Student protests for Palestine spread to 2 more universities in US

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - Two more universities in the US started encampments Wednesday to protest the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza Strip.

Students from Brown University in Rhode Island, and the University of Southern California (USC) joined other universities, including Columbia, to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Brown has demanded the university "divest its endowment from all companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza and the broader Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory."

About 100 pro-Palestine students at the University of Texas at Dallas held a sit-in along the hallway that leads to the school president’s office late into Tuesday, according to the media reports.

Last week, Columbia students established an encampment on the school’s South Lawn, which ended in the arrests of more than 100, after the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, ordered the New York Police Department (NYPD) to clear the demonstration.

Earlier this week, similar demonstrations broke out at Yale and New York University.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to visit Columbia on Wednesday to meet with Jewish students and condemn the protests.

"What we're seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable. I believe every leader in the country must condemn this violence. This is not who we are in America. University officials need to get the situation under control," Johnson wrote on X ahead of his trip.