Pressure builds on Columbia president to resign

The leader of the US House of Representatives has called on the head of Columbia University to resign.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said that university president Nemat Shafik has failed to guarantee the safety of Jewish students on campus.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators have also called for Ms Shafik's resignation over police action against the protests.

The protests against the war in Gaza, which began at Columbia, spread to college campuses across the US.

Students at the Ivy League university in Manhattan set up a protest camp a week ago.

On 18 April, the university asked the New York Police Department to clear the camp, and officers arrested about 100 people.

The protesters have since returned to the area with more tents and placards. In response, Columbia officials switched from in-person classes to online and hybrid learning for the rest of the school's semester over safety concerns.

Mr Johnson visited Columbia on Wednesday.

Page Fortna, a professor of political science at Columbia, told the BBC that she had seen a number of "highly objectionable" incidents during the protests, including an Israeli flag being ripped from a student's hand and "extremely problematic" comments.

However, Ms Fortna added that she had seen no physical violence against Jewish students on campus and called accusations of widespread antisemitism being made by Mr Johnson and other Republican lawmakers "exaggerated"."There's a real difference in the tone of the conversation outside the gates, and what's actually happening on campus," she said.

Outside the campus on Wednesday, a masked protester stood on a street corner shouting antisemitic slurs and abuse at students.Several protest camp supporters quickly confronted him, telling him that his remarks "cheapened" their efforts. "This is really detrimental to the movement," said Caroline Daisy, a Baltimore native who came to New York to support the protesters.

"This is not an antisemitic movement. But outside protesters are a different story sometimes."

In interviews, other demonstrators argued that incidents of harassment of Jewish students had been rare and blown out of proportion by those opposed to their demands.

New York police and school officials have also said "outside agitators" have stirred up the protests.

Speaking to the BBC on Wednesday, Guy Sela, an Israeli Columbia student - and a veteran of the Israel Defence Forces - said that he believes "every Israeli Jewish student" at the university has faced "at least one antisemitic act", whether verbal or physical, since the protest began.

"I've been threatened here, called names like murderer, butcher and rapist, just because I was born in Israel," he said.