Dhaka, April 30 -- Columbia University has started suspending pro-Palestinian student activists who refused to dismantle a protest camp on the New York City campus after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the polarising demonstration.

University President Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement on Monday that days of negotiations between student organizers and academic leaders had failed to persuade demonstrators to remove the dozens of tents set up to express opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, reports Reuters.

The crackdown at Columbia, at the center of Gaza-related protests roiling university campuses across the US in recent weeks, occurred as police at the University of Texas at Austin arrested doze...