Student Protests Against Israel Persist, With Over 550 Arrests

Protestors across major US universities say they are willing to risk arrest but will not stop until their demand is met. Nearly 550 arrests have been made in the last week, according to a Reuters tally.

Massive demonstrations against Israel are being held on campus at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, UC Berkeley, and other US universities. University authorities have labeled the demonstrations as unauthorized and have called on police to clear them.

Law enforcement at the behest of college administrators has deployed Tasers and tear gas against student protesters at Atlanta’s Emory University over the past two days, activists say. At the University of Texas in Austin, officers clad in riot gear and mounted on horseback have swept away demonstrations.

A video of a professor being knocked down to the ground and handcuffed by the police at Emory University has gone viral on social media. Professor Caroline Fohlin can be seen attempting to intervene as police officers wrestle one student protester to the ground.

Student protesters express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and demand universities to cut investments in entities tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the conflict in Gaza, including funds run by BlackRock, Google, Amazon’s cloud service, Lockheed Martin, and Airbnb. This demand, known as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, has been rejected by university administrators and lawmakers for decades, who view it as antisemitic.

At the epicenter of the movement, Columbia University officials are locked in a stalemate with students over the removal of a tent encampment set up as a protest against the Israeli offensive. US President Joe Biden has denounced “blatant anti-Semitism” on college campuses but also supports freedom of expression at US universities, according to the White House.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have condemned the arrest of protesters and urged authorities to respect their free speech rights.