More than 1,400 people have been arrested as police dismantle campus encampments – but are the tactics used too brutal?

There have been 970 US student protests related to the Israel-Gaza conflict between 7 October and 26 April, the vast majority of them peaceful, according to the latest available statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled), which tracks political violence and political demonstrations across the US and around the world.

The number of student protests related to the Israel-Gaza conflict surged in April, Acled found – as did the rate of police “interventions”, which Acled defines as police actions including arrests and physical dispersions of crowds with physical force or chemical agents. At student protests where there were no counter-demonstrators, the analysis found, “police have intervened against pro-Palestine demonstrations more than four times as often as pro-Israel demonstrations”.