Multiple arrests as US police clear protests at MIT and UPenn Gaza

Police carried out pre-dawn attacks on students protesting the war in Gaza at two prestigious US universities, adding to the latest unrest on campuses across the country.

And late Thursday, police used tear gas to break up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Calgary in western Canada.

According to university president Sally Kornbluth, around ten arrests were made during the police operation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) near Boston in the northeast. She had “no choice” but to resolve the “high-risk hotspot.”

At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, officers in tactical gear forcibly removed several dozen students who had wrapped their arms around a statue of Benjamin Franklin, NBC reported. It was said they had two minutes to leave.

No students at any US university resisted the arrest, and both actions appeared to be relatively peaceful.

The demonstrations have spread to campuses abroad. The clash in the Canadian province of Alberta pitted police officers in tactical gear against about 150 University of Calgary students. It was not immediately clear how many, if any, arrests were made.

At MIT, Kornbluth provided an overview of weeks of protests and negotiations on campus that culminated in four warnings to students and ultimately her decision to task police with clearing the encampment, which she called a “last resort.”

For the protesters, she wrote, the camp symbolized “a moral obligation that trumped all other considerations given the immense suffering in Gaza.”

But for those who support Israel, “through its signs and chants, it provided a constant assertion that those who believe Israel has a right to exist are unwelcome at MIT.”

“As a result, the camp became a hot spot.”

She said those students who refused to leave campus were “calmly” escorted off campus before being arrested.

But student organizers remained defiant, staging an “emergency rally” at 3pm (1900 GMT) on Friday to protest what they said was the university’s “unjustified discipline, evictions and arrests”.

“You can’t suspend the movement. We will be back,” wrote a protest coalition on Instagram.

Police have arrested more than 2,000 people nationwide in the weeks of unrest on US campuses.

Students are protesting Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza and demanding that their schools divest financially from U.S. weapons makers and Israeli companies.

University authorities have sought to support the right to protest while addressing complaints of anti-Semitism and hate speech at the demonstrations.

In at least one incident, counter-protesters physically attacked demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Some schools have reached agreements with students who have disbanded their camps.

Other universities have called police, and striking images of clashes between officers and students helped turn the protests into a political issue ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election.

President Joe Biden last week defended students’ right to protest, saying that “differing opinions are essential to democracy” but adding that “order must prevail.”

Donald Trump, Biden’s presumptive Republican rival in November, has taken a tougher stance, dismissing the protesters as “radical left-wing lunatics” and saying: “They must be stopped.”

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