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Mass arrests as US campus protests over Gaza spread
Police moved to break up an encampment at New York University (NYU) on Monday night, making a number of arrests, BBC reported.
Dozens of students were arrested at Yale earlier in the day, while Columbia University cancelled in-person classes.
Demonstrations and heated debates about the Israel’s war on Gaza and free speech have rocked US campuses since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on 7 October. The protest movement was thrust into the spotlight last week after New York City police were called out to Columbia’s campus and arrested more than 100 demonstrators.
Rallies have spread since then. In addition to NYU and Yale, encampments have been set up at the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Michigan, Emerson College and Tufts. Like their peers, the NYU protesters are calling on their institution to disclose and divest its “finances and endowments from weapons manufacturers and companies with an interest in the Israeli occupation”.
One student, Alejandro Tanon told the AFP news agency that the US was at a “critical moment”, likening the protests to historic demonstrations over the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.