Pro-Palestinian protests: Over 2,300 individuals are detained on US campuses

The police directed individuals showing support for Palestine to leave a tent camp at New York University on Friday morning.This happened after many protests and clashes with the police at other colleges, which led to over 2,300 people getting arrested.

There were about 12 protesters who got arrested because they didn’t listen to the police, and around 30 others left on their own, said NYU spokesperson John Beckman. The school officials asked for the action to start at 6 am in order to reduce the chance of people getting hurt or causing more problems. Beckman said this.

He said that classes will happen as planned on Friday. A big NYU protest area was taken apart on April 22, and over 130 protesters were taken into custody.

Protesters are setting up camps at universities, asking them to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza. This student movement is happening at many US campuses and is very different from anything else seen in the past 100 years.

Israel has called the protests against them anti-Jewish, but people who criticize Israel say they are doing that to stop any opposition. Some people at the protests have been seen saying hurtful things against Jewish people or threatening violence. But the people who organize the protests, including some who are Jewish themselves, say that it is a peaceful movement to support Palestinian rights and speak out against the war.

President Joe Biden has said that students have the right to protest peacefully, but he doesn’t like when protests become violent and disrupt campus life.

Police officers from the NYPD removed a camp at The New School in Greenwich Village on Friday because students could not go to class in two buildings due to the protesters. The school asked the police department to move the protesters away, according to Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry’s post on social media platform X.

A video from Daughtry shows many police officers with helmets outside the school. No one was arrested.

Police arrested 133 protesters at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and 9 protesters at the University of Tennessee, when they shut down a pro-Palestinian protest. Chancellor Donde Plowman said on Friday that seven of the people who were arrested are students and they will also face consequences according to the school’s rules.

The students started protesting on April 17 at Columbia University. They made a camp to try to stop the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Over 34,000 Palestinians have died in the fighting in the Gaza Strip, as reported by the Health Ministry in that area. Israel started attacking Gaza after October 7th because Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly innocent people, and also took about 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.

Late on Tuesday, the police arrested over 100 people when they removed the Columbia encampment. One police officer accidentally fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall, but no one got hurt, the NYPD said on Thursday. The man was trying to use the flashlight on his gun but accidentally shot the wall with one bullet, said the police.

More than 200 people got arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles on Thursday. The protesters didn’t leave even after being told to, and some of them made human chains. The police used flash-bangs to scatter the crowds. The police broke through a strong barricade made of wood, metal, and dumpsters at a camp, and then took down the tents and canopies.

UCLA leader Gene Block said they tried to find a peaceful solution, but the situation changed when people who disagreed with the pro-Palestinian group attacked them. Before that, everything was calm on campus.

The campus leaders and police did not take action or ask for help for a long time. No one was taken to jail that night, but at least 15 people protesting were hurt.

By Wednesday, the camp had turned into more of a fortress, and the only option was to have the police take it apart, Block said. The police told the crowd through speakers that they would be arrested if they didn’t leave. More than 200 people were arrested while the rest left on their own.

Police have arrested people at least 58 times for protesting at 44 colleges or universities since April 18, according to information from the Associated Press and the schools.

The University of Minnesota and other schools have agreed to not let protests disrupt graduation ceremonies. Similar agreements have been made at Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and Brown University.