Campuses in chaos: Over 100 arrested as anti-Israel protests spread across the US

Universities across the US are facing mounting pressure to deal with pro-Palestine student protests as a wave of campus demonstrations overnight lead to disorder and arrests.

Following the model of the week-long ongoing encampment of pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University, students at the University of Southern California (USC), Brown University, University of Texas in Austin and countless others have begun staging their own demonstrations to pressure their universities to divest from Israeli-linked companies.

At USC, police officers in riot gear arrested 93 people on trespassing charges after the university’s Department of Public Safety ordered protesters gathering at the campus’ Alumni Park on Wednesday afternoon to disperse or face arrest.

Pro-Palestine demonstrators argue with USC public safety officers after officers attempted to take down an encampment in support of Gaza at the University of Southern California on 24 April, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)Getty Images

The official USC account on X posted an update early Thursday morning, writing that the protest has ended but “the campus remains closed until further notice.”

Meanwhile, two members of the media were arrested during protests at the University of Texas at Austin, where local and state police clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Wednesday morning.

More than 500 students at UT-Austin participated in a walk-out in support of Palestine, which turned chaotic when students refused to disperse after multiple orders by officers. According to the Texas Tribune, at least 34 people were arrested.

Mounted police work to contain demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza at the University of Texas at Austin on 24 April, 2024 in Austin, Texas. Students walked out of class as protests continue to sweep college campuses around the country. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)Getty Images

Texas governor Greg Abbott wrote in a statement on X: “Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses. These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell praised the school and law enforcement for showing “extraordinary restraint,” and said the organisers of the protest intended to violate school policies, referring to the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s invitation for students to “occupy” the campus’ South Lawn.

“The group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules,” Hartzell said. “Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied. The protesters tried to deliver on their stated intent to occupy campus. People not affiliated with UT joined them, and many ignored University officials' continual pleas for restraint and to immediately disperse."

A person is detained by police as pro-Palestinian students protest the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, on 24 April, 2024. (Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

At Brown University in Rhode Island, roughly 80 students began an “indefinite encampment” early on Wednesday morning to call for the Ivy League university to divest from companies linked to the Israeli government, according to the Brown Daily Herald. In a video posted to X on Wednesday, students can be seen with a sign reading “Brown invests in the Palestinian genocide” as they set up tents on the university’s Main Green.

Brown University Provost Francis Doyle sent an email to community members on Tuesday afternoon, warning that while an “encampment itself is not an arrestable offense, it is a violation of University policy” and may lead to disciplinary action “up to and including separation from the institution.”

“The larger and the longer an encampment lasts, and the more disruptive it becomes, the more serious the outcomes of the conduct process will necessarily become,” Doyle said.

On Wednesday, Brown University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald: “We have been troubled by reports of violence, harassment and intimidation at some encampments on other campuses, but we have not seen that kind of behavior at Brown. Any such behavior would not be tolerated.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the campus protests in a video message on Wednesday, stating: “What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.”

The protests were praised by several of Israel’s enemies including Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Hamas terror group said in a statement: “The American administration, led by President Biden, violates individual rights and the right to expression, and arrests university students and faculty members because of their rejection of the genocide that our Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists, without the slightest sense of shame about the legal value represented by the students and university professors.”

He called the response of several university presidents “shameful.”

USC President Carol Folt has not commented publicly on the demonstrations and has not responded to the JC’s request for comment. Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, has also remained silent on the matter and has not responded to the JC’s request for comment.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has faced calls for resignation over her lukewarm response to allegations of antisemitism at the elite university and spoke before Congress last week to defend the school’s efforts to combat campus antisemitism.

Faculty join pro-Palestinian students as they protest the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, on 24 April 2024. (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)[Missing Credit]

British-Palestinian peace activist John Aziz said he and American-Palestinian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib were both blocked on X by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, the group behind the encampment on Columbia University’s campus. Aziz, who has been a vocal critic of the anti-Israel campus protests, wrote in a statement on X: “I've never interacted with them before but the Twitter account for the Columbia student organisers @ColumbiaSJP pre-emptively blocked not only me but also @afalkhatib who lost many family members in Gaza. The ‘pro-Palestinians’ are blocking the pro-peace Palestinians.”

Addressing Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine’s position, Alkhatib said in a statement on X: “This is what losing the plot looks like, at a time of rising empathy & solidarity with the Palestinian cause, these students, heavily involved in the Columbia protests, decided that the best thing to do is take an extremist, maximalist, inflammatory, unreasonable, and totally illogical approach which is harmful to the pro-Palestinian cause.”

Protests have also been reported at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Miami University in Ohio and Temple University in Philadelphia.