♪ [ cheers and applause ] ♪ >> announcer: this is "nightline." tonight, the campus protests explode across the country. we're at the encampment at

columbia university, which helped spark the movement. >> it was a scary moment when the riot cops are coming into your college campus and putting you in zip ties. >> we hear from the students speaking out. some demanding their school divest from companies profiting from the war. others saying they feel targeted as jews. >> one of my friends had an israeli flag ripped out of his hands. and people were throwing hard objects at him including hitting him in the face and the chest. >> pro-palestinian supporters saying they won't stop protesting until their voices are heard. >> repression breeds more resistance. >> with disruptions continuing to spread. >> what happens if there's a stalemate? plus, coming together in texas. >> what we've seen in gaza is unprecedented. >> i do believe that israel and the existence of a jewish state in some form is necessary for the protection of jews and the safety of jews. >> we're inside a small circle of students from disparate backgrounds. >> i am palestinian american. >> i am an israeli american jew.

>> my family is mizrahi, sephardi and ashkenazi. >> talking and more importantly listening to each other. trying to find common ground. >> nothing is more brave than being able to listen to somebody that disagrees with you fundamentally. >> and trying to answer the hard questions. >> can you be both pro-palestinian and pro-israeli at the same time? >> announcer: "nightline" will be right back. ♪ ♪ bounce back fast from heartburn with new tums gummy bites, and love food back. ♪

♪ >> juju: thanks for joining us. on nearly 50 college campuses from coast to coast this week pro-palestinian protests disrupted classes, triggered arrests, even led to the cancellation of graduation ceremonies at usc. tonight we've been listening to students, to the voices at the center of the flashpoints at columbia university, where some jewish students say they're feeling threatened while protests say they won't back down. across the nation and around the clock. from california to michigan and along the east coast college campuses erupting in protest. >> let them go! >> juju: pro-palestinian demonstrators demanding action, refusing to back down. >> we will not stop! >> juju: as a string of

outsiders try to join the conversation, tonight we hear from the students themselves. >> shame on you! >> shame on columbia! >> juju: we're at columbia university, the epicenter of the demonstrations that helped spark nationwide unrest. >> the voices in gaza are routinely massacred. on top of that we have millions of gazans within the gaza strip who are also displaced, starving day in and day out. >> reporter: as tensions rose dramatically, jewish students say they've experienced harassment and antisemitism. some say they no longer feel safe on campus. >> this point is not about free speech anymore because it has crossed the line into direct harassment and assault. my friends had water thrown in their faces. one of my friends had his israeli flag ripped out of his hands and people were throwing hard objects at him including hitting him in the face and in the chest. >> juju: to what extent is this about free speech versus disrupting classes? >> the president of the university changed all classes to zoom. why should somebody like me, who is not disrupting anything, not

be able to go to class because people in there want to do class via zoom from inside of their tents? to me that is totally absurd. >> juju: protests first began on campuses after the october 7th hamas attack on israel, where roughly 1,200 were killed and 250 were taken hostage according to the idf. israel's war on gaza has killed at least 34,000 palestinians, according to the hamas-run health ministry. >> we're here for palestine. this is not about us. this is not about the students. this is not about the college. this is about something so much more. >> juju: in december the presidents of harvard and the university of pennsylvania faced a congressional grilling on antisemitism. it led to their resignations. and just last week columbia university's president, minouche shafiq, was also called to testify. >> antisemitism has no place on our campus, and i am personally committed to doing everything i can to confront it directly.

>> reporter: the next day the nypd were called in to clear out the encampment built by protesters on columbia's campus. administrators say the students were breaking university rules. 100 people were arrested and charged with trespassing, including junior sarah boris, who is jewish. what went through your head when you were arrested? >> it was a scary moment when the riot cops are coming into your college campus and putting you in zip ties. but i think that i -- again, i knew these risks. i knew that that was the risk of the action i was taking. sarah was later suspended and lost access to campus, classes and her dorm. but she says she has no regrets. >> what i was taught as a jew growing up is completely against the actions that you're seeing in gaza at the hands of the idf. you're seeing hospitals being destroyed. and that's just completely against everything i was taught, the value of human life as a jewish person. >> juju: soon after those

arrests the encampment came back stronger. >> repression breeds more resistance. the more that they repress us the more that we will resist and the more that our demands become truer and truer. >> juju: yazoun al musa is a palestinian american dental student. he's been protesting on campus since october. >> we've also had comments come at us that are very racist, that are very -- >> juju: islamophobic. >> islamophobic. anti-palestinian. and our goal is to move past that, to understand that our values, to free palestine, is in line with antisemitism. we've made our demands very clear and we haven't budged. we asked for financial transparency from all of columbia's investments. we ask for full divestment from all of the profiting that columbia gets within the bombing, within the gaza strip. and amnesty. amnesty for all the students who spoke up. >> juju: what happens if there's a stalemate? >> we stand steadfast. in f. anything palestinians have

taught us, it's steadfast within our land. and our people know that. every single protester knows that. and we will not move. we will not budge. >> juju: give me a sense of just how delicate that dance is that the university president has to deal with. >> they're juggling students. they're juggling parents, alumni, donors. politicians. these outside actors. even residents of the community. who all have stakes in this issue. i think they're trying to make choices as to what do you prioritize here. and that's an incredibly almost impossible answer. >> juju: isabella ramirez is the editor in chief of the student-run newspaper, the "columbia daily spectator." where have you seen the line between free speech and hate speech? >> that line people draw in different places. and i think that's also part of the issue. some people say no, this chant does not mean that. and other people say, well, this chant makes me deeply feel unsafe and uncomfortable. >> juju: sophomore elisha baker

is a middle eastern history major who speaks out in op-eds in the school newspaper. >> for 6 1/2 months we've been calling out the threatening rhetoric and saying this is antisemitic and we've been told, well, you're interpreting it wrong. and to me that was an antisemitic double standard, too. why are jews the only minority group that when we call out threats against us we're told that we're interpreting it wrong? >> juju: back in january columbia student protester khymani james live streamed antisemitic comments. >> be grateful that i'm not just going out and murdering zionists. >> juju: today university officials announced they're barring him from campus. james issued a statement saying in part, "what i said was wrong. every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification." protest organizers distancing themselves from james. >> he apologized. and he asked for space to reflect and learn and grow and that he will step away.

>> when you have people chanting bomb tel aviv and saying that they're hamas, i don't think that's activism. >> juju: junior chaya dreznik says she and her friends have been the targets of antisemitic vit rooel. >> we went to observe a protest that was going on and they started targeting their chants toward us. they ended it off with "october 7th will be every day for you guys." >> october 7th. you see how many soldiers we got? yo, y'all got smoked. y'all got smoked. >> juju: one of the groups involved in the protests, the columbia university apartheid divest, said in a statement, "our movement is united in valuing every human life." >> we are against all forms of bigotry. we do not stand for that. we allow every single person into our camp. we do not reject people based on ethnicity, based on religion. we ask that everyone respects those community guidelines, to be respectful to the people around them. >> juju: student activism on colleges is stitched into the

fabric of american history. from civil rights protests in the 1960s to the anti-vietnam war unrest that left four people dead at kent state university at the hands of the ohio national guard. with the weight of history on their shoulders, columbia's students and administrators continue to negotiate, with the countdown to commencement less than three weeks away. and when we come back, on a college campus in texas a group of students from different sides of the debate determined to find common ground. if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's disease... put it in check with rinvoq... a once—daily pill. when symptoms tried to take control, i got rapid relief... and reduced fatigue with rinvoq. check. when flares kept trying to slow me down... i got lasting steroid—free remission... with rinvoq. check. and when my doctor saw damage,... rinvoq helped visibly reduce damage of the intestinal lining. check. for both uc and crohn's: rapid symptom relief...

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>> juju: welcome back. you're about to meet a group of students at the university of texas at austin who hold a variety of opinions on israeli-palestinian issues. what sets them apart is they're not just determined to work out their differences but amidst the turmoil they call themselves family. here's my "nightline" co-anchor byron pitts. >> thank you, everyone, for being here. this is a very important and special dialogue. so let's get started. the ground rules will be usual. this will be civil. >> byron: for the next 90 minutes these college students will speak hard truths to each other, in the hardest of times. >> and what we've seen in gaza is unprecedented. like it is on a different scale. there are no universities left. there are no hospitals left. it is unlivable. >> i do believe that israel and the existence of a jewish state in some form is necessary for

the protection of jews and the safety of jews. >> byron: they're all students at the university of texas austin, all desperate for common ground. amidst the bloodshed in gaza and israel they have family and friends in both places. >> we're called atidna. we combine the hebrew word atid for future with the arabic suffix na for our future. we truly view ourselves as one family and we think it's important to allow families to speak. >> byron: jews, palestinians, arabs and muslims, students from across america and around the globe. >> i'm a mexican american jew. >> i am arabi, proud of it, and muslim as well. >> i am palestinian-american. >> i'm originally from iraq. >> i'm an israeli american jew. >> my family is mizrahi, sephardi, ashkenazi. >> reporter: elijah collenberg founded atidna international in 2022. he's 21 and jewish. jed hashem is the group's vice

president. he's 20 and palestinian. can you be both pro-palestinian and pro-israeli at the same time? >> of course. >> 100%. >> i believe firmly you can be pro human being first and foremost because we are human beings and human rights must extend to everybody on an equal level. >> historically with human nature it's hard to have conversation when the blood is warm. >> yeah. >> byron: right now the blood is hot. >> very hot. >> very much so, yeah. and we still think at the end of the day that this is the time to do it. we must take action somehow. we've both had family affected. this is the least that we can do to get something on the grounds here at a grassroots level. >> byron: it's a tall order. just outside protests erupting on u.t.'s campus. during the demonstrations sweeping campuses nationwide. more often than not shouting begets more shouting. but in here there's a quiet space to speak their truth and

to listen. >> this group is a safe space for zblup this is a safe space. i think atidna, the existence of this group, the existence of a group that has jewish and palestinian dialogue and jewish-arab dialogue, israeli-palestinian dialogue is -- sends a message. >> it's so easy to resort to hate and fear. and these are all feelings that i'm sure we all have, even if we don't want to admit them. it's so easy. it's so easy to fall into these echo chambers. >> byron: if i may ask, who at this table is managing fear right now? >> at the end of the day whether we agree on stuff or not we all agree that we are all human and that we are all worthy of respect and dignity. >> byron: october 7th was a turning point for this group. >> i will say after october 7th there was a lot of people that said this is no longer for me. they said we cannot be in the same space. >> byron: is that right? people left your group?

>> we had a lot of people leave. >> byron: but the group says it began to grow again. the members even organized a vigil a month after the war began. >> for u.t. students to see israeli students, palestinian students, professors, to see faith leaders come together, that really resonated with the entire community. i think that what we did is so, so powerful. >> byron: when you see these images from what happened on your campus to other campuses, is there a sense of pride, like right on? is it a sense of anxiety? fear? what's your reaction to it when you see it? >> the one feeling i feel is oh, this is going to be bad. just selfishly. i don't think -- people might take this anger out on jews. they might. and it might -- and they might see this as further proof that there is no middle ground and that there is no nuance. there's a lot of people who don't know what the heck they're talking about. the amount of non-arabic leftists who are speaking over palestinians instead of with them. and the amount of non-jews who are speaking over jews instead

of with them is infuriating. they should be speaking with us and listening to us and uplifting our voices. they shouldn't be speaking over us. they silence us. >> the most american thing that has been done is always a lot of protests have occurred on college campuses. right? whether it be, you know, anti-war protests, anti-apartheid in south africa. >> sure. civil rights. the 1960s. >> civil rights especially. >> byron: while some of them have participated in protests, their main focus is conversations like these. >> i would be doing a disservice if i wasn't having dialogue. you know, you look at -- the way to find solutions to this, at the end of the day we all want to live here we've got to talk somehow. find dialogue now before it's too late. >> what is more authentic than allowing two people who -- i mean, are portrayed as hating each other to be in the same room and say everything that they want to say without anybody telling them they can't say it?

and really even find a way to have co-existence out of it. we are going chest to chest. nothing is more brave than being able to listen to somebody that disagrees with you fundamentally and also allowing yourself to take that in. >> byron: and that's their hope. if they can build civility in a classroom on a campus, could it spread? some of the founding fathers of america were 20-somethings, they remind me. brilliant ideas have beaten barbarism and brutality before. so why not now? for elijah and jad these meetings help foster kinship in this fraught moment. it seems to me part of the tension is historically and in this moment, in order for you to win he has to lose. in order for you to win he has to lose. >> i don't believe our aspirations conflict. i think if we win we can win as a group. if i win, jad wins. if jad wins, i win. >> byron: part of me thinks oh, that's so sweet, that's so incredibly naive. what say you? >> i say people who think it's naive are those who have been

stuck in the past. i think they've never been able to meet the other. and by meeting the other you break down a world of hate. >> byron: disappointed by leaders around the world, their activism is their answer to this dilemma. generations old. what's your hope? >> i will give three words. mutual understanding, non-violence, and reconciliation. that is my hope for the future. >> i will say very similarly i think the future is unity through a common identity. i think it's viewing each other as family and not as enemies. and through doing that we can have peace. it's going to happen one day. >> juju: our thanks to byron. we'll be right back. otect from , i prep without pills. with apretude, a prescription medicine used to reduce the risk of hiv without daily prep pills. with one shot every other month, just 6 times a year. in studies, apretude was proven superior to a daily prep pill in reducing the risk of hiv. you must be hiv negative, to receive apretude and get tested before each injection. if you think you were exposed to hiv or have flu-like symptoms,

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>> juju: and that's "nightline" for tonight. stay tuned to abc news for the latest on the college unrest across the country. we'll see you right back here monday. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america. have a great weekend.