Columbia University president faces censure vote as campus protests spread nationwide: Live updates

With just two weeks to go before their graduation ceremony on 10 May, some said the celebratory atmosphere had vanished and been replaced with one of “almost grief”. Others accused the institution of creating an environment of “us versus them” amongst Jewish and Muslim students.

On Wednesday, like many universities across the country, USC – where tuition can cost up to $95,000 annually – saw demonstrations on campus descend into violence, with armed police arriving to disperse students with rubber bullets and riot gear. Similar shocking scenes played out in states including Georgia, where police used tasers on restrained students and shot pepperballs at demonstrators at Emory University.

In the week since a protest camp exploded across the grounds of Columbia University in solidarity with Gaza, PhD student Jonathan Ben-Menachem has been fielding worried calls from his family. They had been watching the news and were concerned for his safety.

“I’ve had to reassure them that I am not about to get mobbed by antisemites anytime I go to campus,” he told The Independent. “It’s just people trying to take a stand for what they think is right, very peacefully.”

The University of Florida has threatened to suspend students protesting for Gaza, and said it would bar them from the campus for three years if they violate the school’s protest rules.

It also said that any faculty or employees caught breaking the protest rules would be fired, WUFT reports.

Protests at the university entered a third day on Friday.

The rules varied in specificity; some prohibited protesters from using bullhorns and speakers, from possessing weapons, or protesting inside buildings. Others were more nebulous, including one that prohibits students from creating a “disruption” or others that said all signs must be carried by hand at all times.

A list of prohibited activities was circulated by campus police late on Thursday. A university spokesperson confirmed to local reporters that the list was authentic.

Camping, use of tents, littering, blocking anyone’s path, and “sleeping” were among the prohibited activities on the list.

The administration at George Washington University in Washington DC issued a statement saying that students participating in protests on campus are in violation of the school’s rules and could face punishment.

“The individuals who remain on University Yard and any who attempt to join them are trespassing on private property and violating university regulations,” a spokesperson for the university said, according to CNN.

DC police have shut downa street where protesters are gathered, but the protest has spilled out beyond the roadway and into a nearby park and the surrounding streets.

“We are aware that individuals who are not GW students have joined the protest, and we have taken steps to restrict access to University Yard,” the statement says. “We will pursue disciplinary actions against the GW students involved in these unauthorized demonstrations that continue to disrupt university operations.”

It was not immediately clear what disciplinary action would be taken against the protesters.

The Travis County Attorney Delia Garza said that all criminal charges agaisnt protesters who were arrested on the University of Austin campus on Wednesday have been dropped, according to spokeswoman Diana Melendez.

The office said 57 people had been charged with criminal trespassing, but that all of the cases “lack sufficient probable cause to proceed,” CNN reports.

The arrests came after Texas Department of Public Safety troopers were sent to the campus by Governor Greg Abbott to break up the protests.

Roughly half of the demonstrators arrested at the University of Texas at Austin were not affiliated with the institution, according to administrators.

Of the fifty-five people who were found to have “violated institutional rules” during on-campus protests on Wednesday, some 26 were not staff or students, according to a statement released by UT Austin on Thursday.

Vedant Patel, the deputy spokesman for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, told reporters the US was asking Israel to effectively investigate its own alleged war crimes.

The UN issued a report earlier this week that mass graves filled with wounded individuals, women, and the elderly had been found in Gaza, and that some of the dead showed signs of being tortured and bound before their executions.

When asked what the US intended to do about the discovery, Mr Patel told reporter that the Biden administration had asked Israel to look into the matter.

A reporter calls out Mr Patel, asking why the US is asking the accused to investigate itself.