Protests cropped up at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Thursday to stand with Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was arrested last weekend for his role in the university’s protest last year of the war in Gaza.

Nearly 100 people were arrested after protesters gathered at Trump Tower in Manhattan Thursday to denounce the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist detained by ICE over his involvement with pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.

Police, staged inside and outside the Fifth Avenue building before the demonstration, warned protesters to leave or face arrest.

More than a dozen schools, including Harvard, MIT, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania, have frozen hiring.

Beyond the administration’s budget cuts, Trump has been threatening colleges that don’t adhere to his anti-woke political agenda. The Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Department of Education in the name of government efficiency is wreaking havoc on universities across America.

Harvard University and MIT have implemented hiring freezes as the White House crackdown on higher education continues to escalate. Why it matters: Austerity measures at Massachusetts' two most prominent and wealthiest universities mean trouble for the state,