United States | Blooming encampments

Escalating protests expose three fault lines on American campuses

Universities struggle with how to regulate free speech and other rules

NYPD officers in riot gear break into a building at Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian students are barricaded inside.
Photograph: Getty Images
|Los Angeles and New York

Editor’s note (May 1st): This story has been updated.

PRO-PALESTINIAN protests and police crackdowns are escalating at American universities. A phalanx of New York police with battering-rams entered Columbia University on the night of April 30th, joined by an armoured vehicle with an elevated ramp known as a BearCat, a cross between a tank and a fire engine. They breached a building occupied by demonstrators, arrested more than 100 students and other protesters and led their zip-tied detainees onto police buses.

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The crackdown cranks up”

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