Protesters at Columbia University seized a campus building, hours after the school began suspending students over a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Demonstrations have been surfacing at college campuses nationwide since more than 100 student were arrested at Columbia University after university officials called in New York police to clear a pro-Palestinian protest camp on the main lawn encampment.
The officers were caught between buildings and protesters pushed in on them, creating a mass of shoving bodies before police used pepper spray to control the crowed of student demonstrators.
Inspired by the action at Columbia, hundreds of students have set up protest Camps on several other campuses, demanding their universities cut financial ties with Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the war in Gaza.
Israel and many of its supporters have labeled the protests "Antisemitic" and say they pose a threat to the safety of Jewish students.
Some have pointed to videos of protesters outside Columbia's gates who were caught on camera making antisemitic remarks, but the student protesters—some of whom are Jewish—have said those individuals do not represent them and that their movement is peaceful.
"What happens outside the gates has NOTHING to do with the student protest on campus: these are outside groups for which neither students, faculty nor Columbia are responsible," Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia,Explained.
"Conflating the two is a malign tactic used to smear the students, which much of the media has shamefully fallen for."
