By Staff, Agencies

Spiraling pro-Palestinian protests that are rocking universities across the United States have spread to more campuses, triggering suggestions from a senior Republican leader that the National Guard could be brought in.

The comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson are likely to evoke strong emotions in a country where the 1970 killing by National Guardsmen of unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War lives on in folk memory.

Demonstrations erupted on Wednesday at the University of Southern California and in Texas, where a tense standoff developed between students and police in riot gear, with more than 20 people detained.

It was the latest confrontation between law enforcement and students protesting against “Israeli” war on Gaza.

The movement began at Columbia University in New York City, where dozens of arrests were made last week after university authorities called in police to quell an occupation.

Johnson told reporters at Columbia that if the demonstrations were not contained quickly, it would be “an appropriate time for the National Guard”.

He said he intended to demand that US President Joe Biden “take action”, and warned that the demonstrations “place a target on the backs of Jewish students in the United States”.

At New York's Columbia University, the epicenter of the demonstrations, protesting students said they won’t disperse until the school agrees to cut ties with “Israeli” academic institutions and disinvest its funds from entities connected to Israel, among other demands. Protesters at other campuses have similar demands.

The campus encampments spreading across the nation have brought together students from a variety of backgrounds — including Palestinians, Arabs, Jews and Muslims — to decry “Israel's” aggression on Gaza.

Since last Thursday, several campuses have been protesting sites, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, University of Michigan, University of New Mexico, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, and Harvard University.