NEW YORK –
Police ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to leave a tent encampment at New York University early Friday, a move that follows weeks of demonstrations and police clashes on college campuses across the country that have resulted in more than 2,300 arrests.
About a dozen protesters who refused police orders to leave were arrested and about 30 more left voluntarily, according to NYU spokesman John Beckman. The action, which began around 6 a.m. at the request of school officials, was carried out “to minimize the likelihood of injury” or the spread of the disruption, Beckman said.
Classes will continue as scheduled on Friday, he said. A larger NYU encampment was dismantled on April 22, when more than 130 protesters were arrested.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or with companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across American campuses in a student movement like no other this century.
Israel has called the protests anti-Semitic, while critics of Israel say it uses such accusations to silence the opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers, some of whom are Jewish, call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest against the war.
President Joe Biden has defended the right of students to protest peacefully, but has denounced violence and disruption of university life.
On Friday, NYPD officers also cleared an encampment at The New School in Greenwich Village, where students were unable to attend classes in at least two buildings due to protesters. Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry posted on the social platform X that the school asked the department to disperse the protesters.
Video posted by Daughtry shows dozens of helmeted officers massing outside the school. No arrests were announced.
Authorities said another 133 protesters were arrested when police broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the State University of New York at New Paltz beginning Thursday night, while nine protesters were also arrested at the University of Tennessee. Chancellor Donde Plowman said Friday that seven of those arrested are students who will also be disciplined under the school’s code of conduct.
The student protest movement began on April 17 at Columbia University, where student protesters built a camp to call for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas. More than 34,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after October 7, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took approximately 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
More than 100 people were arrested Tuesday night when police broke up the Columbia camp. An officer accidentally fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall during that operation, but no one was injured, the NYPD said Thursday night. He was trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun, but instead he fired a single bullet that hit a wall frame, police said.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, more than 200 people were detained early Thursday after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired stun grenades to break up the crowd. Police tore down a barricade of plywood, pallets, chain-link fences and garbage containers from a fortified camp, then tore down canopies and tents.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block told alumni in a phone call Thursday afternoon that administrators tried to find a peaceful solution and that things had been stable on campus until counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian camp on Tuesday night.
Campus administrators and police did not intervene or call for backup for hours. No one was arrested that night, but at least 15 protesters were injured.
By Wednesday, the camp had become “much more of a bunker” and there was no solution other than to have police dismantle it, Block said. Officers warned over loudspeakers that arrests would be made if the crowd did not disperse. Hundreds of people left voluntarily, while another 200 remained and were arrested.
Arrests have been made during at least 58 crackdowns on protesters at 44 colleges or universities since April 18, according to figures based on Associated Press reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
University of Minnesota officials reached an agreement with protesters not to disrupt graduation ceremonies, and similar commitments have been made at Northwestern University in the Chicago suburbs, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island.
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Watson reported from San Diego and Keller from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Associated Press journalists across the country contributed to this report, including Carolyn Thompson, Kavish Harjai, Krysta Fauria, Leslie Ambriz, John Antczak, Lisa Baumann, Jae C. Hong, Colleen Long, Sarah Brumfield, Philip Marcelo, Steve Karnowski, Cedar Attanasio and Gene Johnson.