While all eyes in the nation are fixed on the police response to pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, this week, demonstrations are spreading beyond the Ivy Leagues and universities on the East and West coasts.
Students at several colleges and universities in the Midwest have orchestrated pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including encampments and protests, joining students at numerous schools across the country in calling for divestments from companies that do business with Israel. Part of their demands include increased transparency about university ties to Israel and a public denouncement of Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a genocide.
On Oct. 7, the militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 240 people were taken hostage. In retaliation, Israel has repeatedly launched strikes on the Gaza Strip, resulting in more than 30,000 deaths so far, the displacement of nearly the entire population and a growing famine. The deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military have prompted a mobilization of college students across the U.S. and the world.
Protests at Ivy League schools and larger institutions in major cities have been met with forceful pushback from university officials, many of whom have called in law enforcement to crack down on the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian rallies at many universities in the Midwest have been able to continue without much police escalation or incidents.
On Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators, including faculty and students, gathered on Ohio State University’s campus for a protest in which they chanted, prayed and waved Palestine flags. According to The Columbus Dispatch, the gathering remained peaceful and nonviolent with minimal confrontation with police officers, a contrast to a smaller demonstration at OSU last week that resulted in 36 arrests.
Students at the University of Nebraska, University of Kansas and Iowa State University also held protests at their campuses on Wednesday, which remained peaceful and calm throughout the day without any major police intervention, local news outlets reported.
“Our positionality in the Midwest is important in this movement because there is a shared fallacy that non-white bodies do not exist,” KU Students for Justice in Palestine said in a social media post. “Midwest is often dismissed as a region of little significance in elections; however, our voices today align and express the same disgust for the ongoing financial support that the U.S. provides toward the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Similar reports were given of a protest at the University of Missouri earlier this week, in part because of “lessons learned” by the college nearly 10 years ago.
In 2015, students camped out at the university to protest its failure to address the culture of racism on campus, KMIZ-TV in Columbia, Missouri, reported. Black student athletes also refused to play until then-President Tim Wolfe resigned. Mizzou saw lower applications from prospective students for years following the protests.
After the 2015 protest, the University of Missouri changed its policies to prohibit camping on school grounds. On Monday, campus protesters were expected to follow school policies as well as city ordinances.
“Yesterday we felt was a very large success for everyone involved,” University of Missouri spokesperson Christian Basi told KMIZ-TV. “The student groups were able to hold their protests. They were able to have their march. They were able to utilize the routes that they wanted to take. At the same time, the university was able to continue its operations.”
At the DePaul University in Illinois, students have gathered for a second day at their Chicago encampment, which has not faced police intervention. According to WLS-TV in Chicago, university officials are making a concerted effort not to have their college join the list of schools where violent clashes have occurred, and local police are aiming to keep the campus calm.
“With our universities here, people are protesting peacefully. We’re not engaging them in a way that is going to inflame what they are trying to do,” Chicago Police Department Supt. Larry Snelling said, according to WLS-TV.
Many right-wing pundits and some news outlets have cast the protests at Ivy League schools and other universities on the coasts in recent weeks as being violent, pointing to graphic scenes of police interventions and unrest.
CNN reporter Dana Bash faced backlash on Wednesday for claiming that protesters “lost the plot,” and she compared the fear that Jewish students feel on campus to the treatment of Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s.
“Destruction, violence and hate overtake college campuses across the country with Jewish students feeling unsafe at their own schools. It is unacceptable, and harkening back to the 1930s in Europe,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Yesterday we felt was a very large success for everyone involved. The student groups were able to hold their protests. ... At the same time, the university was able to continue its operations.”
- Christian Basi, University of Missouri spokesperson
It is unclear whether violence was instigated before or after police intervened at the protests across the country. Some reports indicate that there were clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters.
Many students, faculty and witnesses have claimed that they were attacked by police and counter-protesters, accounts that appear to be corroborated by photos and videos online.
Some politicians have called out the police escalation at universities and in cities across the country, pointing out how de-escalation plans have been successfully carried out at protests in other areas.
“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and univ presidents,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote Tuesday on X. “Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) also voiced her support for student protesters.
“The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor Adams is abhorrent and barbarous,” she wrote on X. “The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end.”