The Los Angeles Police Department Investigates the Protests against an Israel-Hamas Weapon During the March for Independence of the United States

Protesters were arrested at schools including The Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota and Indiana University on Thursday, joining the fast-growing list of demonstrators who have been detained by police nationwide.

93 people were arrested for being on the University of Southern California campus. The department did not say what the weapon was but it was an assault with a deadly weapon. No injuries were reported, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

The University of Southern California in Los Angeles decided to cancel its main graduating class due to additional security measures. It had already canceled its valedictorian’s speech because of safety concerns stemming from the backlash she received over her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war.

At The University of Texas at Austin, almost 60 people were arrested Wednesday for loitering, but charges have been dropped for most of them. Faculty members at the school called for the president to resign after he praised the school and law enforcement’s restraint against the protesters.

Cheryl Elliott, Emory’s vice president for public safety, said in a statement Thursday that the university called in Atlanta police and George State Patrol officers to disperse the crowd after protesters ignored multiple warnings for trespassing. She said law enforcement put chemical irritants into the ground after protesters threw objects at them.

She said there was nothing threatening your safety at the moment. You are our main concern at the moment. To protect your safety and integrity of our academic program we are moving student final exams.

GW Law School Dean Dayna Bowen said in a video message on Thursday that the school is working to move law students’ final exams, which are currently underway, to more quiet and secure locations because of the protests.

At George Washington University in Washington, DC, there is a second day of protests on Friday despite a 7 pm deadline for clearing the camps.

Protests against a Gym at Columbia University during the September 2016 Israel-Israel War: State and U.S. Students protest in Harlem

She admitted to being “deeply sensitive” about the fact that seniors spent their first year at Columbia remotely. “We all very much want these students to celebrate their well-deserved graduation with family and friends.”

Minouche Shafik, the university’s president, says that if discussions do not succeed, the school may have to consider other options to restore calm on the campus.

Columbia officials said Thursday that protesters had agreed to remove a significant number of tents, limit the protests to Columbia students and comply with fire department requirements.

The administration set a deadline of midnight for protesters to dismantle the setup, but it was continued due to what it described as constructive dialogue.

Hamas’ attack killed 1200 Israelis, another 120 were taken hostage, and Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the conflict, according to the health ministry.

Student activists nationwide want to support the people in Gaza by getting universities to stop doing business with companies that profit from the war with Hamas.

But others, especially the Society of Afro-American Students (SAS), were also upset that Columbia University was moving ahead with plans to take over part of a public park in Harlem, to build a gym that critics said would give only limited and second-class access to the local community.

“They were building it in a green space in Harlem, which is one of the few green spaces in Harlem,” Eleanor Stein said. “And we felt that it couldn’t be business as usual, that the university itself was engaging in an indefensible takeover of Harlem land and an indefensible participation and complicity with the Vietnam War effort.”

White and Black students coordinated a protest against the gym — and then hundreds of students moved from there to take over office and classroom buildings, enforcing a strike against the school.

The troubles on Columbia University began over six months ago. Shortly after Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, a box truck covered in LED screens displaying the names and photos of dozens of Columbia students started circling a pro-Palestine protest near the university’s Morningside Heights campus. The students were called Columbia’s Leading Antisemites by a truck paid for by Accuracy in Media.

The debate and argument over free speech on campus was followed by her testimony. The House Education Committee is investigating the school’s response to antisemitism.

The Institute for Defense Analyses was opposed by the Students for a Democratic Society because of its research on weapons and strategies used in Vietnam. They also wanted the CIA and military services barred from on-campus recruiting.

For many Columbia students in 1968, their protest was motivated by anger over the Vietnam War — and changes to the military draft that were chipping away at students’ deferments, particularly in graduate schools.

There are parallels between the two high-profile events, most starkly the proliferation of similar protests around the country, as students call for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Masked as a protester against antisemitism in Columbia: Henry Coleman, a white student, and the black encampment

The congresswoman made her own visit on Thursday. Omar’s daughter was one of the students suspended when the encampment was cleared last week. Shafik’s early Friday deadline was swiftly approaching. That night, Shafik said there would be no arrests. “There is a rumor that the NYPD has been invited to campus this evening,” she wrote in an email sent to students at 11:08PM. “This rumor is false.”

When the police were called onto campus in 1968, officers were blamed for violently arresting hundreds of students, using nightsticks and horses in a chaotic scene.

In contrast police and city officials said last week that the removal of the demonstrators from Columbia’s campus was peaceful, and no injuries were reported.

Reporters for Columbia’s college radio station WKCR (including longtime NPR host Robert Siegel), were present when Henry Coleman, acting dean of Columbia College, sought to confirm his status as he stood among a crowd of students in the lobby of Hamilton Hall.

The online history exhibit by the Columbia’s library system states thatSAS leaders later said that the politics of the white students interfered with the black students’ goals of racial justice and equity.

Conditions inside Hamilton Hall were calm and quiet compared to the “boisterous” atmosphere elsewhere, the exhibit states. University leaders thought that if police were called in against the students at the hall, Harlem’s Black community would mount a violent reaction.

But some divisions emerged among the students: Black protesters asked their white counterparts to leave a building due to their different approach and focus, for instance. Both groups of women embraced the feminist movement due to their discontent with being left out of positions of power.

At Columbia and elsewhere, pro-Palestine protesters have attempted to balance their public-facing activism with increasingly dire concerns over their privacy and safety. It has become a problem for people who have attended marches or rallies to be harassed online after their names were published by anonymous accounts that claim to fight antisemitism. In some cases, they have even lost their jobs.

Like most of the other people who filtered in and out of the encampment, the student stayed masked as we spoke. To prevent spread of covid-19 and to protect themselves from outsiders who might target them, students covered their faces with surgical masks, sunglasses, and kaffiyehs.

In the enclosed environs of a college campus, a student’s first and last name is not exactly top secret sensitive information. But when placed into a certain context and disseminated through certain media streams outside the confines of the university, a name becomes a liability — and for bad-faith actors, a weapon that can be wielded against students.

Avila Chevalier, who graduated from Columbia in 2016, was among the first students to be featured on Canary Mission, a database that describes itself as dedicated to exposing antisemitism. Canary Mission has linked pro-Palestinian activism with anti-semitic hate speech since it’s founding, and implicated one of its employees in the movement. The Israeli government has used Canary Mission to bar political activists from entering the country, Haaretz reported in 2018. Canary Mission has harassed protesters all over the country.

In support of the arrested students, Columbia faculty held a walk out on Monday and demanded that Columbia lift their suspensions and restore access to campus. “To send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive, and dangerous,” Christopher Brown, a professor of history, told the crowd of a hundred or so people who assembled on the university steps. That force was a sign of weakness. They showed they were incompetent in trying to show they meant business.

The encampment, all things considered, is extremely chill. When I walked around on Monday, I saw students lounging in their tents, doing homework, and generally hanging out. There was a craft corner where people could make pro-Palestine signs: among them were pieces of cardboard and cloth that read “Anti-imperialism is feminist” and “End the blockade.” In the middle of the quad, students had set up a snack table — complete with a “nut zone” to accommodate their peers with allergies — that also had sunscreen, water bottles, and ibuprofen available.

“It’s basically just a bunch of nerds,” Jared told me on Wednesday. “And then I go home, check Twitter, and I hear like, ‘Pro-Hamas mob has taken over Columbia.’ There’s a huge disparity between what’s going on here and how it’s been portrayed by the media.”

The faculty member, who wished to remain, believes that many faculty are afraid to speak up for their students who have been harassed or arrested at the school due to their precarious employment. Columbia has more than half of their instructors being scheming faculty. The open letter was written by over 160 Columbia professors and was supportive of the arrested, suspended, and protesting students.

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference on the edge of Morningside Park, Marianne Hirsch, a literature professor who specializes in Holocaust studies, said the university had fostered “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in which some people are afraid to tell you their names.”

The media circus was full by Wednesday. As I was speaking with two members of the campsite who were wearing sunglasses and scarves, a man approached us and asked why we weren’t in class, and I noticed Proud Boys founder and provocateurGavin McInnes. A few hours later, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a press conference on the other side of the quad. This is not safe. This isn’t the First Amendment. This is not free expression,” Johnson said amid boos and chants of “Mike, you suck.” Then he urged President Joe Biden to call in the National Guard.