Pro-Palestinian protests are spreading in US colleges, protests that closely resemble those of the 1960s against the war in Vietnam and which have so far led to at least 400 arrests in a week (since April 18, when around a hundred young people at Columbia University in New York).
Today’s news is that the demonstrations have spread to other campuses, from California to Georgia, from Boston to Florida. The police continued to confront the demonstrators and there were arrests at Emerson College, in Atlanta, but also at the University of Southern California and the University of Texas at Austin, and in Washington DC (from Georgetown to George Washington University).
On campuses across the nation, students are demanding that universities cut ties with companies that do business with Israel and have organized encampments, sit-ins, demonstrations. Demonstrations are still ongoing at Columbia University, Harvard, New York University, UC Berkley. In Atlanta, Georgia, the chair of the philosophy department at Emory University, Noelle McAfee, was also stopped and escorted off campus by an officer who handcuffed her. At Columbia University, the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who is a naturalized American Somali and elected to Congress in 2019, also showed up today. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is 21, was among the group of pro-Palestinian protesters cleared from the university by police last week.