Students Pitched Tents For Gaza On at Least 100 US College Campuses

Pro-Palestine encampments have spread to at least 100 colleges in 30 states and Washington, DC, and nearly 1,600 people have been arrested on campuses since protesters first erected tents on Columbia University’s quad on April 17.

The New York Police Department cleared Columbia’s Hamilton Hall late Tuesday night, where demonstrators had barricaded themselves earlier that day, and arrested 282 people there and in a separate operation at the City College of New York. Violent clashes broke out overnight at the University of California at Los Angeles, as well.

College leaders from Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan — all schools with encampments — have been invited to testify before Congress about their efforts to stop antisemitism on their campuses.

The demonstrations have prompted a heated national debate over how colleges allow for free speech on campus while also keeping their students safe and maintaining order. The number of encampments on campuses across the country, ranging from the Ivy League to state universities, has doubled since Friday, according to reports compiled by Bloomberg News.

Many schools are attempting to clear the encampments before commencement ceremonies begin, aiming to avoid a situation like the one at University of Southern California where the graduation ceremony has been canceled. For much of their senior undergraduate class, this is their second canceled graduation — their first being in 2020 when Covid caused widespread cancellations of most events. Northwestern University and Brown University both reached deals with student groups to remove tents before the end of the semester.

Arrests have been made at about 30 colleges, and the number of people arrested has more than doubled since Friday. About a third of those arrests were in New York City. Before the arrests at Columbia and City College on Wednesday, local law enforcement arrested more than 80 people, 53 of whom were students, at a Virginia Tech encampment Tuesday.

Students at Columbia and Yale University were among the first to pitch tents in mid-April, calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for their schools to disclose and divest financial holdings tied to Israel and US weapons makers. The demonstrations have raised concerns over antisemitism on campus and several protesters have expressed support for Hamas, an Iran-backed group designated as a terrorist organization by the US government. Some protests have featured antisemitic and intimidating chants and posters, which are fueling a sense of isolation among Jewish students. Student organizers dispute that these incidents are representative of the movement, noting that the sit-ins have been largely peaceful and that they “reject any form of bigotry.”

Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have been holding protests on college campuses since October, after Hamas killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 in an attack on Israel, and the Jewish state retaliated by bombarding and invading Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Israel says it has killed at least 13,000 members of Hamas.

The reverberations from the protests are being felt globally as encampments are popping up at universities abroad. Students at Sciences Po, the alma mater of French President Emmanuel Macron, and at Sorbonne University both launched sit-ins in Paris, as did those at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne in Australia.