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The police arrest the students. Helicopters flying over New York City. Protesters shouted and lawmakers condemned university officials.
Videos of the campus protests, widely shared on TikTok, X and elsewhere, are spreading on social media and show the most visceral aspects of the demonstrations. Like the war in the Middle East itself, the images can inform and inflame viewers, and serve as a reminder that in the modern era, videos spread on social media can shape public opinion.
Videos from New York show tension spilling over off campus
Aerial videos taken from above the city show that hundreds of students have set up camp on the Columbia campus, including dozens of tents where they have been sleeping and eating for a week. New York University had its own encampment, but police cleared it Monday night. The students say the demonstrations are to show support for Palestinians in Gaza and to pressure their universities to “dispose of all economic and academic interests in Israel.”
The New York City Police Department arrested more than 100 Columbia students on Thursday and 120 New York University students on Monday after receiving permission from university leaders. Protests spread off campus on Tuesday.
Lawmakers speak
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have spoken out about the unrest on Columbia’s campus, and every Republican in the New York House of Representatives is among those calling for the resignation of Columbia President Minouche Shafik. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday became the highest-ranking elected official to ask him to resign.
President Joe Biden on Monday condemned the actions of protesters that he considered “anti-Semitic” and also condemned “those who do not understand what is happening to the Palestinians.”
Former President Donald Trump condemned the pro-Palestinian protests on the Columbia campus on Tuesday, saying they are a “shame to our country.”
The protests spread to campuses across the country.
Universities in about a dozen states have seen pro-Palestinian student protests over the past week, from the east coast at Yale University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the west at State Polytechnic of California in Humboldt and up to half the country at the University of Minnesota.