In the early hours of Wednesday, April 17, a small group of students set up tents at Columbia University, protesting against Israeli military action in Gaza and calling on their university to stop working with companies they see as supporting the war.

At the same time, Columbia President Minous Shafiq was heading to the Capitol to provide answers about anti-Semitism on campus and how she was dealing with it.

For four hours he explained the initiatives he had already taken. The students, he emphasized, “receive the message that violations of our policies will have consequences.”

The next afternoon, Columbia’s president made a decision that ignited protests at dozens of universities across the US.

He said the students protesting on campus had been trespassing, had refused to leave and were creating a “disturbing and intimidating environment” for many of their fellow students.

And then he sent the police, the famous NYPD.

Immediately officers from the largest police department in the US, wearing riot gear and holding plastic handcuffs, arrested more than 100 students.

It was the first mass arrest on Columbia’s campus since the Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.

The angry reaction of the students came immediately. The very next day, a second “village” of tents was set up on the grass, just a few meters away from the first.

Now the ‘village’ had grown, turned into a large campsite with donated buffet meals, live performances and a ‘security team’ at the gate watching for intruders.

A day later a third “village” was established 110 kilometers northeast of Columbia, at Yale University in Connecticut.

In the following days, protests spread to dozens of university campuses across the US. Yesterday, police said they had broken up a demonstration at Northeastern University in Boston, arresting about 100 people.

Columbia students sparked a national movement.

Student anger over how Israel is waging the war against Hamas has raised questions for university administrations, which are already grappling with “heated” debates over what’s happening in the Middle East.

How do they balance the right to protest and free speech with the need to protect other students? When do they send in the police to enforce university policies, knowing that the responses will be taped and instantly appear on millions of social media feeds?

At Yale, police arrived at the protest camp in the early hours of April 22, as many students were still sleeping. Nearly 50 students were arrested after refusing to leave, with some being held around a flagpole.

The last 10 days have seen the most intense and widespread protests in the last six months in the US. Simmering tensions boiled over after the first “village” in Columbia was cleared. Clashes and arrests followed at other universities as well.

In the University of Texas, in Austin, soldiers — some on horseback — stopped a sit-in started by hundreds of students Wednesday. In the Emory University in Atlanta, a female teacher was tackled to the ground by a police officer and a video of her handcuffed arrest went viral on Thursday.

Police clashed with protesters in Emerson College in Boston, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C New York University and to University of Southern California (USC).

Protesters are calling on university administrations not to accept funds from companies they see as linked to Israel’s war on Gaza.

At the same time, Jewish students and professors say they fear for their safety. And those concerns are partly what prompted university administrations, including Ms. Shafiq, to ​​call the police.

In interviews this week, Jewish students on several campuses talked about incidents that made them feel uncomfortable, from pro-Hamas chants and banners to fights and threats.

Northeastern University officials said some of the protesters had used anti-Semitic slogans, which is why they decided to take action on Saturday.

The university said the demonstration started as a student protest, but now foreigners have joined.

Many protesters have tried to distance themselves from the anti-Semitic incidents and in some cases have blamed outside agitators.

As negotiations between institutions and students continue, many protesters – and their outside supporters – are convinced that what they see as brutal police practices will help the movement continue.

“This is a movement that started with only 70 students,” Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, told the BBC while visiting the Columbia camp.

“And because Columbia University decided to crack down on them, this has now spread nationally and internationally.”