As anti-Israel protests sweep college campuses, Senator Hawley is calling on President Biden to deploy the National Guard to protect Jewish students at risk.

“Most alarmingly, in-person classes at Columbia University have been canceled today — on the Jewish holiday of Passover — in response to a days long, illegal pro-Hamas demonstration,” Mr. Hawley wrote in a letter addressed to the president. “You must immediately mobilize the National Guard and any other authorities necessary to ensure the safety of Jewish American students and citizens.”

At Columbia University, protesters recently occupied the campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” and now similar encampments are popping up at schools across the country. More than a dozen colleges and universities have ongoing encampments or have recently set up encampments, Anti-Defamation League tracking indicates, including at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, and Vanderbilt University. 

More than 100 anti-Israel demonstrators were arrested at New York University early on Tuesday after the school called in police to respond to “antagonizing behavior that has interfered with the safety and security of our community.” 

“There is a pattern of behavior occurring on campuses across our nation, in which individuals attempt to occupy a space in defiance of school policy,” the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of operations, Kaz Daughtry, wrote on X early Tuesday. “Rest assured, in NYC the NYPD stands ready to address these prohibited and subsequently illegal actions whenever we are called upon.”

In his letter to Mr. Biden, Mr. Hawley cites Columbia’s “shocking displays of antisemitism,” including “assaults on Jewish students, the theft and attempted burning of an Israeli flag, and violent, genocidal rhetoric such as ‘Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.’” 

It wouldn’t be the first time the National Guard was called to protect students — in 1957, President Eisenhower issued an executive order deploying the Arkansas National Guard and 101st Airborne Division to protect black students during the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Mr. Hawley’s letter notes. 

“I urge you to similarly mobilize the National Guard and other necessary authorities to protect Jewish American students on Columbia University’s campus, and any other campus where Jewish students are at risk,” he writes. “‘Never again’ means never again.”