Pro-Palestinian protests in US universities must remain peaceful, urges White House after police arrest hundreds

Following over 275 arrests by police on four different campuses over the weekend, the White House reiterated on Sunday that the nonviolent rallies in support of Palestine that have erupted across US universities in recent weeks must continue.

Spokesman for the National Security Council John Kirby said, “We certainly respect the right of peaceful protests,” on ABC’s “This Week.”

However, he also stated that they absolutely condemn the anti-Semitism language that they’ve heard of late and also condemn all the hate speech and the threats of violence out there.

The protests started at New York’s Columbia University and have since quickly expanded across the nation.

While many campuses have seen tranquilty, the number of demonstrators being detained—sometimes by police wearing riot gear and deploying tasers and chemical irritants—is rapidly increasing.

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Among them are 23 at Indiana University, 72 at Arizona State University, 80 at Washington University in St. Louis, and 100 at Northeastern University in Boston.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was among those detained at Washington University. Stein criticised the police for using forceful methods that she claimed incited the same unrest they are supposed to put an end to.

“This is about freedom of speech… on a very critical issue,” she told CNN shortly before her arrest Saturday. “And there they are, sending in the riot police and basically creating a riot.”

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Protesters at Yale University established a new encampment on Sunday, the school’s independent student newspaper reported, after a previous site was taken down by police days earlier, when dozens were arrested and charged with trespassing.

College administrators have struggled to find the best response, caught between the need to respect free-speech rights and the imperative of containing inflammatory and sometimes violently anti-Semitic calls by protesters.

With final exams coming in the next few weeks, some campuses – including the Humboldt campus of California State Polytechnic University, have closed and instructed students to complete their classes online.

The activists behind the campus protests – not all of them students – are calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas, and want colleges to sever ties with Israel.

Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants also took roughly 250 people hostage. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,454 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.