Police officers swept onto the ordinarily serene campus of Emory University in Atlanta after demonstrators erected tents on Thursday morning, leading to the latest clash in a pro-Palestinian protest movement that has cascaded across American campuses this week.
As the demonstrators at Emory screamed, officers wrestled with protesters on the ground and escorted others away. From a few dozen yards away, onlookers stared and recorded the scene with their cellphones.
The authorities did not immediately say how many people had been arrested in Atlanta, but across the country, more than 400 protesters have been taken into police custody since April 18, when the arrests of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University in New York set off a wave of student activism nationwide.
University administrators have responded at several campuses by calling in law enforcement, removing encampments and threatening academic consequences. Some Jewish students have expressed concern for their safety, and politicians have demanded a crackdown on the growing demonstrations.
The Boston police arrested 108 protesters at Emerson College late Wednesday, just hours after the Los Angeles police arrested 93 people on the University of Southern California campus who had refused to disperse. In each case, it was unclear how many of the arrested demonstrators were students.
Earlier on Wednesday, dozens of police officers, many of them in riot gear and some on horseback, arrested 57 people at the University of Texas at Austin. Most of them have already been released from custody. Diana Melendez, a spokeswoman for the county attorney’s office, said charges were dropped in many of the cases after the office found legal “deficiencies” in their arrests.
