New York City mayor Eric Adams says about 300 people were arrested in police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and City College.

Duelling groups of protesters clashed on Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, grappling in fistfights and shoving, kicking and using sticks to beat one another. Hours earlier, the police burst into a building at Columbia University that pro-Palestinian protesters took over and broke up a demonstration that had paralysed the school.

After a couple of hours of scuffles between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators at UCLA, the police wearing helmets and face shields formed lines and slowly separated the groups. That quelled the violence, and the scene was calm as day broke.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza have spread across the country in a student movement unlike any other in the 21st century, reaching from New York to Texas and California. The ensuing crackdown by the police on some college campuses has stirred echoes of the much larger student protest movement during the Vietnam War era.