In the subsequent and inevitable confrontation, police in riot gear arrested more than one hundred students. This was the first time mass arrests had been taken place on the Columbia campus since the Vietnam War protests some fifty years ago.
The Chinese people have a saying, 'a single spark can set the prairie alight'. It was Shafik's decision to order a clampdown that sparked the wildfire of protests that have broken out since on university campuses throughout the United States. They have now also spread to other countries, such as France, where students have occupied the University of Paris.
There have been further arrests on other university campuses in the United States, but the occupations not only continue, the number of protesters has increased.
The protest have rattled a political establishment that continues to support and enable Israel's genocidal war against the people of Gaza. In the same week that the protests began, the US Congress approved a $95 billion funding package for Israel and Ukraine.
US speaker of the House Mike 'Maga Mike' Johnson, a Trump supporter and who was involved in trying to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, turned up at Columbia University to condemn the occupation. Not surprisingly, he claimed the protest movement was, variously, 'antisemitic', 'a supporter of Hamas' and was being manipulated by 'outside agitators'. But all he did was pour more petrol on the fire. Referring to his severe anti-abortion views, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commented on X: 'Why would I ever listen to a man that thinks he should have more say over my body than I do? NEXT.'
The protest movement has drawn the links between the imperialist interests of America Empire and the Zionist state. Students want their universities to divest from firms that 'profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign' in Gaza, and end university research 'on weapons of war' funded by the Department of Defence. They also want an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, while supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions. And they want the university administrations to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Throughout the course of Israel's onslaught on Gaza, American universities have remained silent.
Some university authorities in an attempt to deflect protest from their campuses, have indicated a willingness to cut ties, albeit temporarily, with firms profiting from Israel's war in Gaza. Journalist Abby Martin has reported that Portland State University in Oregon has said it will 'pause' accepting donations from Boeing, the world's fifth-largest weapon manufacture. It makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as 'multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits' that have been used 'extensively' during the war, including in a bombing of Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp.
Student organisations in Gaza have issued a statement in solidarity with students in the United States. In part, he reads:
'We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising up in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-U.S. genocide against our people in Gaza. As we remain under the bombs of occupation, resisting Nazi genocide, grieving for our martyred colleagues and faculty, and witnessing the destruction of our universities, we welcome the examples of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion in order to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-U.S. genocide and renounce their support for the occupation and the war profiteers that arm it.'
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