WASHINGTON: The White House insisted Sunday that pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked US universities in recent weeks must remain peaceful, after police arrested around 275 people on four separate campuses over the weekend. “We certainly respect the right of peaceful protests,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s “This Week”. But, he added, “we absolutely condemn the anti-Semitism language that we’ve heard of late and certainly condemn all the hate speech and the threats of violence out there.”

The wave of demonstrations began at Columbia University in New York but they have since spread rapidly across the country. While peace has prevailed in many campuses, the number of protesters detained - at times by police in riot gear using chemical irritants and tasers - is rising fast. They include 100 at Northeastern University in Boston, 80 at Washington University in St Louis, 72 at Arizona State University and 23 at Indiana University.

Among those arrested at Washington University was Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who faulted police for aggressive tactics she said provoked the sort of trouble they are meant to quell. “This is about freedom of speech... on a very critical issue,” she told CNN shortly before her arrest Saturday. “And there they are, sending in the riot police and basically creating a riot.”

College administrators have struggled to find the best response, caught between the need to respect free-speech rights and the imperative of containing inflammatory and sometimes violently anti-Semitic calls by protesters. At the University of Southern California, school officials late Saturday closed the main campus to the public after pro-Palestinian groups again set up an encampment that had been cleared earlier, the school announced on X.

With final exams coming in the next few weeks, some campuses - including the Humboldt campus of California State Polytechnic University, have closed and instructed students to complete their classes online. The activists behind the campus protests - not all of them students - are calling for a ceasefire in the Zionist entity’s war with Hamas, and want colleges to sever ties with the Zionist entity.

In a statement on X, Northeastern said the area on campus where the protests were held was now “fully secured” and “all campus operations have returned to normal.” The school said it made the move after “what began as a student demonstration two days ago was infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern”. It added that detained individuals who produced a valid school ID have been released and will face disciplinary proceedings, not legal action. “Those who refused to disclose their affiliation were arrested,” the school said.

Dozens of students remained encamped Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania, despite the college president ordering disbandment after what he said were “credible reports of harassing and intimidating conduct”. Canada saw its first campus protest camp spring up Saturday at McGill University. The school in Montreal said such encampments, which are not permitted, increase “the potential for escalation and confrontation, as we have seen at some colleges throughout the US”.

Meanwhile, Columbia University in New York was relatively calm. Officials there announced Friday that they would not be calling police back to campus after more than 100 people were arrested last week. “To bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus, and drawing thousands to our doorstep who would threaten our community,” school leaders said in a statement, referring to the New York Police Department.

The decision was made even as Columbia signaled it had barred from campus Khymani James, a leader of the campus protests who had said in a video in January that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” “Chants, signs, taunts and social media posts from our own students that mock and threaten to ‘kill’ Jewish people are totally unacceptable, and Columbia students who are involved in such incidents will be held accountable,” the school said. — AFP