School drops deadline for dismantling protest camp

NEW YORK: Columbia University backed off late on Thursday from an overnight deadline for pro-Palestinian protesters to abandon an encampment there as more college campuses in the US sought to prevent occupations from taking hold.

Police have carried out largescale arrests in universities across the country, at times using chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests over Israel’s war with Hamas.

The office of New York-based Columbia University president Minouche Shafik issued a statement at 11.07pm retreating from a midnight deadline to dismantle a large tent camp with about 200 students.

“The talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned,” the statement said. “We have our demands; they have theirs.”

The statement denied that New York City police were invited on the campus. “This rumor is false,” it said.

A student, identifying herself only as Mimi, told AFP she had been at the camp for seven days.

“They call us terrorists, they call us violent. But... they’re the ones that called in the police when students were sitting in a circle,” she said. “The police are the ones with guns, the police are the ones with tasers, we only have our voices.”

Protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

More than 200 protesting the war were arrested Wednesday and early on Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas.

Riot officers in the southern state of Georgia used chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests at Emory University in Atlanta.

Photographs showed police wielding tasers as they wrestled with protesters on neatly manicured lawns.

The Atlanta Police Department said officers responding to the school’s request for help were “met with violence” and used “chemical irritants” in their response.

The spreading protests began at Columbia University, which has remained the epicentre of the student protest movement.