Anti-Israel campus protests are spreading: California, Texas brace after activists overrun Columbia, Yale
After anti-Israel protests formed at Columbia University, UC Berkeley and Yale, additional activist groups have become inspired to lead their own resistance movements, forcing schools in California, Texas and Maryland to brace for potential mayhem, Fox News has learned.
Activist groups at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Texas at Austin, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have all announced on social media that they will hold anti-Israel protests on Wednesday, April 24.
Pro-Palestinian factions at all three universities have posted on social media indicating that they intend to hold "resistance" movements, including a post from the Hopkins Justice Collective which calls members to "stand in support of our brothers and sisters in Gaza, as well as the students on many college campuses across the country fighting for divestment from the settler colony of Israel."
"Bring your signs, bring your posters, and — most importantly — bring your energy," the post continues.
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The newly anticipated anti-Israel protests come as activists have seen massive turnouts with hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York City and Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Similar protests have risen at other universities in recent days.
The University of Maryland - College Park, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have all experienced similar protests in recent days targeted at Israel and its war with the terror group Hamas in Gaza.
Many of the protesters are calling for an end to the fighting in the region, which has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian Palestinian deaths.
"Our universities have chosen profit and reputation over the lives of the people of Palestine and our will as students. The supposed power of our administrators is nothing compared to the strength of the united students, staff, and faculty committed to realizing justice and upholding Palestinian liberation on campus," Students for Justice in Palestine, University of California Los Angeles wrote on Instagram.
The post continued: "In the footsteps of our comrades at Rutgers-New Brunswick SJP, Tufts SJP, and Columbia SJP, we will take back our university and force our administration to divest for the people of Gaza!"
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In Austin, Texas, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee is calling for students to walk out of class on April 24, and to "occupy the South Lawn."
"In the footsteps of our comrades at Columbia SJP, Rutgers-New Brunswick, Yale, and countless others across the nation, we will be establishing THE POPULAR UNIVERSITY FOR GAZA and demanding our administration divest from death," the post continues.
The new protests are continuations of anti-Israel protests exhibited across the U.S.
Protesters and agitators in the U.S. have successfully targeted and held protests at all top five U.S. universities, according to the U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 Best National University Rankings.
These include Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale — each witnessing active anti-Israel protests in the last few days.
According to these rankings, at least half of the top 50 U.S. universities have had active anti-Israel protests in the past week.
While many of these universities have had anti-Israel protests in waves since the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, they have seen more recent protests sparked by or after the April 17, 2024, Columbia University protests.