Pro-Palestinian demonstrations expanded to additional American college campuses on Thursday as police started to retaliate firmly and officials seemed to be losing patience.

At one campus, riot police deployed tasers and chemical irritants as officials at several of the nation's most esteemed universities struggled to stop occupations from taking root.

The activists are demanding a halt to Israel's war with Hamas and the dissolution of collegiate connections with both the nation and businesses they claim profit from the fighting by organising loud protests and sit-ins.

"For 201 days, the world has watched in silence as Israel has murdered over 30,000 Palestinians," an online statement from the protest's organisers at the University of California, Los Angeles stated.

"Today, UCLA joins students across the country in demanding that our universities divest from the companies which profit off of the occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine."

At campuses in Los Angeles, Boston, and Austin, Texas, more than 200 demonstrators were taken into custody on Wednesday and early Thursday. On Thursday, almost 2,000 people gathered once more.

Photos from Emory College in Atlanta showed police fighting demonstrators on immaculately groomed lawns while brandishing tasers.

According to the Atlanta Police Department, police using "chemical irritants" and "met with violence" in response to the school's plea for assistance.

The movement's epicentre, an encampment at Columbia University in New York, was set to be removed by midnight on the day that the demonstrations started to spread.

- Free speech?

University authorities are facing a difficult task in juggling the demonstrators' demands for free speech on campus with criticism that the demonstrations have gone too far.

Concerned about student safety , pro-Israel advocates have cited anti-Semitic events and claimed that schools are inciting hate speech and intimidation.

"I've never felt more scared to be a Jew in America right now," said George Washington University philosophy and political science student Skyler Sieradsky, 21.

"There are students and faculty standing by messages of hate, and standing by messages that call for violence."

Student demonstrators claim to be showing support for Palestinians in Gaza, where the health ministry of the Hamas-run region reports that the dead toll has exceeded 34,305.

A handful of Jewish students are among the demonstrators, who have denied anti-Semitism and blasted administrators for conflating it with hostility to Israel.

"People are here in support of Palestinian people from all different backgrounds... (compelled by) their general sense of justice," AFP was informed by a 33-year-old PhD student at the University of Texas, Austin, who identified himself as Josh and claimed to be Jewish.

Israel, an ally of the United States, began its assault in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas onslaught, which claimed the lives of almost 1,170 Palestinians, according to an AFP count of Israeli government numbers.

Roughly 250 individuals were also taken prisoner by Hamas fighters. According to Israel, 129 people are still in Gaza, 34 of them are thought to be dead.

From coast to shore

After 93 individuals were detained on Wednesday at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for trespassing, organisers announced that the graduation ceremony scheduled for May 10 will not take place.

This month, authorities postponed a top student's scheduled speech at the ceremony—which typically draws 65,000 attendees—after receiving complaints from Jewish organisations that the student had ties to anti-Semitic organisations. She refuted the accusation.

Local media in Boston reported that classes at Emerson College were postponed on Thursday following police-protester clashes overnight that resulted in the destruction of a pro-Palestinian encampment and the arrest of 108 individuals.

Georgetown and George Washington University (GW) students in Washington set up a solidarity camping on the GW campus on Thursday.

Along with Yale and New York University, where several students were detained earlier this week, there have also been protests and encampments at Harvard, Brown, MIT, the University of Michigan, and other universities.

The campus of California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, may be closed into next week because demonstrators are seizing facilities, the university announced.

US President Joe Biden condemned "blatant anti-Semitism" on Sunday, saying it had "no place on college campuses."

However, the White House has also stated that the president is in favour of free speech at American institutions.

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