Pro-Palestinian Protests Hit US Campuses After Mass Arrests

New York, MINA – The Columbia campus in New York canceled face-to-face classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale and the gates of Harvard Yard were closed to the public on Monday, as some of the most prestigious universities in the US sought to defuse tensions related to Israeli aggression.

The actions follow the arrest last week of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators camped out on Columbia’s green fields, as schools struggle to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

“This is an absolutely outrageous act by the university to allow the police to arrest students on our own campus,” said New York University law student Byul Yoon, as reported by NBC New York.

In addition to demonstrations on Ivy League campuses, tent-setting actions in support of Palestine have also sprung up on other campuses, including at the University of Michigan, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A number of pro-Palestinian students demanded that their campuses condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel.

A woman inside the campus gates led about a dozen student protesters down the street outside the campus, shouting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Meanwhile, a small group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators protested nearby.

Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among dozens of students who set up tents on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus on Sunday evening, calling for a ceasefire and protesting what they described as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.

“MIT hasn’t even called for a ceasefire, and that’s a demand we definitely have. We are here to show that we have the right to protest. “It’s an important part of life on campus,” Iyengar said. (T/RE1/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)