Pro-Palestinian protesters dig in at Columbia University, other U.S. campuses [Video]

The student organizers of a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University are vowing to stay until the school pulls its endowment money out of companies connected to Israel, thwarting the school’s efforts to end the protest even as similar camps spread to other campuses across the United States.

By Wednesday, tent villages had sprung up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and California State Polytechnic, among other schools.

At the University of Texas in Austin, police in riot gear, some of them on horses and motorcycles, broke up a pro-Palestinian march on Wednesday and arrested more than a dozen protesters to stop a planned encampment.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, visited Columbia to call for the resignation of the university’s president, ratcheting up the national political stakes in a tense election year.

The encampment at Columbia, in upper Manhattan, began last week. It is the latest high-profile demonstration …