The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony Thursday and dozens of students were arrested on other campuses as protests against the Israel-Hamas war continued to spread.
College officials across the U.S. are worried the ongoing protests could disrupt their plans for commencement ceremonies next month. Some universities called in police to break up the demonstrations, resulting in ugly scuffles and arrests, while others appeared content to wait out student protests as the final days of the semester ticked down.
Other approaches taken by schools included rewriting their rules to ban encampments and moving final exams to new locations.
USC announced the cancellation of the May 10 ceremony a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus. The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school commencement ceremonies, during which students cross a stage and receive their diplomas.
Tensions were already high after the university canceled a planned commencement speech by the school’s pro-Palestinian valedictorian, citing safety concerns.
“We understand that this is disappointing; however, we are adding many new activities and celebrations to make this commencement academically meaningful, memorable, and uniquely USC," the university said in a statement Thursday. Those include gatherings, the releasing of doves and performances by the marching band.
The Los Angeles Police Department said 93 people were arrested Wednesday night during a campus protest for allegedly trespassing. One person was arrested on allegations of assault with a deadly weapon.
At Emerson College in Boston, 108 people were arrested overnight at an alleyway encampment. And new encampments and protests continued to pop up at campuses across the country.
Students protesting the war are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
At Emerson, video shows police first warning students in the alleyway to leave. Students link arms to resist officers, who move forcefully through the crowd and throw some protesters to the ground.
“As the night progressed, it got tenser and tenser. There were just more cops on all sides. It felt like we were being slowly pushed in and crushed,” said Ocean Muir, a sophomore.
“For me, the scariest moment was holding these umbrellas out in case we were tear-gassed, and hearing them come, and hearing their boots on the ground, just pounding into the ground louder than we could chant, and not being able to see a single person,” she said.
Muir said police lifted her by her arms and legs and carried her away. Along with other students, Muir was charged Thursday with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Emerson College leaders had earlier warned students that the alley has a public right-of-way and city authorities had threatened to take action if the protesters didn’t leave. Emerson canceled classes Thursday, and Boston police said four officers suffered injuries that were not life-threatening during the confrontation.
The University of Texas at Austin campus was much calmer Thursday after 57 people were jailed and charged with criminal trespass a day earlier. University officials pulled back barricades and allowed demonstrators onto the main square beneath the school’s iconic clock tower.
The gathering of students and some faculty was protesting both the war and Wednesday’s arrests, when state troopers in riot gear and on horseback bulldozed into protesters, forcing hundreds of students off the school’s main lawn.
At Emory University in Atlanta, local and state police swept in to dismantle a camp, although the university said the protesters weren't students but rather outside activists. Some officers carried semiautomatic weapons, and video shows officers using a stun gun on one protester who they had pinned to the ground.
Protesters at Emory chanted slogans supporting Palestinians and opposing a public safety training center being built in Atlanta. The two movements are closely entwined in Atlanta, where there has been years of “Stop Cop City” activism that has included attacks on property.
Jail records showed 22 people arrested by Emory police were charged with disorderly conduct.
But many colleges, including Harvard University, were choosing not to take immediate action against protesters who had set up tents, even though they were openly defying campus rules. And some colleges were making new rules, like Northwestern University, which hastily changed its student code of conduct Thursday morning to bar tents on its suburban Chicago campus.
George Washington University said it would move its law school finals from a building next to the protest encampment to a new location, because of the noise.
The current wave of protests was inspired by events at Columbia University in New York, where police cleared an encampment and arrested more than 100 people last week, only for students to defiantly put up tents again, in an area where many are set to graduate in front of families in a few weeks. Columbia has said it plans to continue negotiations with protesters through early Friday.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the ability to embrace student voices and different perspectives was a hallmark of the nation’s growth but warned authorities wouldn’t tolerate hate, discrimination or threats of violence.
“We continue to follow reports about protests — including very alarming reports of antisemitism — on and around college campuses across the country,” he said in a statement.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began, the U.S. Education Department has launched civil rights investigations into dozens of universities and schools in response to complaints of antisemitism or Islamophobia. Among those under investigation are many colleges facing protests, including Harvard and Columbia.
