Hundreds of arrests, riot police facing angry students: the atmosphere remains electrifying today in American universitieswhich are at the mercy of increasingly tense protests against the war in Gaza.
From Los Angeles to New Yorkfrom Austin to Boston, Chicago and Atlanta, the pro-Palestinian American student movement is growing by the hour. Some of the most prestigious universities in the world are affected by the protests, such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Princeton.
The scene across the country is being repeated: students set up tents at their universities to denounce US military support for Israel and the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. They are then removed, often violently, by riot police at the request of university administrations.
Last night, more than 100 protesters were arrested near Emerson University, Boston. Thousands of miles away, mounted police arrested students at the University of Texas at Austin. And this morning, it was the turn of Emory University students in Atlanta, in the southern US, to be forcibly removed by the police.
However, the movement is growing. Earlier today, a new camp was set up on the campus of George Washington University in the US capital, where a demonstration will be held later.
Videos posted on social media showed a bronze statue of the first US president, after whom the university and city are named, with a Palestinian flag on its forehead. At the base of the statue, more than ten tents set up by protesters can be seen.
National Guard “Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza sleep in the cold every night without access to food or a shelter,” explained Yazen, an American-Palestinian student in New York, to justify his involvement in this movement. For more than a week, the 23-year-old student has been sleeping outside Columbia University every night. It was from this university that the protest movement started, about a week ago, before it spread across the country, thanks mainly to the mobilization of students on social media.
Yesterday, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson visited Columbia University, where he threatened to ask Joe Biden to mobilize the National Guard on campuses, which he said were at the mercy of a “virus of anti-Semitism.”
A segment of American society accuses universities of anti-Zionism, accusations that cost the chancellors of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania their jobs this winter. Mike Johnson’s warning, however, evokes painful memories in the US: on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire at Kent State University on anti-Vietnam War protesters. Four students were killed.
The White House has so far avoided mentioning that scenario, simply assuring that the Democratic president, who is hoping for re-election in November, “supports free speech, public debate and non-discrimination” at universities.
Source: RES-MPE
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