Following the arrest of over 100 students at Columbia University on April 18, Palestine solidarity encampment protests have multiplied across the US. Police crackdowns have occurred at other schools as well, including Northeastern University in Boston, where about 102 protesters were arrested. Officials at Northeastern claimed that the protest had been “infiltrated” by organizers who had “no affiliation” with the university. Northeastern administrators also claimed that protesters had engaged in calls to “kill all Jews,” however evidence has emerged indicating that the hateful messaging leveraged by officials to justify the raid came from a pro-Israel counter-protester. Confronted with a video of the incident, an official told reporter Tori Bedford, “The fact that the phrase ‘Kill All Jews’ was shouted on our campus is not in dispute.”

More than 700 protesters have been arrested on US campuses since April 18, as students demand an end to Israeli attacks that have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians since October 7, and insist that their schools divest from companies that profit from Israel’s war-making and apartheid policies. 93 protesters were arrested at the University of Southern California (USC) on April 24 when police in riot gear violently dispersed protesters. USC has also canceled its upcoming commencement ceremony for graduating seniors. At Emory University in Atlanta, police used pepper balls and tasers to subdue protesters while making 28 arrests on April 25.

Members of the Stop Cop City movement have drawn connections between the attacks on students at Emory, who are taking action in defense of Palestinian lives, and the murder of Tortuguita, who was killed by police while occupying a forest amid waves of fascistic repression against protesters in the state of Georgia. Student protesters at California State Polytechnic University have also acknowledged the connection between their actions and the Stop Cop City struggle with a paragraph-long tribute to Tortuguita scrawled on a wall inside an administrative building that student protesters have seized and occupied. In a viral video, Cal Poly Humboldt students can be seen fending off police attempting to disperse the occupation of Siemens Hall, which students have renamed Intifada Hall.

On the evening of April 25, 36 people were arrested at Ohio State University when police violently attacked a line of protesters who had locked arms to form a protective wall around Muslim protesters who were gathered in prayer. Ohio Rep. Munira Yasin Abdullahi described the incident in a statement, saying, “They surrounded us at a moment when we were supporting students who were conducting prayer. I was grabbed by my headscarf. I was pushed toward the ground onto students. Ultimately, I sustained painful bruising around my ribs and midsection.”

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one protester was arrested during a clash with police during an incident where protesters encircled advancing cops using reinforced signs and banners, leading some people to applaud the protesters for “kettling” police officers rather than being kettled by them.

At some schools, protesters have managed to evade arrest, at least for now. At Northwestern University, in Illinois, professors formed a protective line and squared off with police officers — a tactic that has ended in arrest for professors at some schools — in a standoff that was ultimately de-escalated. While administration officials announced that the protest had been disbanded, I visited the Northwestern encampment on Saturday and found the protest site bustling and well-attended.

At the University of California, Berkeley, rows of tents have appeared outside Sprout Hall, an administrative building that has been at the center of numerous moments of historic protest. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a controversial anti-war speech outside Sprout Hall in 1967. Mario Savio spoke on the building’s steps in 1964 when he declared, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop.”

Berkeley students also........

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