" Welcome to the people ’s University for Palestine . "
Reports of students protesting some American universities' ties with Israel have been generating copious headlines in the past few days.
Many of the student groups' aims arebroadlysimilar: encourage the universities tocutfinancial ties with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza. Campus protestsbeganafter the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, and have picked up as the death toll in Palestine has risen toat least30,000 people from subsequent Israeli attacks.
So here’s what the protests look like right now at universities across the US:
1.Columbia is making headlines after police initially tried toclear outstudent encampments on the university’s campus on April 18, with over a hundred students being arrested.
2.The majority were charged with trespassing. According to University President Nemat Shafik, the protests are inviolationof “a long list of rules and policies.”
3.On April 22, hundreds of Columbia faculty held amass walkoutin response to police involvement.
4.Classes will behybriduntil the end of the semester on April 29. Protestors have said that they willnotmove until their demands are met.
5.Other universities have also set up “solidarity encampments,” such asNYU’s Palestine Solidarity Coalition. Their Instagram bio states, “We organize to break the university’s ties with the apartheid settler-colonial state.”
6.On NYU’s campus, over 120 people werearrestedMonday following what university officials called “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.”
7.According toTeen Vogue, the NYPD reportedly pepper-sprayed students and arrested several faculty members.
8.This sparked further protests of police involvement in a peaceful protest the following day.
9.In Massachusetts, Harvard reportedlyrestrictedaccess to Harvard Yard and hung warning signs against tents, leading some students to join the protest at MIT.
10.The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee reportedlysaidit aims to “support MIT as part of the nationwide campaign to escalate for divestment."
11.At Yale, over 40 students were arrested on Monday. Student group Occupy Yale wrote onInstagram, “Yale, you have intimidated us, criminalized us, militarized our campus and failed to accept our demands. We will not stop, we will not rest until we have disclosure and divestment.”
12.University of California, Berkeley students began their protests on Monday insolidaritywith Columbia.
13.And finally, theUC Berkeley Divestgroup has called for an end to the university’s investment in groups that “arm and sustain the genocide in Gaza.”
