DISCIPLINARY ACTION
As the holiday of Passover began Monday night, social media images appeared to show pro-Palestinian Jewish students holding traditional seder meals inside the protest areas on multiple campuses, including at Columbia.
Further downtown, police began detaining protesters who had set up their own encampment at New York University at around 8.30pm, the New York Times reported, after the school called the students’ behavior “disorderly, disruptive, and antagonising”.
There were also demonstrations at MIT, the University of Michigan and Yale, where at least 47 people had been arrested on Monday after refusing requests to disperse.
“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind,” the Ivy League university said in a statement.
At Harvard, university officials on Monday suspended the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, the student group said on Instagram.
They were ordered to “cease all organisational activities” for the rest of the term, or risk permanent expulsion after holding an unregistered demonstration last week, student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported, citing an email to the group.
Universities have become the focus of intense cultural debate in the United States since Hamas’s Oct 7 attack and Israel’s overwhelming military response, as a humanitarian crisis grips the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
President Joe Biden on Monday said he condemned “the anti-Semitic protests”.
“I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” he told reporters, without further details.
