US Campus Protests: Hundreds Arrested amid Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Students

By Staff, Agencies

Dozens of protesters were arrested on Wednesday while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations across US college campuses.

At least 34 protesters, including a member of the media from a local news station, were arrested during protests at University of Texas in Austin and at least 50 more were detained by police at University of Southern California [USC].

The arrests come amid a wave of demonstrations at campuses across the US, which began last week after students at New York’s Columbia University set up encampments calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to “Israel”.

The crackdown led to mass suspensions and arrests of hundreds of students in New York and other cities.

House speaker, Mike Johnson, jumped into the fray on Wednesday with a visit to Columbia’s campus, where he faced jeers from the pro-Palestinian protesters and called for the resignation of the university’s president.

Flanked by a number of Republican members of Congress, Johnson denounced the demonstrations as “mob rule” and condemned what he called a “virus of antisemitism” at colleges nationwide.

Johnson’s speech drew boos from the crowd, as he also called for the resignation of Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president.

In California, protests swelled at UC Berkeley and USC. Further north at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, protesters barricaded themselves in a university building using furniture, tents, chains and zip-ties, prompting a campus shutdown.

Students at Harvard University set up an encampment in Harvard Yard on Wednesday morning to protest against the suspension of the university’s undergraduate Palestine solidarity committee and demand the university divest from “Israel” over its aggression on Gaza.

And in Texas, an anti-war protest at the University of Texas in Austin resulted in at least 34 arrests, including of a photojournalist, after state troopers stormed the campus.

As temperatures rose, Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York, called Johnson’s trip “divisive”, while the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assailed authorities for the “reckless and dangerous act” of calling police to non-violent demonstrations.

Hochul accused Johnson of “politicizing” the issue, and “adding to the division”, according to the New York Post. “There’s a lot more responsibilities and crises to be dealt with in Washington,” she said.

Thousands of students have turned out this week to attend marches or set up encampments at universities from Massachusetts to California, demanding their schools cut financial ties to “Israel” and divest from companies enabling its aggression.

At UC Berkeley, a protest camp entered its third day. Rows of tents have been added to a cluster set up on the steps of the university’s Sproul Hall at the center of campus. Starting with just a dozen, more students have joined the “Free Palestine Camp” over the last three days, a sit-in demanding their school sever its financial connections to BlackRock and other asset managers they see as complicit for financing genocide in Gaza.

The protesters are also calling for an academic boycott, which would end collaborations with “Israeli” universities and the establishment of a new Palestinian studies program.

Police responding to a demonstration at USC got into a back-and-forth tugging match with protesters over tents. As of 7pm local time over a dozen people were arrested at the campus, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene.

At UT Austin, hundreds of local and state police – including some on horseback and holding batons – clashed with protesters, pushing them off the campus lawn and at one point sending some tumbling into the street.

A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was arrested after being caught in a push-and-pull between officers and students, the station confirmed. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff who bandaged his head.

Faculty at UT Austin will be striking in response to what they called a “militarized response” to a “peaceful, planned action”, stating on X that they are refusing to hold classes starting Thursday.

At Columbia, the focal point of national student demonstrations, Shafik said on Wednesday that she had extended by 48 hours a deadline for talks with protest leaders for the dismantling of a tent encampment on Columbia’s west lawn. More than 100 people were arrested at the university last week after she brought in the police, and more than 140 students, faculty members and others were arrested on Monday night at a separate protest at New York University’s Manhattan campus.