First Thing: More than 2,000 arrests on US campuses amid police crackdown

6 months ago 29

Senator Bernie Sanders said this could be ‘Biden’s Vietnam’. Plus, trial over US torture in Iraq collapses after jurors fail to return verdict

Good morning.

More than 2,000 people have now been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests across dozens of college campuses in recent weeks.

Where have the arrests happened? As well as at Columbia and UCLA, authorities have made arrests and cleared protest encampments at institutions including City College, Fordham University and Stony Brook College in New York; Portland State University in Oregon; Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff; Tulane University in New Orleans; and the University of Texas at Dallas.

Have any US colleges not called police in? In one rare example of authorities de-escalating protests, Brown University in Rhode Island agreed to a divestment vote in October – apparently the first US college to agree to such a demand.

What are Democrats saying? Biden criticized what he called “violent” protests. Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN on Thursday that “this may be Biden’s Vietnam”.

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