New York University has called on police to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on its property.
Officers from the New York Police Department are on campus assisting in the effort, removing students from the area and tearing down a collection of tents that were set up last week.
School officials also warned protesters that if they do not leave the area, they will face punishment.
New York police said 13 people were arrested.
Scripps News has a crew on the ground, and they did not witness any use of force as the day progressed, with proceedings seeming somewhat calm.
When the NYPD moved into the encampment earlier, one student at the scene told Scripps News she was awakened by another protester who told her there was an “imminent raid,” and that they had to grab their belongings and go.
She spoke on the message her school is sending student protesters by calling in police:
“It sends a message that they are not comfortable with open dialogue, and that they have no interest in meeting our demands, and frankly, that they're willing to use NYPD, which is brutal force to disperse their students, instead of engaging in the dialogue and coming to the table in good faith,” the student told Scripps News.
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She did not witness any injuries when police were clearing students from the encampment, but said some were ushering students out “in a very forceful manner.”
The student said she was a Jewish American standing in protest with pro-Palestinians to call for an end to the violence in the Middle East.
She said students will not stop protesting until their demands are met.
“This school, our tuition funds a genocide in Gaza. We want that genocide to end, we want to free Palestine and we want to end our complicity and we want to end this university’s complicity in genocide.
The protest at NYU is part of a larger trend of pro-Palestinian protests happening at college campuses across the country. On Thursday, police in Los Angeles also staged a raid to dismantle an encampment at University of California, Los Angeles. About 130 protesters were arrested there.
