In the United States, Columbia University is delaying the evacuation of its campus, which has been occupied by pro-Palestinian students

Columbia University in New York (United States of America) has postponed the Friday midnight (6 a.m. Paris time) deadline for pro-Palestinian students to evacuate the campus that was occupied in protest against the war in the Gaza Strip, it announced.

“Negotiations have progressed and are continuing as planned”NYU President Minouche Shafik’s office said in a press release Thursday evening. “We have our requirements, they have theirs”continue from the presidential office, denying that police intervention was requested.

“They call us terrorists, they call us thugs. But the only tool we have is our voices”said one of the students who participates in the occupation and introduces herself under the name Mimi.

A major movement in American universities

The pro-Palestinian American student movement, which has become widespread on American campuses, left Columbia University more than a week ago. Some of the most prestigious universities in the world were affected, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

Dozens of arrests took place last week, after university officials called on police to end the occupation, which several accuse of fueling anti-Semitism. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations then continued on campus on Wednesday.

More than 200 protesters were arrested again on Wednesday and Thursday at universities in Los Angeles (California), Boston (Massachusetts) and Austin (Texas), where about 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday. Early Thursday morning, a new camp was set up on the George Washington University campus in the capital. At UCLA in Los Angeles, more than 200 students set up a mini-village of about thirty tents, barricaded with pallets and signs. In the vicinity of the pro-Palestinian rally, about thirty students organized a counter-demonstration.

The scenes follow one another and are similar: students set up tents on their campuses to denounce the United States’ military support for Israel and the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip. They are then chased away, often harshly, by police officers in riot gear at the request of university management.

On the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, in the southeast of the United States, the police evacuated the protesters with mana militari, and threw some to the ground to arrest them, according to the pictures of the photojournalist from the “French Media Agency”. Atlanta police have admitted to using agents “irritant chemicals” against the protesters, facing the “violence” some of them.

USC University in Los Angeles, where ninety-three people were arrested on Wednesday, announced Thursday the cancellation of its main graduation ceremony this year, officially due to “new security measures”. Jason Miller, an adviser to Donald Trump, seized on the announcement, saying on X that, “Under Joe Biden, Your Graduation Ceremony Won’t Be Guaranteed” to take place.

The White House, for its part, assures that Mr. Biden, who hopes to be re-elected in November, will “supports freedom of expression, debate and non-discrimination” at universities.