News about protesters, Columbia

Mayor blames "movement to radicalize young people." NEW YORK -- Columbia University called in the NYPD and cleared protesters from campus Tuesday, nearly two weeks after demonstrators set up a pro-Palestinian encampment on the school's main lawn.

Initial demonstrations at Columbia University in April 1968 started with the threat of violence between radical students who wanted to end the university's ties to war research during the Vietnam War and terminate a university gymnasium construction project and mostly white athletes who wanted to push forward with it.

Police removed barricades and began dismantling a fortified encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave and about 24 hours after counter-protesters attacked the tent encampment on the campus.