According to The Washington Square News, the NYPD announced via loudspeaker that students were being arrested for “disorderly conduct” and for unlawfully blocking traffic.
The law enforcement interventions at Yale and NYU followed several tense days on campuses throughout the US.
Last week, Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik called upon New York police to dismantle a tent encampment on the university’s main lawn, where students were demanding divestment from companies linked to Israel.
Over 100 students faced trespassing charges and numerous suspensions from Columbia University and affiliated Barnard College following Thursday’s arrests.
Columbia University decided to cancel in-person classes on its New York City campus on Monday in an effort to “reset” and “deescalate” the situation.
Despite these efforts, a new encampment has sprung up, prompting hundreds of faculty members to stage a mass walkout in protest against the president’s handling of the situation.
Bassam Khawaja, an adjunct lecturer at Columbia Law School and supervising attorney at the school’s Human Rights Clinic, expressed shock and dismay at the president’s immediate recourse to the New York Police Department.
“This was, by all accounts, a non-violent protest,” she asserted. “It was a group of students camping out on the lawn in the middle of campus. It’s not any different from everyday life on campus.”
Following the crackdown at Columbia, students across the US initiated their own protests in solidarity, with many urging their universities to support a ceasefire in Gaza and to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Protests have spread to various universities across the United States, with students at Brown, Princeton, and Northwestern staging demonstrations on Friday and throughout the weekend.
In the Boston area, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson College have established their own protest encampments.
Additionally, institutions such as Boston University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have witnessed protest actions as well.