed to have exceeded 1,300 since the start of the latest bout of protests two weeks ago, with more students being detained on Wednesday evening. Here’s a summary of the main campuses where arrests have taken place over the past 24 hours:
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested across US campuses on Wednesday, raising tensions after a weeks-long protest movement over the Israel-Gaza war that has put student demonstrators at odds with university leadership.
Demonstrators have set-up encampments on about 30 campuses across the US and are demanding that academic institutions stop doing business with Israel or companies that are connected to the Israeli military’s war in Gaza.
The exact number of arrests remains unclear but is believed to have exceeded 1,300 since the start of the latest bout of protests two weeks ago, with more students being detained on Wednesday evening. Here’s a summary of the main campuses where arrests have taken place over the past 24 hours:
Columbia University, New York
The protest movement was sparked at New York’s Columbia University when students pitched tents in the middle of campus and began rallying in support of Palestinians in Gaza on 17 April.
Police first tried to clear the encampment a day later, when they arrested more than 100 people. That move motivated Columbia protesters to regroup.
On Tuesday night hundreds of police entered Columbia’s campus at the request of the university president after protesters occupied an academic building. Less than two hours later, all protesters had been removed from Columbia.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said 282 arrests had been made at the Columbia and City University of New York, or Cuny, campuses.
City University of New York
About 170 of the total 282 arrests were blocks away at the Cuny campus, reports said, with the total number of students involved unclear.
In a statement, the university said the calling in of police on Tuesday night was a “public safety approach [that] was a response to repeated acts of violence and vandalism.”
Video footage showed officers forcing some protesters to the ground late on Tuesday and shoving others as they cleared the street and sidewalks. The City news site said an unspecified number of staff and faculty stayed home from work on Wednesday in solidarity with the protesters.
Fordham University, New York
Police officers in riot gear began arresting protesters on Wednesday evening, the New York Times reported, adding that demonstrators “did not appear to resist”.
The university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had organized a small encampment in the Lowenstein Lobby building to urge Fordham to divest from Israel on Wednesday morning.
The university paper, the Fordham Ram, reported that all students participating in the encampment had been arrested and suspended by 6.30pm. The university said it had called in the police with the “utmost regret” but added that it had requested a police presence until 22 May.
The city’s pro-Palestine movement reassembled across four different locations on Wednesday evening, including at a joint Columbia and City universities gathering at the Cuny campus in Harlem.
University of California, Los Angeles
In the early hours of Wednesday, UCLA was the site of some of the worst violence seen in the protests so far, when counter-protesters “forcefully attacked” a pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus.
Fifteen people were injured during the UCLA confrontation, including one person who was hospitalised, while multiple news reports said security guards and law enforcement officials at the scene initially retreated or failed to intervene.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called the violence “unacceptable” while Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass called for a “full investigation” into the incident.
On Wednesday, hundreds of people were reportedly still queueing to enter the encampment in the evening, with authorities reportedly declaring an unlawful assembly there and preparing to clear the encampment.
University of Wisconsin, Madison
In Madison on Wednesday, a scrum broke out after police with shields removed all but one tent at the university’s encampment and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said.
More tents sprang up within hours. More than 30 people were initially detained, but police said only four were charged, with battering law enforcement.
University of Arizona, Tucson
Police at the University of Arizona in Tucson fired “non-lethal” chemical weapons at protesters and arrested four people in the early hours of Wednesday, the Arizona Daily Star reported, to break up a protest camp that had been set up on Tuesday. At least one protester was hit with a rubber bullet.
The university’s president, Robert C Robbins, said police’s “minimal use” of pepper balls and rubber bullets in breaking up the protest was warranted and claimed that officers had been “assaulted with projectiles”.
Student leaders disagreed with the police tactics, saying: “the use of force against peaceful students has never and will never deserve to have a place on our campus”.
University of Texas, Dallas
The University of Texas in Dallas confirmed that 17 protesters had been arrested on its campus as of Wednesday evening, after police moved in at the request of university officials.
According to local media, the police operation involved dozens of state troopers in riot gear. The entire encampment was dismantled within about 20 minutes and additional law enforcement remained on the campus until about 6pm.
About 100 protesters are reportedly continuing demonstrations on another part of the campus.
Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana
Fourteen people including two students were arrested early on Wednesday when police were called in to clear a two-day encampment, the Tulane Hullabaloo news site reported. University officials said they supported “free speech and the freedom to protest” but were opposed to trespassing, hate speech and antisemitism.
Dozens arrested at Columbia University as New York police disperse Gaza protest
Diana Ramirez-Simon, Jonathan Yerushalmy, Edward Helmore and Erum Salam
Tue, 30 April 2024
Dozens arrested at Columbia University as New York police disperse Gaza protest
Dozens of students have been arrested after hundreds of New York City police officers entered Columbia University on Tuesday night to clear out an academic building that had been taken over as part of a pro-Palestinian protest.
Live video images showed police in riot gear marching on the campus in upper Manhattan, the focal point of nationwide student protests opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Police used an armoured vehicle with a bridging mechanism to gain entry to the second floor of the building.
Officers said they used flash-bangs to disperse the crowd, but denied using teargas as part of the operation.
Before long, officers were seen leading protesters handcuffed with zip ties to a line of police buses waiting outside campus gates. NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves said he had no immediate reports of any injuries following the arrests.
“We’re clearing it out,” police yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building.
Related: ‘This machine bonks fascists’: US student protester’s water jug becomes symbol of resistance
“Shame! Shame!” jeered many onlooking students still outside on campus.
One protester at Columbia, who only gave their name as Sophie, told the Guardian that police had barricaded protesters inside buildings before making arrests. “It will not be forgotten,” she said. “This is no longer an Israel-Palestine issue. It’s a human rights and free speech and a Columbia student issue.”
The police operation, which was largely over within a couple of hours, follow nearly two weeks of tensions, with pro-Palestinian protesters at the university ignoring an ultimatum on Monday to abandon their encampment or risk suspension. On Tuesday, Columbia University officials threatened academic expulsion of the students who had seized Hamilton Hall, an eight-story neo-classical building blocked by protesters who linked arms to form a barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
The university said in a statement on Tuesday it had asked police to enter the campus to “restore safety and order to our community”.
It said: “After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice. Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
The university reiterated the view that the group who “broke into and occupied the building” was being led by individuals who are “not affiliated with the university”.
It added: “The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing.”Interactive
New York congressman Jamaal Bowman said he was “outraged” by the level of police presence at Columbia and other New York universities. He said on X: “The militarization of college campuses, extensive police presence, and arrest of hundreds of students are in direct opposition to the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy.”
Bowman has called on the Columbia administration to stop the “dangerous escalation before it leads to further harm” and allow faculty back on to campus.
Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, has requested that police retain a presence until at least 17 May “to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished”. Earlier, Shafik said efforts to reach a compromise with protest organisers had failed and that the institution would not bow to demands to divest from Israel.
Separately, the New York Times reported dozens of arrests at City College of New York, part of the City University of New York system (CUNY), when some students left Columbia and moved north to the campus where a protest sit-in was still in effect.
One protester who offered their name as OS, told the Guardian: “We need to keep protesting peacefully and the truth needs to come out. This is a genocide happening in front of us, and the people in power are allowing this to happen.
“It’s scary to speak out because so many people are losing their tuition or being fired from jobs.”
An NYPD official confirmed that CUNY had requested that police enter the campus to disperse protesters.
An encampment at the public college has been going since Thursday and students had attempted to occupy an academic building earlier on Tuesday.
At a Tuesday evening news briefing, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.
Neither Adams nor the university provided specific evidence to back up that contention.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s school of international and public affairs on a student visa, disputed assertions that outsiders had initiated the occupation. “They’re students,” he told Reuters.
Hamilton Hall was one of several buildings occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protest on the campus. This week, student protesters, displayed a large banner that reads “Hind’s Hall”, renaming it in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza City who was killed by Israeli forces earlier this year.
Columbia journalism professor Seyma Beyram, said on X that she and her journalism school colleagues were trapped on one block surrounded by police barricades. “All I can document right now are students getting put on one of the buses.”
On Tuesday night, Columbia’s student radio station reported that Jelani Cobb, the dean of the journalism school, was threatened with arrest if he and others in the building came out. “Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled: “Let the students go.”
At CUNY as the police moved off, one student said: “We de-escalated , and now the police are leaving. We’re proud of standing up for something. All we’re saying is we’re not happy university tuition fees are being used to fund wars, and we want to see what we can do about it, but without violence.”
At least one thousand supporters of the campus protests assembled at 1 Police Plaza to greet detained protesters as they were released by police one by one.
Many greeting them said the night’s events had not dulled their determination to continue, or had in fact increased it. “The solidarity and energy of the movement is strong,” said one Barnard student waiting for their friend to be released. “This will not end until our purposes are achieved.”
Members of neturei karta, the fringe anti-Israel orthodox group, also assembled. “I believe in freedom of speech and the cause of Palestine is a righteous cause, and criticism of Israel is not antisemitism,” said Rabbi Dovid Feltman.
Reuters contributed to this report
NYPD make arrests at Fordham University
Videos
Updated Wed, 1 May 2024
STORY: New York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed-up in an academic building on nearby Columbia University campus late on Tuesday (April 30) and removed a protest encampment the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks. Daytime aerials over the university campus on Wednesday morning (May 1) showed a cleared protest site where protesters had previously camped out for several days.
As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.
About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack but the Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure, and created a humanitarian crisis verging on famine.
STORY: New York City police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed-up in an academic building on nearby Columbia University campus late on Tuesday (April 30) and removed a protest encampment the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks. Daytime aerials over the university campus on Wednesday morning (May 1) showed a cleared protest site where protesters had previously camped out for several days.
As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.
About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack but the Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure, and created a humanitarian crisis verging on famine.
Xinhua, May 2, 202
The New York Police Department (NYPD) officers have arrested nearly 300 pro-Palestinian protesters from three campuses within 24 hours, according to the NYPD and media reports.
The NYPD arrested 173 protesters from the City College of New York and 109 from Columbia University in separate operations on Tuesday night, according to a press conference by the NYPD on Wednesday morning.
NYPD officers detained 15 pro-Palestinian protesters from Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus on Wednesday afternoon, reports said.
The NYPD cleaned an encampment on the campus which was set up on Wednesday as classes in both the City College of New York and Columbia University's Morningside Campus went fully remotely.
The NYPD employed drones before entering the Hamilton Hall of Columbia University once occupied by protesters and police radios were encrypted during the operation, said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who served as a police officer in New York for over two decades.
Fordham University asked the NYPD to be on campus through at least May 22 while the NYPD was required to have their presence on Columbia University's Morningside Campus at least until May 17.
The NYPD responded to about 1,100 protests and demonstrations across the city since the outbreak of the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, accounting for 45.8 percent of the total in New York City, said New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban.
Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on U.S. university campuses were seen as part of the national protests against war and a call for peace in Gaza.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) officers have arrested nearly 300 pro-Palestinian protesters from three campuses within 24 hours, according to the NYPD and media reports.
The NYPD arrested 173 protesters from the City College of New York and 109 from Columbia University in separate operations on Tuesday night, according to a press conference by the NYPD on Wednesday morning.
NYPD officers detained 15 pro-Palestinian protesters from Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus on Wednesday afternoon, reports said.
The NYPD cleaned an encampment on the campus which was set up on Wednesday as classes in both the City College of New York and Columbia University's Morningside Campus went fully remotely.
The NYPD employed drones before entering the Hamilton Hall of Columbia University once occupied by protesters and police radios were encrypted during the operation, said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who served as a police officer in New York for over two decades.
Fordham University asked the NYPD to be on campus through at least May 22 while the NYPD was required to have their presence on Columbia University's Morningside Campus at least until May 17.
The NYPD responded to about 1,100 protests and demonstrations across the city since the outbreak of the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, accounting for 45.8 percent of the total in New York City, said New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban.
Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on U.S. university campuses were seen as part of the national protests against war and a call for peace in Gaza.
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