George Washington University students rally on campus in support of Palestinians suffering under Israel s war on Gaza, on Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. AP
Riot officers used chemical irritants and tasers at one university as administrators at some of the country's most prestigious institutions battled to prevent occupations taking hold.
Staging sit-ins and mounting boisterous demonstrations, the activists are calling for a ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza, as well as for colleges to sever ties with the country and with companies they say profit from the conflict.
"For 201 days, the world has watched in silence as Israel has murdered over 30,000 Palestinians," organizers of a protest at the University of California, Los Angeles said in an online message.
"Today, UCLA joins students across the country in demanding that our universities divest from the companies which profit off of the occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine."
More than 200 protesters were arrested Wednesday and early Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas, where around 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday.
At Emory College in Atlanta, photographs showed police wielding tasers as they wrestled with protesters on neatly manicured lawns.
Meanwhile, a university professor was caught on CNN camera being slammed to the ground and arrested, in a display of police brutality now standard during pro-Palestine protests.
The spreading protests began at Columbia University in New York, where a midnight deadline was approaching for students to remove an encampment that has become the epicenter of the movement.
Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll has topped 34,305, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Demonstrators, who include a number of Jewish students, have disavowed anti-Semitism and criticized officials equating it with opposition to Israel.
"People are here in support of Palestinian people from all different backgrounds... (compelled by) their general sense of justice," a 33-year-old graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, who said he was Jewish and gave his name as Josh, told AFP.
Coast to coast
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, 93 people were arrested for trespassing on Wednesday, authorities said they were cancelling events at the May 10 graduation ceremony.
At Emerson College in Boston, local media reported classes were cancelled Thursday after police clashed with protesters overnight, tearing down a pro-Palestinian encampment and arresting 108 people.
In Washington, students from Georgetown and George Washington University (GW) established a solidarity encampment on the GW campus Thursday.
Protests and encampments have also sprung up at New York University and Yale -- both of which also saw dozens of students arrested earlier this week -- Harvard, Brown University, MIT, the University of Michigan and elsewhere.
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt said its campus could remain closed into next week due to protesters occupying buildings.
On Sunday, US President Joe Biden denounced "blatant anti-Semitism" that has "no place on college campuses."
But the White House has also said the president supports freedom of expression at US universities.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online
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