Police continued to break up campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war Thursday as the demonstrations spread around the globe and prompted politicians, including President Joe Biden, to weigh in.

The number of people arrested in connection with protests has now topped 2,000 including those at Portland State University, where police cleared the library and arrested a dozen people including four students. The Associated Press has tallied arrests at 35 schools since the protests began at Columbia University on April 17.

PSU

In Portland, police took about four hours Thursday morning to clear out the people who remained inside the university’s fortified library after pro-Palestinian protesters had occupied it for the last three days, The Oregonian reported.

Police used what they said was a “slow, methodical” approach to remove occupiers from the five-story Millar Library.

Officers moved in through a side entrance toward the back of the library, took the stairs to the fifth floor and worked their way down, securing the roof and upper floors while encountering barricades as they went, police said. They had to breach a door to gain access to the first floor, which took some time, and as they got inside on that level, more than a dozen people ran out the building’s front door, police said.

“We took this step only after extensive negotiations using faculty members as intermediaries,” PSU President Ann Cudd said in a statement. “We look forward to opening our campus to all students as soon as possible.”

Chaos at UCLA

Police arrested pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses across the country overnight, most notably at UCLA, where chaotic scenes played out early Thursday as officers in riot gear surged against a crowd of demonstrators and made arrests.

Police removed barricades and began dismantling demonstrators’ fortified encampment on campus after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds. Police bound the hands of many protesters with zip ties behind their backs and escorted them onto buses to the county jail’s reception center near downtown Los Angeles.

Officers moved in after spending hours threatening arrests over loudspeakers if people did not disperse. A crowd of more than 1,000 had gathered in support, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside it. Protesters and police shoved and scuffled as officers encountered resistance. Video showed police pulling off helmets and goggles worn by some protesters as they were being detained.

Arrests elsewhere

In New York, Stony Brook University officials said 29 people were arrested early Thursday morning, including students, faculty members and others not affiliated with the school. School administrators said the protests began peacefully but escalated to include intimidation, harassment and an encampment.

The University of Texas said Thursday that 17 people were arrested on criminal trespass charges Wednesday after demonstrators refused to comply with orders to take down an encampment built on the main walkway of the Dallas campus.

At the University of Pennsylvania and at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, officers lined up to separate opposing camps of demonstrators waving Israeli and Palestinian flags.

And bulldozers were scooping up bags of trash and dismantled tents at UCLA, where crowds swelled to more than 1,000 at a pro-Palestinian encampment before police finally cleared the area early Thursday.

Professors also arrested

The arrests tallied since the protests began include professors from Dartmouth and an Illinois university.

Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck could be seen in a video posted to the social platform X approaching police and being pulled away from a crowd and taken into custody Wednesday night.

A Dartmouth spokesperson confirmed the video and said the school had no intention of seeking Orleck’s exclusion from campus and is “taking every reasonable step to ensure she can continue teaching classes.”

History professor Steve Tamara from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville said he suffered nine broken ribs and a broken hand Saturday during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis.

Bystander video shows Tamari appearing to be moving in to take video or pictures of protesters being detained when multiple officers roughly take him down. The video shows Tamari handcuffed with his arms behind him as officers drag his limp body toward a van, then drop him on the ground, face down.

Campus police referred questions to the university’s communications department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Protests spread around the globe

A number of pro-Palestinian protests have popped up from France to South Africa to Mexico.

On Thursday, tents popped up on the lawn of National Autonomous University of Mexico, the country’s most prestigious university.

The camp of about 50 students and activists was draped in Palestinian flags. Protesters organizing food and other logistics said they planned to camp out at least a week in solidarity with protests breaking out across the U.S.

“The student movement in the United States has given us a lot of hope,” said Luna Martínez, a human rights lawyer who studied at the university.

Some universities reach agreements

The University of Minnesota officials announced an agreement with pro-Palestinian protesters on Thursday to end their encampment on the Minneapolis campus. In exchange, representatives of the coalition of student organizations involved will get to address the university’s Board of Regents at its meeting May 10 to discuss their demands that the university divest its investments in Israel.

“While there is more work to do, and conversations are still planned with other student groups affected by the painful situation in Palestine, I am heartened by today’s progress,” Interim university President Jeff Ettinger wrote.

Similar agreements have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island — apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.

California Republicans want university leaders fired

California Republican leaders blasted university administrations, saying they failed to protect Jewish students and should have prevented campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war from escalating into “lawlessness and violence.”

They now call for the firing of leaders at universities such as UCLA and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where more than 30 were arrested early Tuesday. They’re also pushing for a proposal that would cut pay for university administrations.

“We’ve got a whole lot of people in these universities drawing six-figure salaries and they stood by and did nothing,” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher told reporters Thursday.

“There does need to be accountability.”

Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones said students found responsible for violence should be disqualified from receiving state-funded financial aid.

Any such GOP proposals would need the approval of Democratic lawmakers, who hold supermajorities in both chambers at the state Capitol.

Biden condemns violence, vandalism, hate speech

President Joe Biden defended the right to peacefully protest on college campuses but said vandalism, violence, hate speech and other “chaos” has no part in a peaceful protest.

“Dissent is essential for democracy,” he said at the White House on Thursday. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”

The Democratic president said the U.S. is neither an authoritarian nation that squashes dissent, nor a lawless country.

“We are a civil society and order must prevail,” Biden said. “We are a big, diverse, free-thinking and freedom-loving nation.”

Trump praises police

Former President Donald Trump commended police who cleared pro-Palestinian protesters from college campuses as he arrived in court Thursday morning for another day of his criminal hush money trial.

“It’s a shame. I’m so proud of the New York’s finest. They’re great,” Trump told reporters after police cleared demonstrators who had taken over an academic building at Columbia University. “They did a job in Columbia and likewise in Los Angeles they did a really good job at UCLA.”

Trump, in his comments, blamed the protests on “the radical left,” which he has railed against for years.

Information from The Oregonian is included in this report.