In 1968, Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall was occupied by student activists protesting both Columbia’s complicity in the Vietnam War and the university’s plan for a de facto segregated building. It was occupied again in 1985, when students demanded that Columbia divest from apartheid South Africa. And it was occupied on Tuesday by students outraged about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, once again demanding divestment.

The recent footage of Columbia students overturning tables to blockade doors understandably captured the media’s collective imagination. But while Columbia has grabbed the spotlight, students there are far from alone. We’re now seeing a massive, unprecedented wave of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on college campuses across the country. And contrary to the view of commentators using this moment to grind their culture-war axes, the movement is hardly limited to Ivy League institutions.

The same day as the Hamilton Hall occupation, for example, dozens of students were arrested at Cal Poly Humboldt, ending a similar occupation of that campus’s Siemens Hall. A couple of days before that, seventy-two students were arrested at an encampment at Arizona State University. Around the same time, fifty-six were arrested at an encampment at Indiana University Bloomington. Similar events have played out at dozens of other universities around the country, with encampments popping up from Dallas and Austin to Milwaukee and Madison.