US Universities Experiencing Pro-Palestinian Protests, Police Crack Down
"For 201 days, the world has watched in silence as Israel has murdered over 30,000 Palestinians," organizers of a protest at the University of California, Los Angeles said in an online message, a report by AFP said.
"Today, UCLA joins students across the country in demanding that our universities divest from the companies which profit off of the occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine."
More than 200 protesters were arrested Wednesday and early Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas, where around 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday.
Riot officers used chemical irritants and tasers at one university.
At Emory College in Atlanta, photographs showed police wielding tasers as they wrestled with protesters on neatly manicured lawns.
The Atlanta Police Department said officers responding to the school's request for help were "met with violence" and used "chemical irritants" in their response.
The spreading protests began at Columbia University in New York, where a midnight deadline was approaching for students to remove an encampment that has become the epicenter of the movement.
The protests pose a major challenge to university administrators who are trying to balance campus commitments to free expression with complaints that the rallies have crossed a line.
Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll has topped 34,305, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, 93 people were arrested on Wednesday, and authorities said they were cancelling events at the May 10 graduation ceremony.
At Emerson College in Boston, local media reported classes were cancelled Thursday after police clashed with protesters overnight, tearing down a pro-Palestinian encampment and arresting 108 people.
In Washington, students from Georgetown and George Washington University (GW) established a solidarity encampment on the GW campus Thursday.
Protests and encampments have also sprung up at New York University and Yale -- both of which also saw dozens of students arrested earlier this week -- Harvard, Brown University, MIT, the University of Michigan and elsewhere.
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt said its campus could remain closed into next week.
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