Night of chaos on college campuses rocks America

Not since 1968 had Columbia University witnessed scenes like it.

Hamilton Hall, in New York, a centrepiece of the elegant Ivy League campus, has long served as a garrison for student activists.

It was the backdrop to demonstrations against racial inequality, the Vietnam War and the apartheid regime in South Africa.

But after two weeks of sprawling protests against Israel’s action in Gaza left the university in a state of paralysis, Columbia’s leaders and police said they had “no choice” but to act.

On Wednesday, hundreds of students, like their predecessors before, had occupied Hamilton Hall in an anti-war protest.

They had barricaded themselves in with vending machines, sofas and their own bodyweight to reinforce the doors and windows.

Half a century ago, the clashes between police and anti-war protesters were marred by violence that ignited a wave of campus activism across America.

On Wednesday, they were stamped out by a calm and coolly efficient brigade of officers clad in riot gear.

But police raids on other US universities were less peaceful.

At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), there were reports of pepper spray being used on protesters as the metal barricades surrounding the encampment were set upon.

It was unclear who was behind the action, with many of the clashes appearing to play out between protesters and counter-protesters.

Meanwhile, activists clashed with police officers who destroyed their tents at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century.

This is all playing out in an election year in the US, raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back US President Joe Biden’s re-election effort, given his staunch support of Israel.

There have been confrontations with law enforcement and more than 1300 arrests. In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antiSemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic remarks or violent threats, organisers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he received a piece of intelligence that shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.

“Outside agitators” working to “radicalise our children” were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor said. And one of them, Adams said, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism”.

But Nahla Al-Arian, 63, said Adams had mis-stated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband.

“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Nahla Al-Arian said.