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Brown University's governing body has made an agreement with protesters at its campus in Rhode Island - if they pack up and leave, it will hold a vote on divestment from Israel.

Divesting involves reducing or cutting off financial ties with companies affiliated with or working in Israel.

Announcing the agreement today, protest organisers said they would clear up their encampment by 17:00 local time from the campus of the Ivy League institution.

"VICTORY!! BROWN COMMITS TO DIVESTMENT VOTE!" the Brown Divest Coalition wrote on X.

This latest protest at Brown was preceded by other acts of civil disobedience by the student body, including a February hunger strike and a December 2023 sit-in that led to 41 arrests.

Participants are still expected to face disciplinary action over these latest events.

Brandon Drenon
BBC News

More than 1,000 students have been arrested in less than two weeks during these protests.

For those in their final year of college, the risk of punishment is particularly significant - and now perhaps more so with Columbia's expulsion announcement.

"One of the first things we had to consider was that we might not be able to walk during commencement ceremony at Yale on May 20," Craig Birckhead-Morton, one of the student protesters at Yale University in Connecticut says.

As we reported earlier, Craig was arrested and charged with trespassing.

"We might not receive our diplomas. We might not receive our final transcripts. All of these things are important to me," he says.

"In many ways, it's sort of scarier, particularly for students, than the prospect of our actual legal charges."

As we reported a short while ago, Columbia administrators have warned that students currently occupying Hamilton Hall "face expulsion".

Protesters who did not comply with the university's deadline to leave their encampment by Monday afternoon at 14:00 local time are already now being suspended.

"We made it very clear yesterday that the work of the University cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules," spokesperson Ben Chang said in a statement shared on the school's website.

"Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences... We gave everyone at the encampment the opportunity to leave peacefully."

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Columbia University, New York

Mahmoud Khalil said he woke up this morning at 7am to receive an email which surprised him.

“The university suspended me but it goes against the norms. I’m a lead negotiator and go in and out of the encampment. The university were very well aware of this. They offered protections for me. After 2 pm yesterday, I never went into the encampment, so I'm not sure if this is random. I'm not sure if this is targeted. I'm still waiting to hear back from the administration.”

He says he has no clue if the university has linked it with the takeover of the building last night - something Mahmoud said he had nothing to with.

“The university even reached out to me after that, even woke me up asking me what kind of demands these protesters asked me.”

He says as of now he cannot access the university or any healthcare.

“I'm not sure about my housing. Because I live in Columbia housing. I should be OK but I will just wait until the hearing that the university is offering, but I don’t know when that is.”

He says if he gets permanently suspended he will lose his US visa.

But for Mahmoud, the ends justify the means. He says as a Palestinian, he is one of “the lucky ones” and it’s “nothing compared to what people in Gaza are facing”.

Image source, Getty Images

As protests rock the top college in his city, New York Mayor Eric Adams says he is in daily contact with Columbia University administrators and will meet with its president to determine "next steps".

Speaking at his weekly media briefing, he said: “We’re going to respect their right to determine when they want police involvement and when they ask us, we’re going to carry out the necessary exercises to do it with the minimum amount of force and to not harm faculty, students or the law enforcement personnel."

Mayor Adams added that, with students heading into final exam week, it was important to have a "duality" where "people can protest but the city can still function".

NYPD officers are currently on standby, stationed around the perimeter of the campus. But Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said earlier today that officers "will not be going onto Columbia’s property without a specific request".

"As of right now, we do not have that request" or a threat of "imminent danger", he noted.

University leaders are keeping their powder dry for now.

When police last took action against the protesters - on 18 April - it failed to quell the demonstrations and appeared to embolden many protesters.

Officials at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, has confirmed that 13 people were arrested on Monday night during protests.

Six of those individuals were VCU students, the school said.

VCU officials say protesters violated campus policies and local police declared the protest an unlawful assembly.

The university said protestors threw objects and used "chemical spray", on police, and in response campus and area police used tear gas to clear the crowd.

Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang says “students occupying the building [Hamilton Hall] face expulsion".

The warning comes after university leaders set a 14:00 local time deadline on Monday for protesters gathered on its campus to leave.

After the deadline passed, dozens of students broke into the building and barricaded themselves inside.

“Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation — vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances — and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday,” the spokesman said in a statement.

The University of North Carolina has just released a statement, following the detention of some protesters after the school asked them to leave their encampments.

The school's provost and chancellor said they were "disappointed that we had to take action this morning regarding protesters, including many who are not members of the Carolina community, who violated state law and University policies that provide for peaceful demonstration".

The school said it had attempted to maintain a "constructive" dialogue with protesters over the weekend, but alleged protesters "backtracked on their commitment to comply" with school policy.

The university said it had to "consider the physical safety of all of our students, faculty and staff".

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Up north in Canada things are also heating up on some university campuses.

At McGill University in Montreal, campus officials have requested police assistance to help remove an encampment after protesters refused to leave.

Like many pro-Palestinian demonstrators, students gathering at McGill's campus are demanding that the university divests from Israeli companies that are "complicit in the occupation of Palestine."

McGill president Deep Saini told members of the community that "having to resort to police authority is a gut-wrenching decision for any university president".

"It is, by no means, a decision that I take lightly or quickly. In the president circumstances, however, I judged it necessary."

Over the past week or so, pro-Palestinian protests have also taken place on university campuses in at least six other countries.

In Australia, there have been demonstrations at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne.

An encampment in Canada on the Montreal, Quebec campus of McGill University will likely be broken up with the help of police, which the university's president called "a gut-wrenching decision" to make.

There have also been protests at Montreal's Concordia University, as well as in Egypt (American University in Cairo), France (Sciences Po and Sorbonne), and Italy (Sapienza).

In the UK, pro-Palestinian groups have gathered at the campuses of Leeds, UCL and Warwick.

Brandon Drenon
BBC News

Craig Birckhead-Morton, a senior at Yale University, says his final semester in college has been "incredibly stressful" - and not for the typical reasons, like final exams.

For the past few weeks, his campus in New Haven, Connecticut has been consistently occupied by both protesters and police.

It has made things on campus “very tense”, he says.

Dozens of students have been arrested for protesting, including Craig. He was charged with trespassing.

“It’s a whole new level of stress,” he says. “It’s definitely affected me academically.”

After his arrest, Craig says Yale police kept some of the items he needed for class later that day.

On the eve of final examinations - on 1 May - his academic progress is stalling.

“I have two final papers due next week, and I’m still behind on it,” he says.

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Republicans, including former President Trump, have been calling out reports of antisemitic chants, harassment and threats of violence at various campus protests.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has already called on Columbia's president Nemat Shafik to resign over her handling of the protests, is now going one step further.

"This is not a protest; this is terrorism," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik told reporters: "The university leadership has lost complete control. It is a disgrace and it is untenable."

“The world is watching as the leadership of our so-called elite colleges and universities continue to fail to condemn antisemitism and protect Jewish students on campus," the New York representative said.

As you can see from these pictures inside the campus building, the protesters used chairs, tables and rope to secure the doors.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Pro-Palestinian protesters had occupied a major administrative building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, for the past week, forcing the small campus north of San Francisco to close until 10 May.

But overnight, local law enforcement moved in to clear their encampment, making about 35 arrests.

The charges range from vandalism to unlawful assembly, with disciplinary action likely to follow for student participants.

In a statement on its website, the university said it had made "repeated efforts" to resolve the protest.

"What was occurring was not free expression or a protest. It was criminal activity, and there were serious concerns it would spread even further on campus."

University president Tom Jackson Jr said: “This is a difficult day, it breaks my heart to see it, and truly nobody wanted to see things come to this."

Columbia students inspired a nationwide revolt - but each day seems to provide updates from another college campus. Here's a quick look at other protests:

• At least six arrests took place Tuesday morning at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, with police also detaining 24 others
• Portland State University has shut down it's campus today, after demonstrators took over the library
• Police in riot gear arrested 17 protesters and ripped down their tents at the University of Utah
• Officials at Virginia Commonwealth University said police made "multiple arrests" for trespassing last night over a protest that "violated several university policies"
• California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt said it has "restored order" after police moved in Monday night to clear an encampment in a major campus building that was renamed "Intifada Hall" by demonstrators
• There were about nine arrests on Monday evening at Florida State University, with a school spokesman saying protesters "knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences"
• Six people were arrested at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday
• Nearly 80 arrests were also made on Monday at the University of Texas - Austin, where civil rights groups have expressed concern about the heavy-handed tactics of local police on horseback
• Police made 82 arrests to end a three-day protest on the campus of Virginia Tech on Sunday night
• New York University (NYU) says it is "moving forward with disciplinary processes" after protesters refused to move; organisers have responded that suspensions have not yet occurred and "we continue to hold the encampment down"

Around the same time that Donald Trump was calling on President Biden to make a statement - the White House was doing just that.

Through statements, the president said that overtaking Hamilton Hall was "absolutely the wrong approach".

Biden has stood against "repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric" his whole life, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, and he was disturbed of reports of hate speech on display in recent days.

Biden "respects the right to free expression", Bates said, but protests have to be "peaceful and lawful".

"Forcibly taking over building is not peaceful – it is wrong," Bates added.

"And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America."

The White House also said it is unaware of any evidence of "bad actors" among the pro-Palestinian protesters.

Image source, Getty Images

A few miles up the road from the Columbia protest, Donald Trump's criminal trial has just started for another day in Manhattan.

He spoke to reporters before walking into court, and characterised the occupation as "the Biden protests".

"It’s all caused by him because he doesn't know how to speak. He can't put two sentences together. He's got to get out and make a statement because the colleges are being overrun in this country," he said.

Highlighting the alleged antisemitic chants and incidents linked to some protest participants, Trump needled his rival for saying he had run in 2020 because of the deadly white supremacist riot in Charlottesville.

That event in 2017 is widely considered one of the lowest moments of the Trump presidency, after he claimed that there had been "very fine people on both sides" of the conflict.

The Republican told reporters that the uproar over his comment was "a big hoax" and people understood what he said was misconstrued by the media.

He also added: "Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you're looking at now - this whole country is up in arms, breaking into colleges, knocking the hell out of Columbia University."

Trump also hearkened back to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, saying "I wonder if what's going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6 [protesters]".

And this is what those campus restrictions look like from the outside - long lines for students and "essential workers" to get onto the campus.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

In a series of posts this morning on the university's website, Columbia has said it is limiting students, staff and faculty access on campus to one entrance because of the protesters occupying Hamilton Hall.

All other access points to the campus will stay closed until "circumstances allow otherwise".

The university has also recommended that people who don't need to be on campus should avoid the area.

Image source, Getty Images

Rallies, sit-ins and hunger strikes on campus have been going on since October, after Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people in Israel, leading to retaliatory strikes that have since killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.

But the latest round of protests are focused on one thing: that universities financially divest from Israel.

Many US schools have massive endowments, and student activists say that that money should not go into any companies who are doing business in or with Israel, because of its offensive in Gaza.

The ask is not new - pro-Palestinian campus groups have for years called on their institutions to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, as a way to push back against Israel.

No US university has ever committed to the BDS framework, although some have cut specific financial ties in the past.

Click here to learn more about the protests, and what the college students are demanding.