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The White Home has condemned pro-Palestinian college students who occupied a constructing in a single day at Columbia College in New York, intensifying a political backlash to protests sweeping throughout US college campuses.
Demonstrators marched into the Hamilton Corridor constructing early on Tuesday and unfurled a “free Palestine” flag, escalating a stand-off after Columbia’s authorities had sought on Monday to finish a campus encampment by threatening to droop any college students who didn’t disperse.
The college — which has been struggling to steadiness freedom of speech with issues over antisemitism — clamped down additional on campus after the most recent occupation, limiting entry to resident college students and workers offering “important providers”.
“President [Joe] Biden respects the suitable to free expression, however protests have to be peaceable and lawful,” stated White Home spokesperson Andrew Bates on Tuesday. “Forcibly taking on buildings shouldn’t be peaceable — it’s mistaken. And hate speech and hate symbols don’t have any place in America.”
Columbia has been a focus of demonstrations triggered by the war between Hamas and Israel, which began October 7, however a call by its administration to droop college students and call in the police to arrest them sparked widespread copycat occupations and clampdowns within the US and different universities overseas.
Police on Tuesday additionally arrested protesters to finish the occupation of a constructing at California State Polytechnic College, Humboldt. Arrests have additionally taken place at different campuses across the US in latest days.
College students have demanded measures together with extra transparency in faculty investments and divestment from firms they deem to have profited from Israel’s struggle in Gaza.
Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, final week stated she had been keen to ascertain new processes to have interaction with college students round transparency and divestment, however had failed to succeed in an settlement.
A number of completely different organisations have sued the college over claims of discrimination and failure to guard Jewish and Muslim college students, and most just lately over disruption of their skill to check and graduate.
Columbia is beneath strain from the US Congress to crack down on the protests, however can also be racing to arrange for its commencement ceremony to be held adjoining to the encampment on Could 15.
The White Home pressured Biden had “stood in opposition to repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his complete life” and added: “He condemns using the time period ‘intifada’, as he has the opposite tragic and harmful hate speech displayed in latest days.”
The scholar tent camp was nonetheless seen by way of the locked gates of the Columbia campus on Tuesday, however only a dozen demonstrators and a small variety of police and personal safety guards stood exterior its important entrance in the course of the day. One placard learn: “Carry the siege on Gaza now”.
The one seen signal of the occupation at Hamilton Corridor was a single banner. A truck drove by with a US and Israeli flag painted on the aspect and the slogan “United we stand with Israel”.