College campuses across the country have become home to protests and encampments against Israel’s war on Gaza — leading to hundreds of arrests.
The protesters across the numerous universities are calling for a permanent cease-fire, university divestment from companies making money off of the war, an end to U.S. military assistance for Israel, and amnesty for disciplined student or faculty protesters.
In one high-profile instance at Columbia University in New York, more than 100 people were arrested Thursday as students and faculty protested the university’s Israel-related investments.
The demonstrations mirror a week of protests at the university in 1968 over the Vietnam War, which led to more than 700 arrests and nearly 150 reported injuries.
The present-day Columbia demonstrations seem to have added fuel to numerous other demonstrations across the country despite the arrests.
On Monday, 120 protesters were arrested at New York University, 47 students were arrested at Yale University , and three people were arrested at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
On Tuesday, nine people at the University of Minnesota were arrested, and two were arrested at Ohio State University.
The demonstrations at Columbia and across the country have been labeled as antisemitic and unsafe for Jewish students. But many of the protesters at these campuses’ “solidarity encampments” are themselves Jewish students calling for Palestinian freedom.
For example, students with the Jewish Voice for Peace, alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, at the University of Rochester formed encampments on campus, according to a post on X from the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Justin O’Connor.
The White House joined university administrators earlier this week in condemning the protests, presuming that Jewish students in the U.S. automatically support Israel’s military offensive in Gaza — a dangerous assumption that JVP said is “actively harming Palestinian and Jewish students.”
Faculty and staff at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, condemned the war and President Joe Biden ’s stance in a statement as Biden is set to be the college’s commencement speaker.
