New York, New York - Columbia University backed off late Thursday from an overnight deadline for pro-Palestinian protesters to abandon their Gaza Solidarity Encampment there as more college campuses in the United States sought to prevent occupations from taking hold.

Police have carried out large-scale arrests in universities across the country, at times using chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests over Israel's assault on Gaza.

The office of New York-based Columbia University president Minouche Shafik issued a statement at 11:07 PM retreating from a midnight deadline to dismantle a large tent camp with around 200 students.

"The talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned," the statement said. "We have our demands; they have theirs."

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The statement denied that New York City police were invited on the campus. "This rumor is false," it said.

A student, identifying herself only as Mimi, told AFP she had been at the camp for seven days. "They call us terrorists, they call us violent. But... they're the ones that called in the police when students were sitting in a circle," she said.

"The police are the ones with guns, the police are the ones with tasers, we only have our voices."

Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll has topped 34,305.

More than 200 people protesting the siege were arrested Wednesday and early Thursday at universities in Los Angeles, Boston, and Austin, Texas, where around 2,000 people gathered again on Thursday.

Riot officers in Georgia used chemical irritants and tasers to disperse protests at Emory University in Atlanta.

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Photographs showed police wielding tasers as they wrestled with protesters on neatly manicured lawns.

The Atlanta Police Department said officers responding to the school's request for help were "met with violence" and used "chemical irritants" in their response.

The spreading demonstrations began at Columbia University, which has remained the epicenter of the student protest movement.

Protesters have been plagued with accusations of antisemitism, but many of the participants, who include a number of Jewish students, have disavowed antisemitism and criticized officials equating it with opposition to Israel.

"People are here in support of Palestinian people from all different backgrounds... (compelled by) their general sense of justice," a 33-year-old graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, who said he was Jewish and gave his name as Josh, told AFP.

At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, 93 people were arrested for trespassing on Wednesday, authorities said, and the university canceled events at the May 10 graduation ceremony.

The ceremony, which usually attracts 65,000 people, made headlines this month when administrators canceled a planned speech by a top student after complaints from Jewish groups that she had links to antisemitic groups. She denied the charge.

At Emerson College in Boston, local media reported classes were canceled Thursday after police clashed with protesters overnight, tearing down a pro-Palestinian encampment and arresting 108 people.

In Washington, students from Georgetown and George Washington University (GW) established a solidarity encampment on the GW campus Thursday.

Protests and encampments have also sprung up at New York University and Yale – both of which also saw dozens of students arrested earlier this week – Harvard, Brown University, MIT, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere.

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt said its campus could remain closed into next week due to protesters occupying buildings.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden denounced "blatant anti-Semitism" that has "no place on college campuses."

But the White House has also said the president supports freedom of expression at US universities.