Pro-Palestinian protests have been happening at colleges across the country amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
In Columbus, two Ohio State University students were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing during a protest on campus on Tuesday, our news partners at WBNS reported.
Students pitched dozens of tents on Columbia University’s south lawn as talks between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and school administrators took place, CBS reported.
“We chose to reclaim our University for the people of Palestine,” A Columbia University Student said.
Amid negotiations, House Speaker Mike Johnson met with Jewish students at Columbia. He was concerned for their safety and had a message for the university’s president.
“I’m here today joining my colleagues and calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos,” Johnson said.
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For over a week, demonstrators at Columbia have been calling on the school to cut ties with companies that do business with Israel. angry over the war in Gaza.
“Our core demands are financial divestment. So all of the endowment, all of the investments that are complicit in Israeli apartheid and colonization being revoked,” Catherine Elia, a student in the Columbia University International Affairs Master’s program.
Students agreed to scale down their encampment and ban discriminatory language in a sign of progress on Wednesday. This was after a commitment from administrators not to call in the police.
Campuses across the country are seeing similar protests, from California to Massachusetts.
Tensions rose at UT Austin as Texas State Troopers moved in on students staging a walkout to occupy the campus’s south lawn.
At Columbia, after classes were moved to hybrid style, the school said the same would apply to this year’s final exams.
Israel Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out about the student protests taking place in the U.S. He called them horrific and antisemitic.