Columbia University in New York postponed Friday’s deadline for pro-Palestinian students to evacuate the campus, which was occupied to protest the war in Gaza, a movement that has become widespread on American campuses.
The office of the president of the American university, from which the movement in support of Gaza started more than a week ago, returned to the midnight deadline set to dismantle a tent village where some 200 students pro-Palestinians gathered.
“Negotiations have progressed and are continuing as planned,” said the office of university president Minouche Shafik in a press release released at 11:07 p.m. Thursday.
“We have our requests, they have theirs,” continues the presidential office, denying that police intervention was requested.
“They call us terrorists, they call us violent. But the only tool we have is our voices,” said one of the students present at the pro-Palestinian rally, introducing herself under the name Mimi.
The pro-Palestinian American student movement, which has become widespread on American campuses, started from Columbia University in New York.
Dozens of arrests were made there last week, after university officials used the police to put an end to an occupation accused by several figures of fueling anti-Semitism.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations then continued on Wednesday on campus.
Some of the most prestigious universities in the world are affected by this movement of American students, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
Hundreds of arrests
More than 200 protesters were arrested Wednesday and Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas, where some 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday.
The scenes across the country follow one another and are similar: students set up tents on their campuses to denounce United States military support for Israel and the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
Then they are dislodged, often in a muscular manner, by police officers in riot gear, at the request of university management.
On the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, in the southeast of the United States, demonstrators were evacuated manu militari by the police, some thrown to the ground to be arrested, according to images from a photojournalist from the AFP.
The Atlanta police admitted to having used “chemical irritants” on demonstrators, in the face of “violence” from some.
Early Thursday, a new encampment was set up on the campus of George Washington University in the capital.
At UCLA University in Los Angeles, more than 200 students set up a mini-village of around thirty tents, barricaded by pallets and signs.
Kaia Shah, a 23-year-old political science student, is enthusiastic about the movement’s expansion. “It’s great what we’re seeing on other campuses,” she said, “it shows how many people support this cause. »
For Kit Belgium, a professor at the University of Austin, the campus needs to see “free expression and the free exchange of ideas. And if the university cannot tolerate this, then it is not worthy of the name,” she adds to AFP.
Counter-demonstration
Near the pro-Palestinian rally, around thirty students organized a counter-demonstration. Jasmine Rad, a Jewish student at the University of Texas, says protests in support of Gaza are “dangerous for Jewish students.”
Same echo at George Washington University. “I have never been more afraid of being Jewish in America than I am now. Some students are there with hate messages, messages that call for violence,” says Skyler Sieradsky, 21, a philosophy and political science student.
The demonstrators, including a number of Jewish students, refute any anti-Semitism and criticize officials who equate it with opposition to Israel.
“The people who are here come from diverse backgrounds to support the Palestinian people,” driven by “their sense of justice,” says a University of Austin graduate, who identifies as Jewish and goes by the first name Josh to the AFP.
Cancellation of a convocation
The University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where 93 people were arrested Wednesday, announced Thursday the cancellation of its main graduation ceremony this year, officially due to “new security measures.”
Jason Miller, an advisor to Donald Trump, seized on the announcement, saying on X, that “under Joe Biden, your graduation ceremony will not be guaranteed” to take place.
The White House, for its part, assures that President Biden, who hopes to be re-elected in November, “supports freedom of expression, debate and non-discrimination” in universities.
The war was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out from Gaza against Israel by Hamas commandos, which resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report established using data Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Islamist movement, and its vast military operation in the Gaza Strip has so far left 34,305 dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.