Boston, November 11 (RHC)-- Students on college campuses across the U.S. have been protesting Israel’s U.S.-funded assault on Gaza amid an intensifying crackdown from school authorities. 

At Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, 20 Jewish students who participated in a sit-in to demand Brown consider a divestment resolution were arrested Wednesday.  Hundreds of fellow students sang Jewish prayer songs outside Brown’s University Hall in solidarity with the sit-in.

Students with the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid, located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, held a peaceful protest despite threats from the school’s administration.  One student organizer told reporters: “We are all here because MIT has now threatened to suspend all peaceful protesters who took part in the No Science for Genocide demonstration.  And we must fight for this voice, because we are Gaza’s voice outside of Palestine.”

Another student protester said: "There’s a lot of energy around this No Science for Genocide claim, because a lot of people here, they come to MIT because they care about science, they care about engineering. They want to do good for the world. But the thing is that they come to MIT and become disillusioned, because we find out that what our work is going towards is not for good, is not for people. It’s going towards war, endless war.”

In New York City, students at the Columbia School of Social Work held a sit-in protest despite multiple threats of academic sanctions.

On Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, students protested at a congressional hearing earlier this week, calling out the demonization of pro-Palestinian voices and what they called unjust charges of antisemitism to suppress any criticism of Israel.  Students were thrown out of the hearing and arrested.  The House hearing was called “Free Speech on College Campuses.”