US, pro-Gaza protest leads to avalanche of arrests in universities –

Crackdown in the USA. Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested overnight by American police at Yale University in Connecticut and at New York University in Manhattan. In particular, on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, officers have arrested at least 47 protesters in the past few hours. The students arrested, the university specifies, will be subjected to disciplinary action. The police crackdown follows Columbia University’s decision to cancel in-person classes in response to the setting up of tent encampments on its New York campus by protesters protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. And to try to “reset” the situation and “reduce resentment”. Several hundred people also protested on the Yale University campus, demanding that the university stop funding military weapons manufacturers. Yale said it repeatedly asked the students to leave and warned them that they might face law enforcement and disciplinary action if they did not.

In Gould Plaza, near New York University, officers intervened to dismantle an encampment set up by protesters, causing clashes. An NYPD spokesperson said the arrests were made following the university asked police to enforce the trespassing law, but the total number of arrests was unclear. The student newspaper Washington Square News reported that the NYPD announced over a loudspeaker that students would be arrested for “disorderly conduct” and that protesters were illegally blocking traffic.

Bassam Khawaja, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School and an attorney at the school’s human rights clinic, told the Guardian he was “shocked and appalled that the president immediately turned to the New York Police Department.” And he explained that «this was, by all accounts, a nonviolent protest» by «a group of students camped on the lawn in the center of campus. It’s no different than everyday life on campus.” After the crackdown at Columbia, students across the United States protested in solidarity, many calling on their universities to support a ceasefire in Gaza and to divest from companies with ties to Israel. For example, students at Brown, Princeton and Northwestern protested over the weekend. Camps have also been set up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson College, both in the Boston area. Protest actions were also conducted at Boston University, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An outcry that spreads like wildfire.