Russell Group students have set up protest camps “in unison” with pro-Palestine students and academics in the United States.

Tents were erected by a group occupying grounds in the centre of the University of Warwick on Friday, as students at University College London (UCL) staged a campus rally after occupying a building for 34 days.

It comes amid fears that unrest at US campuses that has left Jewish students fearing for their safety will spread to the UK.

Hundreds of students and academics have been arrested at US universities as police clamp down on demonstrations.

Protesting students have set up camps at more than 20 US universities, including Harvard and Yale, since the first encampment on the lawns of New York’s Columbia University last week.

Warwick Stands with Palestine

Warwick Stands with Palestine, a group of university staff and student activists, occupied the piazza in the centre of the university on Friday in protest at Warwick’s financial ties which they say is enabling “Israeli colonial genocide”.

In a statement on social media, the group said it will “rise up in unison with fellow students all over the world, from Columbia, NYC, to Paris, to Sydney”.

It added: “We say no business as usual as long as Warwick sponsors colonial genocide!”

The protest group is calling on the university to scrap all academic and teaching partnerships with companies it claims are facilitating Israel’s war in Gaza, including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, and all defence contractors.

It has also urged the university to “condemn Israeli war crimes”, “expand scholarships for Palestinian students” and “protect the freedom of speech” of Palestinian students and their allies in “expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for national liberation”.

UCL rally

At UCL, students organised a rally in the university’s main quad on Friday afternoon.

An advert for the event, organised by UCL Action for Palestine, stated: “From Gaza to Columbia to London, we will not rest until our campuses divest.”

Amna Ghaffar, a spokesman for UCL Action for Palestine, told Sky News that instead of working with police to shut down protests on UK campuses, UK universities have been taking a “silencing approach”.

She said that “in the UK, although there has been consistent escalation and political organisation from students, the universities are taking more of a silencing approach”.

She added: “Repression is happening. The repression on campuses here and those in America are symptoms of the same issues, but manifesting in different forms.”

Jewish students told to ‘go back to Poland’ 

Footage taken at Columbia University last week showed Jewish students being told to “go back to Poland”. Some chants of pro-Palestine protesters expressed open support for Hamas’s terror attack on Israel on Oct 7.

Asked what she would say to Jewish students who feel afraid, Ms Ghaffar said: “I would just say that as a movement we are motivated by a love of Palestinian people and a commitment to end any system of racist domination that claims that some lives are worth less than others, and that includes anti-Semitism and that includes Islamophobia.”

On Thursday, Baroness Fox of Buckley told the House of Lords: “The global student movement is coming to the UK” and claimed that “the levels of anti-Semtisim are routine and normalised” on campuses.

A spokesman for the University of Warwick said: “The university is aware of an ongoing protest in the Piazza by Warwick Stands With Palestine – a coalition of student and staff organisations. We are in talks to the organisers of the demonstration. Planned campus activities will continue.”