The inflammatory anti-Israel protests engulfing Columbia University are metastasizing, spreading to other elite schools and campuses across the country as spoiled students join the flow.
One of the largest protests outside of Columbia was at Yale University, which was violently suppressed on Monday morning.
Riot police stormed an Ivy League campus in New Haven, Connecticut, arresting at least 47 protesters who refused to disperse despite warnings from police.
The crackdown came after a Jewish student journalist covering an encampment was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag during an anti-Israel rally over the weekend.
More than 150 demonstrators have been arrested for trespassing in recent days as police clash with protesters who have set up campsites on campus quads from Michigan to Massachusetts.
Columbia University has come under fire for being unwilling or unable to stop protesters from occupying the school’s West Lawn, but on Thursday, Columbia University President Minoush Shafik called the New York City Police Department. 114 protesters were subsequently arrested.
However, protesters reconvened on the New York City campus less than 24 hours later.
More than 200 protesters are currently camping in dozens of tents.
Harvard University, which was embroiled in an anti-Semitism scandal that saw former president Claudine Gay resign in disgrace in January, has taken pre-emptive steps to avoid getting drawn into the fray this time, closing Harvard Yard in preparation for anti-Israel protests. They announced that they would be closed for the rest of this week. , by harvard crimson.
However, the movement at Columbia appears to have inspired a number of other “solidarity demonstrations” in which student demonstrators set up dilapidated encampments, occupied university buildings and campuses, and It was declared a “liberated area.”
At the New School in Manhattan, anti-Israel students occupied the university’s lobby on the Union Square campus on Sunday, setting up tents and demanding that the private research university begin its “refusal to cooperate” with the NYPD and defend anti-Israel They put up signs and banners. professors and others to “institute an academic boycott against the genocidal Zionist apartheid state.”
The call for the rally was posted to the New School for Justice in Palestine student Instagram group, along with a post expressing support for “our comrades” at Columbia University.
Progressive liberal arts schools cost $54,000, with an additional $30,000 for library and food, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
Meanwhile, a similar tent city was set up in front of NYU’s Stern School of Business on Monday morning as students called on the school to secede from the Jewish state and demand an end to the conflict in Gaza. It was done.
student waved flags on roads and sidewalks Some people held signs outside Manhattan College downtown that read “Honoring the Martyrs of Palestine.”
Tuition at New York University’s business school (named after Jewish billionaire Leonard N. Stern, whose family emigrated from Germany in the 1920s) costs more than $60,000 a year, plus $18,000 for housing. It takes.
On Sunday, similar encampments began to appear in Boston, with students from MIT, Tufts University, and Emerson College joining the fledgling uprising.
In an interview with NBC 10 BostonEmerson student Dylan Young called the protests an “occupation in progress” and vowed, “We will continue to hold this area.”
“It took hundreds of people to put this together,” he boasted to the station.
At Emerson College, a large gathering of Palestinian Justice Students set up tents blocking Boylston Place Alley, a public street that includes access to the university as well as the state transportation center.
No arrests had been reported as of Monday afternoon, but letter to students On Sunday evening, Emerson College President Jay Barnhart warned against “bigotry and hatred in any form.”
“We encourage thoughtful dialogue and meaningful expression, but we do not tolerate behavior that threatens safety, work, or access to education,” his letter said.
in Post to X On Sunday night, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) doctoral student Francesca Riccio Ackermann announced that “MIT students and workers” had established a “scientists encampment against genocide” on MIT’s Kresge Lawn. did.
Students set up tents, spread giant blue tarpaulins on the lawn and held up signs that read “Free Zone” and “Children of Gaza Were Not Born to Die.”
“MIT has received over $11 million in research funding from the Israeli Ministry of Defense since 2015… We will not rest until MIT severing its research ties with the Israeli military,” Riccio-Ackerman wrote.
One of the most prestigious schools in the country, MIT doesn’t come cheap, costing a total of $83,000 per year.
A memo to Jewish students on campus Monday afternoon said MIT’s Passover seder, which marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday, will be held separately to avoid students having to cross the tent protest area. I was notified that I had been moved to a new location.
Follow The Post’s coverage of anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
In the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, a small group of students set up a similar encampment of about seven tents on the campus of Tufts University, calling for the divestment of “Israeli apartheid.” According to CBS.
In a statement to WBZ-TV, Tufts University spokesperson Patrick Collins said the university vowed to “hold accountable community members who engage in conduct that violates university policy.” .
Collins also threw cold water on the goals of student activists when he clarified the university’s position: “We do not support the (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement.”
On Friday, University of North Carolina students set up tents, lawn chairs and blankets on the grounds of the school’s Chapel Hill campus, played music and chanted “In both English and Arabic.” According to the Daily Tar Heel.
During the demonstration, the quad, which was decorated with streamers in red, green, black and white, the colors of the Palestinian flag, echoed the chant: “Disclose, strip, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
University administrators warned the group around 2 p.m. that the tents had to be removed because they violated fire and safety codes, the publication said.
In response, students lifted their tents and placed them on chairs so that they did not touch the lawn.
But within an hour, the tents were removed and the crowd dispersed without incident as police began lining up on campus.
Early Monday morning in Ann Arbor, anti-Israel student demonstrators took over much of the University of Michigan’s downtown area, known as the “Diag.”
The protest was organized by the Tahrir Coalition, which is made up of more than 80 pro-Palestinian student organizations. According to the Michigan Daily.
What you need to know about the anti-Semitism controversy at Columbia University:
Rackham graduate student Shreya Chaudhary told the outlet that the camp was “an act of solidarity with other student organizers across the country, from Columbia to UNC-Chapel Hill.”
This is a national movement that students across the country are joining to show that we will not support universities that fund and profit from genocide. ”
The group issued a press release calling on universities to “come and talk and negotiate with us.” They also accused school authorities of “consistently showing a willingness to suppress” pro-Palestinian protests more often than protests supporting other causes.
Four students held Israeli flags and stood in front of a banner that read “Intifada.” This term refers to the Palestinian uprising against Israel that left thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israeli civilians dead.
Ryan Silverfein, chairman of the university’s Hillel Board of Trustees, told The Michigan Daily that he found the group’s use of the term problematic.
“We want to be here to eliminate the word intifada, because it’s a big trigger word for a lot of Jewish and Israeli students,” he said.
“It means violence. It means uprising. Many of our family members and friends were intentionally killed in terrorist attacks in Israel. So personally, I have a problem with that word.”
He and his small group of pro-Israel counter-protesters wanted to remind other Jewish and Israeli students that they too have a community on this campus and that they should not walk past such upsetting events. I was there to show you what not to do.” Look at it. ”
Back in the Empire State, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik also joined all New York House Republicans on Monday in failing to quell the “massive, unauthorized anti-Semitic riot” involving the Ivy League. They called for the immediate resignation of Colombian President Minouche Shafik. You will spend most of the week on campus.
“The time has come for Columbia University to turn the page on this shameful chapter. This can only be done with the restoration of order and your swift resignation,” Stefanik and nine other Republicans in the Empire State said. he wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by The Post.
