Columbia starts suspending students after Gaza protesters defy deadline to clear encampment: Live

Wesleyan University is among the many top US colleges where student activists have set up encampments to protest aspects of the Israel-Hamas war and US institutions’ ties to it.

However, the school, unlike most others, has said it won’t seek to clear the protest encampment for the time being, so long as it remains non-violent.

“As long as well all reject violence, we have opportunities to listen and to learn from one another,” university president Michael Roth said in an email to students.

Scores of heavily outfitted riot police descended on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin on Monday to clear out a protest encampment rallying against the Israel-Hamas war, the second time a large police presence has been called in response to students there in less than a week.

As of late Monday, campus, local, and state police had reportedly arrested about 50 people from an encampment gathering on the state university’s South Mall.

More details in our full story.

An estimated 50 people were arrested at University of Texas in Austin on Monday, as campus, local, and state police cleared out a pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

Texas governor Greg Abbott shared a video of riot police with batons marching towards a ring of students.

Historical comparisons between the mass protests of 1968 and today’s student demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza are both imperfect and hard to avoid.

It’s been just 10 days since Columbia University students pitched the first tent on the campus lawns, and already the protests have galvanised a generation of college students much in the same way the Vietnam war did 56 years ago – spreading from coast to coast.

It is not just the scale of the protests that have drawn comparisons, but the tactics. That is no accident: the protesters say they studied that generation-defining movement methodically before launching their own.

The massive outpouring of protest on colleges campuses against the Israel-Hamas war has done little to slow the bloodshed on the ground or lessen official US support for a war that’s claimed numerous civilians lives.

Hundreds of people rallied Monday at the campus of University of Wisconsin, Madison, joining the thousands of students across the country who have turned universities into protest centres against the Israel-Hamas war.

Jodi Melamed, faculty adviser for the Students for Justice in Palestine at nearby Marquette University, said sending in police to clear out students, as universities in Texas and New York have done, would be a major mistake.

A group of roughly 100 students and faculty rallied together on Monday and entered a protest encampment in solidarity with pro-Palestine demonstrators who’ve been occupying a central plaza at University of California, Los Angeles.

Demonstrators were spotted with signs reading “Faculty for Justice for Palestine,” “UCLA Faculty and Staff, We Stand With Our Students,” and “Walk out for Gaza,” CBS reports.

Earlier that day, activists within the encampment were seen by reporters denying entrance to the 50-tent assemblage, according to KTLA.

On a recent afternoon, Grant Oh zigzagged across the University of Southern California campus as if he was conquering an obstacle course, coming up against police blockade after police blockade on his way to his apartment while officers arrested demonstrators protesting the Israel-Hamas war.

In many ways, the chaotic moment was the culmination of a college life that started amid the coronavirus pandemic and has been marked by continual upheaval in what has become a constant battle for normalcy. Oh already missed his prom and his high school graduation as COVID-19 surged in 2020. He started college with online classes. Now the 20-year-old will add another missed milestone to his life: USC has canceled its main commencement ceremony that was expected to be attended by 65,000 people.

His only graduation ceremony was in middle school and there were no caps and gowns.

Campus police and state troopers arrested at least 40 people on Monday at the University of Texas at Austin, where protests began last week as part of a nationwide wave of encampments and demonstrations against the Israel-Gaza war.

University officials claimed protesters had “physically engaged with and verbally assaulted” university staff who attempted to remove their tents and “strategically” placed “baseball sized rocks” throughout the encampment, according to an email reported by The Texas Horn, a campus publication.

In the email, the university also claimed most of those present at the campus protest weren’t students.