American campuses | Renewed tensions around pro-Palestinian demonstrations

(New York) Tensions are once again electrifying American campuses, and especially the prestigious New York University Columbia, between pro-Palestinian demonstrations and accusations of rising anti-Semitism, four months after the highly publicized resignations of two university presidents.

That of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, decided on Monday to carry out all courses remotely and called in a press release to “put things back in order”, while hundreds of people gathered on campus to denounce the war carried out by Israel in Gaza, a Palestinian territory in the grip of a humanitarian disaster.

Tensions have continued to increase since Thursday and the arrest of around a hundred people during a rally on campus.

In response to these arrests, students gathered at universities across the country. Like at the University of Michigan or at Yale, north of New York, where hundreds of them waved pro-Palestinian flags and signs.

These demonstrations reopen a wound in universities, split in two: on one side, those who denounce the demonstrations causing, according to them, a rise in anti-Semitism, and on the other, those who defend freedom of expression.

“It’s a very, very sensitive subject. We try to do our best,” Mike Gerber, head of legal affairs for the New York police, said at a press conference on Monday.

“No form of violence will be tolerated. Material damage, whatever it may be. Any form of crime. And that includes harassment, threats (…) or anything else of that nature,” he added.

On the Columbia University campus, dozens of students stayed put, setting up tents to avoid being evicted.

Call to resign

“There has been a big debate about whether or not to mobilize the police,” Nemat Shafik said in a statement, with police forces only able to intervene on the campus, private property, with his agreement.

On the Yale University campus, at least 47 people were arrested, according to a university statement released Monday.

Rayan Amim, a 19-year-old student at Emerson College, a Boston university, told AFP on Monday that they were demonstrating “to relentlessly condemn the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing that has lasted for more than 75 years.” years “.

American campuses have been the scene of tensions since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on October 7. Voices are being raised to denounce a rise in anti-Semitism.

Republicans seized on the subject and after a heated hearing in Congress, the president of the University of Pennsylvania Elizabeth Magill and her Harvard counterpart Claudine Gay resigned, in December and January respectively.

That of Columbia was heard Wednesday in Congress on the same subject. In front of American elected officials, she assured that “anti-Semitism (has) nothing to do on our campus”.

On Monday, US President Joe Biden condemned “anti-Semitic demonstrations” while denouncing “those who do not understand what the Palestinians are going through”.

But the ten elected Republicans from New York in the House of Representatives called for the resignation of the president of Columbia, arguing in a letter that “anarchy has taken over the campus”.