Those involved with the Columbia protest, also known as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” describe their organizing efforts as both meticulously planned and heavily improvised. They say the university’s heavy-handed attempts to quell the movement have only lent it more momentum.

The decision by Columbia University’s president to call in the New York Police Department to clear pro-Palestinian protesters from the campus last week appears to have sparked the spate of increasingly strident demonstrations.

Tensions appeared to ease at Columbia University on Wednesday after it extended a deadline for students to remove an encampment set up to protest Israel's Gaza incursion, while violence broke out at other college campuses as police dispersed similar protests.