What do students protesting against the war in Gaza want and 5 other points to understand the crisis at US universities | World

Police enter Columbia University

Many universities are struggling to deal with camps on their campuses just days before graduation ceremonies.

Since the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s retaliation, students have launched rallies, peaceful demonstrations, hunger strikes and, most recently, anti-war camps.

They demand that their universities — which receive millions of dollars in donations each year — sever their financial ties with Israel.

This means, for example, selling shares in Israeli companies.

Student activists say companies that do business in Israel or with Israeli organizations are complicit in the war in Gaza. And the same goes for the colleges that invest in these companies.

Universities depend on donations for their operation, such as research and scholarships. These donations are typically invested in companies and assets.

“What we are asking is that the university stops investing funds in those who profit from the genocide in Gaza. And we will not leave until we succeed,” said a University of California student, who preferred to remain anonymous, to BBC News Mundo (service in BBC Spanish).

The movement reflects the increasingly sharp division in American society over the Joe Biden administration’s support for a historic ally, Israel.

Through demonstrations, they call for a ceasefire in Gaza and freedom for the Palestinian people.

A police operation on Tuesday night removed protesters from a Columbia University building they had occupied with an encampment.

Officers in riot gear climbed stairs to enter the second floor of Hamilton Hall and took the occupants away in a police bus.

Police later said they had expelled all protesters from the scene, ending the standoff, at least for now.

It all started at the beginning of this month. As Columbia President Minouche Shafik testified before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus, hundreds of students pitched tents on campus in New York City.

Mass arrests the next day did not stop the protests and triggered actions at more colleges across the US.

In-person classes at Columbia have been canceled. The university said a hall was vandalized and blocked off and that police would remain until mid-May to prevent further encampments.

“This drastic escalation of many months of protest activity has pushed the university to the limit, creating a disruptive environment for everyone and raising security risks to an intolerable level,” she adds.

Columbia has a “long and proud tradition of protest and activism,” Shafik continued, adding that there was a “breaking down” of Hamilton Hall’s doors.

According to her, there were conflicts with “security officials and maintenance personnel and damage to property.”

“These are acts of destruction, not political speech,” he says.

Shafik urged that students can complete their academic work and move on.

“It will take some time to heal, but I know we can do it together,” he said.

The crisis at Columbia spread to universities in several regions of the US:

• North East: George Washington; Brown; Yale; Harvard; Emerson; NYU; Georgetown; American; University of Maryland; Johns Hopkins; Tufts; Cornell; University of Pennsylvania; Princeton; Temple; Northeastern; MIT; The New School; University of Rochester; University of Pittsburgh
• West Coast: California State Polytechnic, Humboldt; University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Berkeley; University of Washington;
• Midwest: Northwestern; Washington University in St Louis; Indiana University; University of Michigan; Ohio State; University of Minnesota; Miami University; University of Ohio; Columbia College Chicago; University of Chicago;
• South: Emory; Vanderbilt; University of North Carolina, Charlotte; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kennesaw State; Florida State; Virginia Tech; University of Georgia, Athens;
• South-west: University of Texas at Austin; Rice; Arizona State.

There was an agreement in Boston between Northwestern University and the protesters to limit the size of the camp.

Some politicians appealed to colleges for them to take stronger measures against protesters, highlighting accusations of anti-Semitism in some of these protests.

Jewish students from several campuses told the BBC about incidents that made them uncomfortable or afraid.

They ranged from chants and signs of support for Hamas, a group classified by the US government as terrorist, to physical clashes and alleged threats.

For years, pro-Palestine university groups have called on their institutions to support the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)” movement against Israel.

No U.S. universities have committed to the BDS project, but some have already cut specific financial ties.

While an eventual boycott of universities is unlikely to have any impact on the war in Gaza, protesters say it would help expose those who profit from the war and raise awareness of the issue.

Demonstrations at Columbia and other universities are remembering the protests in the late 1960s against US involvement in the Vietnam War.

At that time, faced with the serious atrocities suffered by the Vietnamese people, American public opinion began to be horrified.

Thousands of people were arrested and there were violent clashes with the police.

Brutal images shocked citizens and gradually dismantled the official argument that a war for democracy was being fought.

In 1970, four students in Ohio were killed when the National Guard opened fire on protesters.

The deaths triggered a nationwide student strike and hundreds of universities were closed.

Even maintaining the proportions, for many experts there are obvious parallels between the current situation and this historic event.

“Students are now protesting Gaza like those who protested the war in Vietnam did,” says Ananya Roy, founding director of the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles and professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography.

The strength of the protests in that period — along with the enormous cost of the war — was one of the factors explaining why the United States lost the conflict, despite its overwhelming military superiority.