More than 60 people, including a journalist, arrested at University of Southern California and University of Texas at Austin. This blog is now closed.
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, will visit Columbia University today to speak to Jewish students and hold a press conference “regarding the troubling rise of virulent antisemitism on America’s college campuses”, his office has said.
New York House Republicans have called on Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, to resign immediately for failing to end the protests.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has weighed in on the student campus protests, calling them “antisemitic” and claiming they “incite terrorism”.
Writing on X, Gallant added: “To our Jewish brothers and sisters – we stand with you. To university faculties and US authorities – listen to their calls for jihad. Act now to defend Jewish youth.”
The protests taking place on U.S. college campuses are not only antisemitic, but also inciting terrorism.
— יואב גלנט - Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) April 24, 2024
To our Jewish brothers and sisters - we stand with you.
To university faculties and U.S. authorities - listen to their calls for Jihad. Act now to defend Jewish youth.
Team Biden, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to be overly concerned yet by any potential impact the campus protests could have on his electoral chances.
Politico reports this morning that campaign officials believe the student vote and the youth vote are not one and the same. One official is quoted as saying: “It’s not going to be for the vast majority of young voters the thing that’s going to determine whether they vote or how they vote.”
A recent Harvard Youth poll, quoted by Politico, says economic issues rather than the war in Gaza is at the forefront of young Americans’ minds. However, Harvard polling guru John Della Volpe was quotes as saying: “How this evolves, who knows? … Hopefully things improve. But I would not be willing to write [the protests] off right now.”
On Tuesday, the Georgia chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine criticized Morehouse College’s decision to go ahead with Biden’s commencement speech.
In a statement, the group called on Morehouse leaders to rescind the invitation and said students and faculty members were not consulted, warning the decision “would do lasting harm to everyone associated with the college”.
Quoting former college president Benjamin E Mays, who said Morehouse graduates must work to correct wrongs and injustices in the world, the statement also added: “President Biden has not demonstrated sensitivity to wrongs sufferings and injustices. And as the one person on the planet who has the power to stop an active genocide, he has not accepted responsibility for correcting the ills.”
Joe Biden will be the commencement speaker at Morehouse College in Georgia, giving the Democrat a key spotlight on one of the nation’s preeminent historically Black campuses but potentially exposing him to uncomfortable protests as he seeks reelection against former Donald Trump.
The AP reports:
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Biden would speak May 19 at the alma mater of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., and then address the graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 25.
The Morehouse announcement has drawn some backlash among the school’s faculty and supporters who are critical of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. That could put the White House and Biden’s reelection campaign in a difficult position as the president works to shore up the racially diverse coalition that propelled him to the Oval Office.
Campus protests are growing across the US, with arrests this week at Yale and New York universities.
Mother Jones has put together a list of universities where students have set up encampments to protest and demand universities divest from companies that are closely linked to Israel’s military operations.
They include:
New York University, where NYPD arrested a number of people on Monday night. NYU professors wrote an open letter signed by the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at the university denying that any NYU-affiliated protesters had engaged in antisemitism or intimidation of others via the demonstration, and decrying heavy-handed tactics by the police. The letter said NYU leadership’s decision to call the New York police department was “capricious” and noted that many protesters were people of color and that the NYPD had a history of brutality against this demographic.
The New School in New York, where students reportedly set up camp on Sunday during an event for new students. The New School called the encampment “unauthorized” in a statement.
Yale University, where at least 47 protesters were arrested on Monday evening. Several hundred people had been protesting at Yale, including hunger strikers. Craig Birckhead-Morton, 21, who participated in the encampment protest at Yale’s Beinecke Plaza, told the Guardian of his arrest: “We were very surprised. We had built a very peaceful, safe community space where students could engage in discourse with each other, where New Haven and Connecticut community members could come onto the campus and engage with us.” He said the university is still in possession of his belongings from the encampment.
Emerson College, MIT, and Tufts University in Boston. “We were definitely inspired by what’s going on at Columbia,” Owen Buxton, an Emerson College student, told the Boston Globe. “They put out the call for universities across the country, and we answered.”
The University of Michigan, where about 40 students set up an encampment, according to the student-run newspaper The Michigan Daily.
University of California, Berkeley, where students set up a protest camp on Monday, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. About 40 tents were set up by midday on Tuesday. Palestinian flags hung on the tents at Upper Sproul Plaza, which has historically hosted protests on campus. A large sign hung on the building reads: “Gaza Solidarity Encampment Until UC Divests.” “We are demanding a direct acknowledgment and condemnation of this genocide,” Matt Kovac, a member of the UC Berkeley Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, told the Guardian. “We take inspiration and we stand in solidarity with our colleagues, our fellow students and workers, at Columbia and Yale.”
Our picture editors have put together a gallery of the most striking photos from the protests at some of the US’s most prestigious universities:
Away from the campus turmoil, hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators were arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.
The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.
The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.
The protesters called on Schumer – who is among a minority of Democrats to recently criticize the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – to stop arming Israel’s military, which relies heavily on US weapons, jet fuel and other military equipment.
Senior Republican US senators on Tuesday waded into growing tensions at leading universities over the Israel-Gaza war, demanding the Biden administration send in federal law enforcement officers to curb pro-Palestinian protests that have led to hundreds of arrests.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and John Thune, his deputy, wrote to Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, and Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, calling demonstrators “antisemitic, pro-terrorist mobs”.
Twenty-five Republican senators led by McConnell wrote: “The Department of Education and federal law enforcement must act immediately to restore order, prosecute the mobs who have perpetuated [sic] violence and threats against Jewish students, revoke the visas of all foreign nationals (such as exchange students) who have taken part in promoting terrorism, and hold accountable school administrators who have stood by instead of protecting their students.”
The Missouri senator Josh Hawley and Arkansas senator Tom Cotton on Monday called for Joe Biden to send national guard troops on to campuses.
Columbia University has extended a deadline for talks on dismantling pro-Palestinian protest camps on campus by 48 hours as tension over the Unites States’ handling of the Israel-Gaza war grows.
The New York university has been in talks with student protest leaders to clear the encampment and had originally set a deadline of midnight on Tuesday. Columbia’s president Minouche Shafik warned on Tuesday that the university would “have to consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn and restoring calm to campus” if discussions failed.
The deadline extension came after students agreed to dismantle a “significant number of tents”, according to the Washington Post. Student negotiators said in a statement that university leaders had threatened to call in the National Guard and NYPD if their demands were not met.
Shafik has faced criticism over her handling of the protests after more than 100 people were arrested at the university last week.
The arrests have since set off a chain of events, including the re-establishment of the encampment and solidarity protests on other US college campuses. Police arrested dozens of people at pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Yale University in Connecticut and New York University in Manhattan on Monday.
The police crackdowns came after Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday in response to protesters setting up tent encampments at its New York City campus last week.
Hundreds of faculty members then held a mass walkout to protest against the school president’s decision to have police arrest students at a pro-Palestinian encampment protest last week.
We’ll bring you the latest news and reactions from the protests.