By KAREN MATTHEWS, MICHAEL HILL, JULIE WATSON and CHRISTOPHER L. KELLER (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Police instructed pro-Palestinian protesters to leave a tent encampment at New York University early Friday, after weeks of protests and police crackdowns at college campuses nationwide that have led to more than 2,300 arrests.
About a dozen protesters who defied police orders to leave were arrested and about 30 more left willingly, according to NYU spokesperson John Beckman. The school requested the New York Police Department to step in “to minimize the likelihood of injury” and disruption, Beckman said.
Classes will continue as planned on Friday, he said. A larger NYU encampment was taken down on April 22, when over 130 protesters were arrested.
Tent encampments of protesters urging universities to cease doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have popped up across U.S. campuses as part of a student movement unlike any other this century.
Israel has labeled the protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics argue it uses those accusations to silence opposition. While some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers — some of whom are Jewish — describe it as a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
President Joe Biden has supported the students’ right to protest peacefully but condemned the violence and disruption of campus life.
NYPD officers on Friday also cleared an encampment at The New School in Greenwich Village, where students were not able to attend classes in at least two buildings because of the protesters. Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry posted on the social platform X that the school asked the department to disperse the protesters.
Video posted by Daughtry shows dozens of helmeted officers gathered outside the school. No arrests were announced.
Authorities said a further 133 protesters were arrested when police broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the State University of New York at New Paltz starting late Thursday, while nine protesters were also arrested at the University of Tennessee. Chancellor Donde Plowman said Friday that seven of those arrested are students who will also be sanctioned under the school’s code of conduct.
The student protest movement started April 17 at Columbia University, where student protesters established an encampment to demand an end to the Israel-Hamas war. More than 34,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
More than 100 people were arrested late Tuesday when police broke up the Columbia encampment. One officer accidentally fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall during that operation, but no one was hurt, NYPD said late Thursday. He was trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun but instead fired a single round that struck a frame on the wall, police said.
At University of California, Los Angeles, over 200 people were detained in the early hours of Thursday, after hundreds of protesters refused orders to leave, some creating human chains as police used flash-bangs to disperse the crowds. Police dismantled a reinforced encampment's barricade made of plywood, pallets, metal fences, and dumpsters, then removed canopies and tents.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block informed alumni on a call Thursday afternoon that administrators attempted to seek a peaceful resolution and that things had been calm on campus until counterdemonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment late Tuesday.
Campus administrators and police did not interfere or request assistance for several hours. No one was arrested that night, but at least 15 protesters sustained injuries.
By Wednesday, the encampment had turned into "much more of a bunker" and there was no alternative but to have police dismantle it, Block stated. Officers cautioned the crowd through loudspeakers that arrests would be made if they did not disperse. Hundreds left voluntarily, while another 200-plus remained and were arrested.
Arrests have occurred during at least 58 crackdowns on protesters at 44 colleges or universities since April 18, according to data from Associated Press and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
University of Minnesota officials reached an agreement with protesters not to interrupt graduations, and similar compromises have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island.
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