Tensions are growing at the University of California where hundreds of police in riot gear have gathered after warning pro-Palestinian protesters to disperse or face arrest, a day after their encampment was violently attacked by masked counter-protesters.
Police began forming lines near the encampment at the Los Angeles campus and ordered the dispersal of more than a thousand people who had gathered in support of the protesters on Wednesday night, warning over loudspeakers that anyone who refused to leave could face arrest.
Students across the US have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their universities to divest from Israeli companies and those that supply the Israeli military, in some of the biggest demonstrations to roil US campuses since the anti-Vietnam war protests of the 1960s.
In California, a large crowd of students, alumni and neighbors gathered on campus steps outside the barricaded area of tents, sitting as they listened and applauded various speakers and joined in pro-Palestinian chants.
Overhead television cameras showed students in the barricaded area passing around goggles and helmets, as well as setting up medical aid stations. A small group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people gathered nearby.
The police presence was in stark contrast to the previous night, when some of the worst violence seen since students across the US intensified their protests in support of Gaza unfolded. At least 15 people were injured when a group of counter-protesters attacked the encampment for hours armed with projectiles, fireworks and chemical agents. Video footage of the violence included some counter-protesters yelling pro-Israel comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.
Students accused police and security guards at the scene of retreating or failing to intervene for hours.
UCLA chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” carried out Tuesday night’s attack, but did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.
Ray Wiliani, who lives near UCLA, said he came to the campus on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. “We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
Across the US, police began breaking up protests and encampments at universities from Tuesday evening, starting with Columbia University in New York, where protesters had holed up in an academic building.
The involvement of police has drawn criticism from students and faculty, who decried the use of force to break up protests.
“We are on the right side of history,” Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American historian and professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia, said. “Shame on our leaders, shame on our administrators, for allowing the police on to our campus. The US is part of this war [in Gaza], it’s our taxes, our bombs, our F-15s and Apache helicopters being used to kill Palestinians.”
Police used an armoured vehicle with a bridging mechanism to gain entry to the second floor of the building, arresting dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. They also removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
In total 280 people were arrested at Columbia and at nearby City University (Cuny), New York officials said, while further arrests were made on Wednesday evening at the city’s Fordham University.
New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, drew criticism for blaming “outside agitators” on Wednesday for leading the demonstrations and repeatedly citing the presence of a woman on Columbia’s campus whose husband Adams claimed had been “convicted for terrorism”.
The woman, Nahla Al-Arian, was not on Columbia’s campus this week and was not among the protesters who were arrested.
Al-Arian, a retired elementary school teacher, told the Associated Press that Adams misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian activist.
In a statement, the group behind the encampment, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, also defended its right “to include people from outside the Ivy League or the ivory tower in this global movement”. “‘Outside agitator’ is a far right smear used to discredit coalition building and anti racism,” the statement added.
Elsewhere, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, activists clashed with police officers who destroyed their tents early on Wednesday, and police dismantled an encampment at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire just hours after pro-Palestinian demonstrators put up a handful of tents. Officers arrested multiple people, including at least one professor, according to local media reports.
Police in Oregon came on to the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.
In Tucson, police at the University of Arizona fired “non-lethal” chemical weapons at protesters and arrested four people in the early hours of Wednesday, the Arizona Daily Star reported, to break up a protest camp that had been set up on Tuesday. At least one protester was hit with a rubber bullet.
The University of Texas in Dallas confirmed that 17 protesters had been arrested on its campus as of Wednesday evening, after police moved in at the request of university officials.
According to local media, the police operation involved dozens of state troopers in riot gear. The entire encampment was dismantled within about 20 minutes and additional law enforcement remained on the campus until about 6pm.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition.
Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting against the war.
Associated Press contributed to this report
