Calls for divestment continue despite hundreds of arrests, with more demonstrations planned for Democratic national convention
Student protests on US university campuses over Israel’s war on Gaza showed little sign of letting up over the weekend, with protesters vowing to continue until their demands for US educational bodies to disentangle from companies profiting from the conflict are met.
In what is perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s, the conflict between pro-Palestinian students and university administrators has revealed an entire subset of conflicts.
The drone of helicopters over New York’s Washington Square Park on Monday previewed the arrival of the strategic response group (SRG), the New York police department’s specialist counter-terrorism and political protests division, which set about arresting more than 120 New York University students and faculty members who had been circulating on a campus sidewalk to the chant of: “Israel bombs, NYU pays, how many kids have you killed today?”
After several years of semi-seasonal student marches through the city to voice positions on topics from racial justice to global heating to gun control, protests over the Israel-Gaza war are the latest headache for authorities. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, blamed the NYU protests on “professional agitators”; the university fenced off the square where students customarily gather.
Several days earlier, and more than 100 blocks uptown, Columbia university officials had warned student members of the Gaza Solidarity encampment on the quadrangle of the Ivy League college that while they had a right to protest, they were not allowed “to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students”.
But then, contentiously, the SRG was called in. Officers arrested – and later released – more than 100 students, inflaming a larger political debate surrounding the university president, Minouche Shafik, in the job less than a year. Students demanded Shafik resign because she’d called the police on to campus – actions that supercharged the spirits of student protest nationally – while accusations of antisemitism have mounted, both against protesters and against Shafik for, her critics say, not sufficiently protecting Jewish students.
Joe Biden joined congressional voices on both sides of the aisle calling the protests “antisemitic”.
The House Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who had just pushed through a $26bn aid package for Israel, came to Columbia on Wednesday to demand that the solidarity encampment be dismantled. “Get off our campus!” one student yelled. “Enjoy your free speech,” Johnson hit back.
At Columbia, some organizers blamed antisemitic rhetoric on outsiders unaffiliated with the university piggybacking on the protesters.
