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Student protests for Palestine spread to 2 more universities in US

April 24, 2024 at 7:29 pm

An aerial view of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University began last week in New York, USA on 24 April, 2024 [Fatih Aktaş/Anadolu Agency]

Two more universities in the US started encampments, Wednesday, to protest the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.

Students from Brown University in Rhode Island and the University of Southern California (USC) joined other universities, including Columbia, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Brown has demanded the University “divest its endowment from all companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza and the broader Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Is anti-war student activism being quashed on campus? - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Is anti-war student activism being quashed on campus? – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

About 100 pro-Palestine students at the University of Texas at Dallas held a sit-in along the hallway that leads to the school president’s office late into Tuesday, according to the media reports.

Last week, Columbia students established an encampment on the school’s South Lawn, which ended in the arrests of more than 100, after the University’s president, Minouche Shafik, ordered the New York Police Department (NYPD) to clear the demonstration.

Earlier this week, similar demonstrations broke out at Yale and New York University.

House Speaker, Mike Johnson, is expected to visit Columbia on Wednesday to meet with Jewish students and condemn the protests.

“What we’re seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable. I believe every leader in the country must condemn this violence. This is not who we are in America. University officials need to get the situation under control,” Johnson wrote on X ahead of his trip.

READ: South African solidarity: Mandela’s grandson joins Gaza aid flotilla