Orders were issued to disperse the pro-Palestinian sit-in camp on the campus of the University of California in the eastern United States, while police arrested 32 people at two universities in Texas and New York amid the expansion of the student movement to new universities.

This was a day after the dispersal of a sit-in at Columbia University in New York City.

As the student movement continued in dozens of universities, rejecting the war on Gaza and demanding that universities boycott Israel academically and economically, the reporter confirmed that the Los Angeles Police intensified their deployment on the University of California campus the day after orders were issued to disperse the sit-in camp on its campus.

In response, the president of the University of California said, “The attack on our students and faculty is completely unacceptable.”

In a later development, the New York Times said that hundreds of University of California students refused to disperse the sit-in, despite some leaving following warnings from the police.

The reporter added that the University of California informed students and faculty members that classes on Thursday and Friday would be held remotely.

In the south of the country, the University of Texas at Dallas reported the arrest of 17 people on charges of trespassing on the property of others for setting up tents on the university campus.

The University of Arizona also said that police used rubber bullets and pepper balls against protesters at the university.

In New York in the north, CNN quoted the state police as saying that at least 15 people were arrested after dispersing a camp at Fordham University's Lincoln Center.

Evictions and arrests

Yesterday, the New York Police stormed the Columbia University campus, dispersed the protesters, evacuated Hamilton Hall, and arrested a number of protesting students.

The presidency of Columbia University expressed its regret that the demonstrators chose to escalate the situation, considering that it had no other choice after individuals it said were not affiliated with the university stormed and vandalized Hamilton Hall.

For its part, the university's faculty held the university's leadership responsible for what it described as the catastrophic lapses that led them to this point. Student leaders at Columbia University announced that they were confident that the protests would continue despite the presence of security.

In this context, New York Mayor Eric Adams said that the police arrested about 300 participants in the sit-ins at Columbia University, noting that there were no violent clashes between the police and the protesters during the dispersal of the sit-in.

Massachusetts and Portland

In the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, north of New York, students at the Massachusetts University of Technology organized a protest demonstration in front of one of the university’s administrative buildings, with the participation of employees and faculty members who reject the war on Gaza.

The protesters expanded their open sit-in on the university campus and set up a tent in the name of the martyr Hamza Al-Dahdouh, a journalist for the Al-Jazeera network, who was martyred in an Israeli bombing in Gaza.

This comes in the context of escalatory steps on the part of the protesters after the failure of a meeting between the university president and the student delegation, where the demonstrators announced the continuation of their open peaceful sit-in until their demands are met, most notably stopping what they described as a war of extermination in Gaza and stopping the development of the Israeli drone program in the university’s laboratories.

In Portland, in the far northwest, the University of Portland announced the failure of negotiations with the student protesters inside its library, and about 50 students left the building voluntarily.

Earlier, Portland police said that between 50 and 75 demonstrators stormed the university library last Monday, according to what CNN reported.