After days of pro-Palestine protests that have sparked mass arrests and barred classes, student fury with school officials and law police on Tuesday worsened tensions on many US campuses.
In recent weeks, protests have erupted at some of America’s most prominent universities, with students and different agitators threatening campus activities and taking control of quads. They are angry over Israel’s involvement in the Hamas battle and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Organisers at Columbia University in New York, the center of the protracted protests, are urging the university to halt operations” that profit from Zionist apartheid, murder, and activity in Palestine.”
Pro-Israel supporters and others concerned about school safety have cited anti-Semitic incidents and claim that campuses are promoting hate speech and intimidation.
” Kids have the right to outcry, but they are not allowed to disrupt college life or abuse and intimidate”, Columbia’s vice president of public affairs Ben Chang told reporters Monday.
” We are acting on problems we are hearing from our Jewish kids”, he said, adding that school officials were meeting “in good trust” with the protesters.
Protesters nevertheless– including a number of Hebrew pupils in the” Gaza Solidarity Encampment”– say they’ve disavowed cases of anti- Semitism and are there to help Palestinians.
” My university leadership, my representatives in Congress and my own president have constantly acted as spokespeople for the Israeli community, equating anti- Zionism with anti- Semitism”, Israeli student Sarah Borus, from Columbia’s Barnard College, said at a news conference held by Jewish and Arab students.
” They solitude us, halt us”, she added.
Fighting individuals claimed they had been called insults by a doctor who supports Israel and that anti-Muslim situations on school were being ignored.
But another Israeli scholar at Columbia, Nick Baum, told CNN he has felt “downright illegal” on college in recent days, saying anti- Semitism there has “reached a boiling place”.
Since last week when Columbia President Minouche Shafik called in authorities to arrest individuals, professors have reacted, some of whom announced they do not impose student punishments.
Although Israel and the Palestinian cause have a long history of college advocacy, big media and political attention have been drawn to the conflict’s flaring issues.
” Jewish students at Columbia University do n’t feel secure,” said one student. Democratic Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stated on Tuesday that the situation has become so hazardous that students were forced to leave.
” This be obvious: these are not calm protests, these are pro- Celtic mobs”.
Further downtown, 133 people were arrested at New York University ( NYU) and released after being issued with court summons, the New York Police Department told AFP, as protests also intensify at other schools.
According to a NYU spokesman, more protesters, many of whom were not believed to be affiliated with the university, broke the barriers built around the protest encampment.
This “dramatically changed” the position, the spokeswoman said in a statement on the school’s website Monday, citing “disorderly, destructive and insulting behavior” along with “intimidated chants and some anti- Jewish incidents”.
California State Polytechnic University announced that its campus would remain open until at least Wednesday after pro-Palestine demonstrators took control of a government building on the West Coast.
President Joe Biden and his administration have also been focusing on the protests.
” Anti- Semitic hate on college campuses is unacceptable”, US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona posted on X on Tuesday, expressing concern about the unrest.
That afternoon, hundreds of NYU students and faculty staged a walkout.
At least 47 people were detained on Monday after refusing to disperse after demonstrations at MIT, the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, and Yale.
