00:00American universities have become the latest battleground for the Israel-Gaza conflict.
00:09We've seen hundreds of pro-Palestinian students being arrested across US campuses over the
00:15last couple of weeks. It began with an unprecedented standoff at Columbia University in New York,
00:22where the president of the university called in the New York Police Department to evict
00:26and arrest more than a hundred students who had been protesting on the lawns for some
00:30days and also suspended them. Now, that has actually led to a bigger backlash in Columbia
00:35itself. Classes have had to go into hybrid mode and the protests have actually swelled.
00:42We've seen protests spreading to many other campuses also, including Ivy League ones like
00:46Yale University. Now, there are a couple of aspects to this story. One, of course, is
00:51that many of these protests, which have been calling for an end to the Israeli actions
00:57in Gaza, have also turned into hate speech and have bordered on being violent. Not all
01:03of them have been violent. Many have been peaceful, but some of them, according to student
01:08accounts, have turned anti-Semitic and threatening in their tone and tenor. And that is not acceptable
01:13because no student, Jewish or otherwise, should feel unsafe and insecure on campus. And it
01:19is the responsibility of authorities to ensure that everyone does feel secure. However, by
01:25all accounts, a vast majority of these protests have been peaceful and people do have a right
01:30to voice their concerns about Israel's actions in Gaza, which have now killed more than 30,000
01:36civilians, many of them women and children. America prides itself on free speech, on protest.
01:42American universities in the past have been bastions of protests, such as against the
01:47Vietnam War. And today they are completely clamping down on any pro-Palestinian protesters
01:53in the most undemocratic way. People have a right to voice their anger with Israel as
01:59long as it's done or within peaceful means. And if that is happening, then arrests are
02:04very heavy handed.
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