Today's recap
At least 2,000 people have arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses. Student protesters, faculty and others have sustained severe injury as police raided several encampment protests across the US overnight.
Here’s a summary of the developments today, from Guardian US staff across the country:
At least 200 people were arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The latest figure brings the nationwide total of arrests to more than 2,000 at dozens of college campuses since police cleared an encampment at Columbia University on 30 April.
The Pulitzer prize board publicly recognized the work of student journalists across the US who are covering pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses. The board praised the work of student journalists at Columbia University, where the Pulitzer prizes are located, for documenting the events on campus as New York police raided student-led encampments on 30 April.
An officer fired a gun inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, and the incident is under review by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. The news was first reported by the outlet The City. No one was injured, according to Doug Cohen, a spokesperson with Bragg’s office, who told the AP that no students had been in the immediate vicinity.
Joe Biden condemned violent protests, including vandalism, trespassing and forcing classes to be cancelled, during remarks from the White House. “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country,” he said.
At the conclusion of his speech, Biden said he did not think the National Guard should intervene in the protests, while responding to questions from journalists. Biden added that the campus unrest had not made him reconsider any policies in the Middle East.
The Gaza solidarity protest encampment at Rutgers University is being peacefully disassembled by students after meeting with university administration and coming to a resolution. Students at Northwestern and Brown have also been able to reach deals with their school administrations. In Canada, University of Toronto officials reversed a previous 10pm deadline for protesters to disperse, and said an encampment could stay if it remained peaceful.
The largest union of academic workers will hold a strike-authorization vote as early as next week in response to how universities have cracked down on students’ Gaza protests. The union represents more than 48,000 graduate student workers throughout the University of California system. Meanwhile, the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) called for a vote of no confidence against Columbia president Minouche Shafik.
Faculty at Pomona College have voted to divest from Israel, weeks after protesters at the liberal arts campus were arrested.The faculty at the school in Claremont, California, have demanded divestment from “weapons manufacturers and companies complicit in human rights violations committed by the Israeli government”.
The Travis county attorney general’s office said there was no evidence to back claims by the University of Texas at Austin that people among the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus had “guns, buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-enforced wood planks, mallets and chains”. The attorney general said that the high numbers of misdemeanor arrests of protesters were unsustainable.
Updated
In Canada, University of Toronto announces it will allow protest encampment to stay
Reversing a previous 10 pm deadline for pro-Palestine demonstrators to disperse, University of Toronto officials said that a protest encampment could remain as long as it stayed peaceful, the Toronto Star reported.
University of Toronto says encampment protesters calling for it to ‘divest’ from Israel can stay for now https://t.co/Em6Bvu0COB
— Toronto Star (@TorontoStar) May 3, 2024
