Hundreds of students arrested from Texas to California as encampments spread

• Published date: 26 April 2024
• Author: ANDREW LAPIN/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

At some schools, students took over campus buildings, while others were seeing protest encampments spring up for the first time. Hundreds of people have been arrested as police and campus authorities have cracked down on the student protests in a growing number of places

Meanwhile, the University of Southern California announced Thursday that it was canceling its graduation ceremony altogether, shortly after it barred its valedictorian from speaking after pro-Israel groups raised alarm about her social media profile.

The latest incidents come a week after mass arrests, suspensions and evictions of pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University, inspiring copycat protests at other colleges that have flummoxed administrators in many cases. The sight of armed police officers sometimes violently disrupting so-called "Gaza solidarity encampments" has drawn comparisons to similar crackdowns on Vietnam War-era campus protests, particularly at Kent State University, where members of the National Guard killed four protesters and wounded nine more in 1970.

Three of the murdered Kent State students were Jewish, including Allison Krause. On Wednesday, her sister Laurel condemned Columbia's president, and other university heads, for their handling of the Gaza protests, urging them to allow student protests without the prospect of police intervention.

"In 1970 failures of Kent State University leadership enabled the massacre which left 'Four Dead in Ohio,'" Krause, who today runs a Kent State narrative project and has advocated on behalf of Palestinians, said in a statement. "Our institutions must learn from these past mistakes to not use militarized responses against unarmed, peaceful student protesters by calling in the National Guard, bringing in State Troopers or deploying Police in riot gear."

The protests have become a canvas for politicians of all stripes, who have made appearances on campuses to advance their own agendas. Republican politicians have urged drastic interventions to quell what they describe as antisemitic unrest. Some progressive Democrats, including Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, appeared in protest encampments.

Netanyahu: Antisemitic mobs have taken over universities

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose handling of the war with Hamas has drawn fierce condemnation not only from international bodies but also from many Israelis, also denounced the campus protests.

"What's happening in America's college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities," he said in a statement on...