NPR reports:

Tensions are growing on U.S. college campuses, as the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked New York-area schools in recent days — and the ensuing arrests of participants — spread from coast to coast.

Students have launched protests and encampments at more than a dozen schools across the country, from Massachusetts to Michigan to California. They are calling for an end both to the Israel-Hamas war and their universities’ investment in companies that profit from it or, more broadly, do business with Israel.

It’s the latest wave of protests to sweep college campuses since the Oct. 7 attack Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and roughly 240 others taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities, who say more than 130 remain captive in Gaza. Israel’s ensuing military response in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, some two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

College-age Americans are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis, according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center.

And the Israel-Hamas war has become a major flashpoint at institutions of higher education, many of which are now grappling with how to balance free speech protections with student safety at a moment of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia. [Continue reading…]

A statement of solidarity with Columbia University students from Princeton faculty and staff, says:

We, Princeton University faculty and staff, affirm our solidarity with and support for the Columbia University and Barnard College students who are continuing to demand that the university divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ongoing occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and other Palestinian land. We fully support the rights of all university community members, including students, to engage in peaceful protest at Columbia, at Princeton, and on all university campuses.

Until the following demands are met, we will boycott Columbia University and Barnard College:

First, we call upon the Columbia University administration to reinstate those students who were wrongfully suspended for exercising their constitutionally recognized right to speech and peaceful assembly. We demand that all charges be dismissed and expunged from their student records, and that all rights and privileges be restored to them immediately. All ad hoc disciplinary proceedings against peaceful student protestors must be stopped. We demand that no disciplinary action be taken against any student protesters without due process, and that no police be permitted on campus without serious consultation with the Executive Committee of the Columbia University Senate. [Continue reading…]