New York:
A cause celebre is ringing out across top US universities with students demanding that the institutes stop investing in Israel and weapons that fuel Gaza war. Protestors say they are willing to risk arrest, but won’t stop until their demand is met.
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Nearly 550 arrests have been made in the last week across major US universities, according to a Reuters tally. Massive demonstrations against Israel are being held on the campuses of Harvard, Columbia, Yale and UC Berkeley and several other US universities.
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University authorities have said the demonstrations are often unauthorized and called on police to clear them.
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Over the past two days, law enforcement at the behest of college administrators have deployed Tasers and tear gas against students protesters at Atlanta’s Emory University, activists say, while officers clad in riot gear and mounted on horseback have swept away demonstrations at the University of Texas in Austin.
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A video of a professor being knocked down to the ground and handcuffed by the police at the Emory University has gone viral on social media. In the video, Professor Caroline Fohlin can be seen attempting to intervene as police officers wrestle one student protester to the ground.
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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.
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They want universities to cut their investments in everything tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the war in Gaza. That means funds run by BlackRock, Google as well as Amazon’s cloud service, Lockheed Martin and even Airbnb.
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It’s a long-shot demand — university administrators and lawmakers have for decades rejected the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, viewing it as antisemitic because it calls into question the legitimacy of the Jewish state and singles out the policies of one country.
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At Columbia, the epicenter of the movement, university officials are locked in a stalemate with students over the removal of a tent encampment set up two weeks ago as a protest against the Israeli offensive.
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Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden denounced “blatant anti-Semitism” that has “no place on college campuses.” But the White House has also said the president supports freedom of expression at US universities.
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Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have condemned the arrest of protesters and urged authorities to respect their free speech rights.
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