USC cancels grad ceremony as campus protests continue

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Bernd Debusmann Jr in New York and Mike WendlingBBC NewsThe University of Southern California in Los Angeles has cancelled its main graduation ceremony on 10 May, citing safety measures. The move comes amid ongoing protests against the Israel-Gaza war that have erupted at dozens of US campuses. At Atlanta’s Emory University, protestors were arrested on Thursday after refusing to leave. The spate of campus protests began at Columbia University in New York City last week.In a statement on Thursday, USC said it “will not be able to host the main stage ceremony that traditionally brings 65,000 students, families and friends to our campus”. The decision comes after police made multiple arrests when confronting protestors at the university’s campus on Wednesday and ordered the dismantling of an encampment. It is also after USC said earlier this month that Muslim student Asna Tabassum would no longer be permitted to deliver a speech as valedictorian due to unspecified security threats.USC tense after valedictorian speech cancelledProtests also erupted at Emory University in Atlanta, where demonstrators said they were supporting Palestinians but also voicing their objection to a police training centre in Atlanta.Plans for the centre have been controversial locally and the project has been dubbed “Cop City” by opponents.In a statement, Emory said that outside protesters were later joined by “members of the Emory community” and that the group was “disrupting the university as our students finish classes and prepare for finals”. Several dozen were arrested, the university said, but declined to give exact numbers or say if any had been charged with crimes. Atlanta Police said that they used chemical irritants but denied reports that they fired rubber bullets at protesters. Getty ImagesOne of the protesters shown on video being detained by police identified herself as Noelle McAfee, chair of Emory’s philosophy department. Ms McAfee said was observing what she described as a peaceful protest when police began to move in and the protesters started to march.”It went from a peaceful protest to mayhem in the matter of a minute,” she said. She said she froze and quickly was detained. The latest wave of campus protests against the war began at Columbia University in New York, after school officials called in police to clear a new protest encampment and more than 100 people were arrested. The movement has now reached dozens of college campuses across the country.Activists have been calling for universities to “divest from genocide” and to stop investing large school endowments in companies involved in weapons manufacturing and other industries supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. Getty ImagesChisato Mimura, a law student and protest leader at Yale University in Connecticut, told the BBC that activists are upset at President Joe Biden as well as their school officials for “quite literally funding and equipping the weapons used in geno …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]