President Joe Biden has spoken out for the first time following violence and arrests during demonstrations at multiple US universities, saying: “There is a right to protest but not a right to cause chaos.”

Tensions at universities across America have been building for days as demonstrators have refused to remove encampments and administrators have called in law enforcement to break them up.

There have been clashes between pro-Palestinian activists and counter-protesters, as well as between demonstrators and police.

Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Mr Biden said events at the universities “put to the test two fundamental American principles, the first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble, the second is the rule of law”.

“Both must be upheld”, the president continued. “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society. And order must prevail.”

He added: “Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can’t finish the semester and college education.”

Mr Biden has at times criticised Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza, but the US has continued to supply it with weapons.

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The president said the protests have not prompted him to rethink policies relating to the Middle East.

His remarks came after days of silence about the protests. During this time, Republicans have tried to use the scenes of unrest against the Democrats.

Mr Biden said he rejected efforts to use the situation to “score political points”. “This isn’t a moment for politics,” he said. “It’s a moment for clarity.”

Hundreds of protesters arrested

Overnight, police arrested pro-Palestinian protesters on multiple campuses, including at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets at demonstrators and tore down an encampment that had been in place for a week.

Between 200 and 300 people were arrested at UCLA on Wednesday night, two law enforcement sources told Sky’s US partner NBC News.

Specific information on those arrested – such as whether they were students, staff or not affiliated with the university – may not be known for days.

The cost of the two-night operation to secure the campus and remove the encampment is in the multiple millions of dollars, they added.

Other arrests were made at the University of Texas, Yale, Dartmouth, and the New York State universities at Buffalo and Stony Brook.

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Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop working with Israel, or companies they say support the war on Gaza, have spread across the US.

Another prominent demonstration at Columbia University in New York was broken up by police on Tuesday night, with around 300 arrests being made.

Protests on US university campuses are “cancerous” and reminiscent of 1930s Germany, the chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre has told Sky News.

Speaking from Yad Vashem, the memorial in the Jerusalem hills, Dani Dayan said that antisemitism is becoming acceptable in many institutions and leaders must make a stand.

Mr Dayan said: “I have no opposition to people protesting against Israel’s policies, including in Gaza. The problem is not that. The problem is that the calls are for the elimination of Israel irrespective of its policies, and that is antisemitic.

University protests latest: Riot police use rubber bullets at Los Angeles campus

“I will be the last person to oppose freedom of demonstration, freedom of opinion, but the genocidal calls are genocidal.

“Even if you don’t intend to kill all the Jews of Israel, just to remove them, just to deny them from their liberties, just to deny them from the right for self-determination, that is deeply antisemitic.

“What we are witnessing in the elite campuses, especially in the United States, is a cancerous process.

“The elimination of Israel is part now of the legitimate discourse. I would even say the prevalent discourse in many universities in America and in Europe, Columbia included.”

Mr Dayan, previously Israel’s consul general in New York, recently wrote a letter to the president of Columbia University urging her to “lead with moral principles”. He is yet to receive a reply, he said.

Recalling events at Heidelberg University in Germany in the mid-1930s when the campus was purged of Jewish academia and students, Mr Dayan said that he sees comparisons with what is happening today.

He said: “We are not on the eve of a Nazi regime, or anything like that, but the similarity I do see is that a bigoted ideology, a racist ideology is considered legitimate, promoted when thousands of faculty, staff and students in a university call for the abolition of the Jewish state and the elimination of Zionism. Something is deeply rotten and should be taken care of.”

By dawn on Thursday, the UCLA encampment in Los Angeles was over, with rubble and debris where the mini village of tents, gazebos and signs protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza once stood in the school’s Royce Quad.

Hundreds of California Highway Patrol officers wearing riot gear had entered the campus and demolished the encampment.

Videos were published of riot police using rubber bullets on demonstrators in fierce clashes that saw some protesters arrested and led away with their hands tied behind their backs.

A hard core of demonstrators were still holding out against police and could be heard chanting slogans and repeated calls for the college to sever its financial ties with Israel.

More than 100 people were arrested when police in New York entered Columbia University on Tuesday night to clear protesters there.

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Across Europe there have been regular marches against Israel and in support of Palestinian people, attended by tens of thousands.

In the UK, the prime minister’s spokesman has said police will have Downing Street’s support if they are forced to break up demonstrations at universities.

A potential running mate for Donald Trump in the US election has continued to defend shooting dead her family’s puppy after saying the animal was “extremely dangerous”.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem has told Fox News the 14-month-old wirehair pointer, who was named Cricket, was a “working dog” and “not a puppy”.

She said in the interview that the female dog had “come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive”, adding that the animal had “massacred” a neighbour’s livestock on the day she shot it dead around 20 years ago.

The Republican governor continued: “At the time, I had small children, a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people, and I wanted to make sure that they were safe.”

Ms Noem, who is being vetted as the Republican candidate for vice president in this year’s US election, also said the dog was “extremely dangerous”.

The account of Ms Noem killing the wirehair pointer was first reported by The Guardian last week after it obtained a copy of her book, named No Going Back: The Truth On What’s Wrong With Politics And How We Move America Forward, which is due for release this month.

She has since defended her behaviour multiple times.

The mother-of-three writes in her book that she had taken Cricket on a bird hunting trip with older dogs in the hopes of calming her down.

However, she claims the dog attacked a family’s chickens and then “whipped around to bite me”.

Ms Noem says she therefore led the dog to a gravel pit and shot it dead.

Political rivals have criticised Ms Noem since the story emerged as experts who work with hunting dogs said she could have trained the animal rather than killing it.

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Democratic Minnesota governor Tim Walz posted on X: “Post a picture with your dog that doesn’t involve shooting them and throwing them in a gravel pit. I’ll start.”

The post included a photo of him feeding ice cream off a spoon to his Labrador mix named Scout.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has shared a photo of the US leader strolling on the White House lawn with one of his three German Shepherds.

Mr Biden’s dogs that have reportedly bitten members of staff have been given away or removed from the president’s Washington household.

Ms Noem has been trying to frame her actions as an example of her willingness to make tough decisions.

On Sunday, she wrote on the X social media platform that the decision to kill the dog “wasn’t easy, but often the easy way isn’t the right way”.

South Dakota Democratic Senate minority leader Reynold Nesiba believes Ms Noem’s decision to share the details in her book is calculated, claiming a story has circulated among politicians for years that the governor had killed her dog in a “fit of anger”.

“She knew that this was a political vulnerability, and she needed to put it out there, before it came up in some other venue,” Mr Nesiba said.

“Why else would she write about it?”