The United States has witnessed a surge in student-led demonstrations against Israel's Gaza war; House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for the deployment of the National Guard despite the fact that riot police have detained numerous youth at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and the University of Southern California (USC).

As students at Harvard University and Brown University on the east coast also disobeyed threats of action and set up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, arrests were made on Wednesday in the cities of Austin and Los Angeles.

The movement, which began at Columbia University in New York last week, is demanding universities cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling its months-long war in Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.

The protests have been peaceful and largely respectful, but have been met by heavy-handed action from many universities amid claims of anti-Semitism.

The biggest protest on Wednesday took place at UT Austin where hundreds of students staged a walkout and marched to the campus’s main lawn, where they planned to set up an encampment. But the university said it would “not tolerate disruptions” and called in local and state police to disperse the crowds.

Hundreds of officers arrived at the scene, some on horseback. Holding batons, they charged at the crowds and forcefully arrested several students.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said at least 34 people were taken into custody.

Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, said the protesters “belong in jail” adding that any students joining in what he called “hate-filled, anti-Semitic protests” should be expelled.

Jeremi Suri, who is Jewish and a professor of history at UT Austin, told Al Jazeera there was “nothing anti-Semitic” about the protests.

“These students were shouting ‘free Palestine’, that’s all,” he said. “They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police – the state police, the campus police, the city police – an army of police almost the size as the student group … many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students.”

Efforts by students to set up an encampment at the USC campus in Los Angeles were also met with force.

Dozens of police officers holding batons and wearing helmets moved in to arrest dozens of students as helicopters hovered overhead and campus security officials took down tents. The move came after USC Provost Andrew Guzman, sent a campus-wide email, saying protesters had “threatened the safety of our offices and campus community”.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from the university, however, said that “this protest against the war on Gaza, was entirely peaceful”.

“We did not see any confrontations or harassment among the students,” he said.

Reynolds said the protesting students later staged a sit-in with their arms linked but did not resist arrest.

“One by one, protesting students are being handcuffed with zip ties and led away by Los Angeles police officers, under arrest and taken away to a vehicle on the campus. They did not resist arrest and we did not see any violence on the part of the police,” he added.

The ABC News broadcaster, quoting local police, said some 93 people were arrested in and around the USC’s campus.

Jody Armour, a law professor at the university, meanwhile said claims of anti-Semitism were being used to try and silence the protests.

“We have lots of Jewish, and Muslim, and Palestinian, and Catholic like I am, Protestants too, intergenerational, coming together. Everybody should hate anti-Semitism and fight anti-Semitism, but being opposed to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that the UN has said may plausibly be genocide, does not mean that you’re anti-Semitic, and we need to stop allowing people to weaponise anti-Semitism against real valid protests.”