Students protesting the ongoing war in Gaza left a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Southern California on Sunday after being surrounded by police and told they could be arrested if they did not go.
The move, days before the start of the course, came after the university said campus security officers, assisted by the Los Angeles Police Department, were clearing the area.
“If you are in the center of campus, please leave. People who don’t leave may be arrested,” USC said on social media platform X at around 4:15 a.m.
Video broadcast live by student journalists showed the camp was empty as police formed a line to clear away remaining protesters and prevent people from re-entering.
The camp restarted after the LAPD first arrested 93 people on April 24. The atmosphere on the private university campus has remained largely calm since then, while attention has turned to the arrests at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In Boston, Northeastern University’s graduation began peacefully on Sunday at Fenway Park. Some students waved Palestinian flags, but these were scattered among flags from India, the US and other nations. Postgraduate students were the first, with graduation starting in the afternoon.
Last month, police arrested about 100 protesters at Northeastern when they broke up an encampment on the Boston campus.
At the University of Virginia, 25 people were arrested Saturday for trespassing after police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to remove tents from the campus, and protesters at the University of Michigan chanted anti-war messages and rioted. flags during graduation ceremonies.
On the campus of the Art Institute of Chicago, police cleared a pro-Palestinian camp hours after it was set up on Saturday and arrested 68 people. The students, who attend classes in the city center buildings surrounding the museum, want the school to divest from companies that profit from the war between Israel and Hamas, among other demands.
The institute said the protest turned disruptive and Chicago police were called. Those arrested will be charged with criminal trespassing, police said.
USC, a private university, has been the target of student protests over the war, as well as the administration’s decision to cancel a commencement speech by the valedictorian, a Muslim student who expressed support for Palestinians. The university made this decision last month, citing security concerns after receiving threats. Some Jewish groups criticized the student’s choice as speaker.
Administrators later canceled the entire main stage kickoff planned for May 10, when 65,000 people were expected to gather. Other graduation activities, including graduation ceremonies for individual schools and colleges, are still scheduled Thursday through Sunday. Access to the private campus has been largely restricted to people unaffiliated with the university since late April.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, student protesters began their protest on the lawn outside the school chapel on Tuesday. On Saturday, video from WVAW-TV showed police officers in heavy gear and holding shields lined up on campus. Protesters chanted “Free Palestine” and university police said on X that an “illegal assembly” had been declared.
As police advanced, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by the arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has been helping student protesters, told The Washington Post.
The university administration said in a statement that protesters were informed that the tents and awnings they erected were prohibited by school policy and were asked to remove them. The Virginia State Police were asked to assist with enforcement, the university said.
It was the latest clash in several tense and sometimes violent weeks at U.S. colleges and universities that have seen dozens of protests and hundreds of arrests in demonstrations over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas; many of the camps were dismantled by the police.
Tent camps of protesters urging universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that say they support the war in Gaza have spread in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools reached agreements with protesters to end demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disruption to final exams and graduations.
The Associated Press has recorded at least 61 incidents since April 18 in which arrests were made during protests, with more than 2,400 people detained across 47 campuses. The numbers are based on AP reports and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
The University of Michigan was among the schools preparing for protests during graduation this weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern. More are scheduled for the coming weeks.
In Ann Arbor, there was a protest at the start of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many of them wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyehs along with their graduation caps, marched down the main hall toward the stage.
They shouted “Regents, regents, you cannot hide! You are financing genocide!” while holding signs, including one that said: “There are no universities left in Gaza.”
Above, the planes displayed banners with competing messages. “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”
Authorities said no one was arrested and the protest did not seriously disrupt the nearly two-hour event, attended by tens of thousands of people, some waving Israeli flags.
At Indiana University, protesters asked supporters to wear their kaffiyehs and leave during school president Pamela Whitten’s remarks on Saturday night. The Bloomington campus designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, where the ceremony was held.
At Princeton, New Jersey, 18 students launched a hunger strike to try to force the university to divest from companies linked to Israel.
One of them, senior David Chmielewski, said in an email that the strike began Friday morning with participants consuming only water and will continue until administrators meet with students about demands, including amnesty from criminal and disciplinary charges. for the protesters. Other protesters are participating in 24-hour “solidarity fasts,” Chmielewski said.
Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes this year before the most recent wave of demonstrations.
The protests stem from the conflict that began on October 7, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking around 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli attacks devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
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Marcelo reported from New York. Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit, Nick Perry in Meredith, New Hampshire, and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.
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