Supporters of Israel attacked a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California in Los Angeles on Wednesday, hours after New York City police arrested some 300 protesters, as days of mounting tensions on some US college campuses boiled over.
Eyewitness videos from UCLA, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were deployed to the campus.
On the other side of the country, New York police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupying an academic building at Columbia University and removed a two-week-old protest encampment that had inspired similar protests at campuses across the country and abroad.
Arrests at Columbia and nearby City College of New York numbered about 300, Mayor Eric Adams said. Many of those arrested were charged with trespassing and criminal mischief.
UCLA 3:20 am, LAPD has successfully cleared the area separating both factions. However, overhearing police, their orders are not to arrest anyone or clear the encampment, simply to separate both opposing protest groups. pic.twitter.com/i9NtEGdG5O
— Anthony Cabassa (@AnthonyCabassa_) May 1, 2024
The student protests in the United States have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.
The Los Angeles Police Department said on X it was responding to UCLA's request "due to multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on their campus," to restore order and maintain public safety.
The clashes at UCLA and in New York are part of the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism rallies and marches of 2020. The protests were triggered by the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
Students have rallied or set up tent encampments at dozens of schools across the US in recent days, expressing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and demanding that schools divest from companies that support Israel’s government. Many of the schools have called in police to quell the protests.
With the presidential election coming in November, Republican lawmakers have accused some university administrators of ignoring antisemitic rhetoric and harassment, some demanding that Columbia’s president resign.
Many protesters, some of whom are Jewish, reject allegations of antisemitism.
UCLA officials declared on Tuesday that the encampment was unlawful, violated university policy and included people unaffiliated with the campus.
"A devastating night of violence," says JVP protester
Footage from the early hours showed counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment.
Some screamed pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.
“They were coming up here and just violently attacking us,” said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA. “I just didn’t think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them.”
Demonstrators on both sides used pepper spray, and fights broke out; pro-Palestinian demonstrators said the counter-protesters threw fireworks at them and beat them with bats and sticks.
Benjamin Kersten, a UCLA graduate student and member of the group Jewish Voice for Peace, called it “a devastating night of violence.”
“The encampment would be a peaceful effort were it not for the continuous presence of counter-protestors and agitators,” he wrote in a text message. “While Congress holds more hearings on whether Jewish students feel safe enough on campuses, Jewish students are among those withstanding attacks from Zionist protesters.”
Police said UCLA called them to restore order and maintain public safety “due to multiple acts of violence” within the encampment. Broadcast footage later showed police clearing a central quad beside the encampment and erecting a metal crowd barrier in front of it.
The atmosphere was calmer on Wednesday. Hundreds of police officers and squad cars were on campus and lining its perimeter. It was unclear how many arrests were made or the number of people who were injured.
Hundreds of arrests at Columbia
In New York, police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League college had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik asked police to stay on campus until at least May 17, two days after graduation.
“Free, free Palestine!” protesters chanted outside the building. “Let the students go!”
“A lot of people are shaken. I think I’m forever changed by what happened today,” said Bo Tang, a history student who has been part of the protesting students research group. “The university fails to learn its own history and repeats its mistakes with such brutishness,” Tang wrote in a text-message from the locked-down campus.
Ben Solomon, a 22-year-old Jewish student at Columbia, said he welcomed the move to clear the protesters from the occupied building and the encampment.
“I’m glad to see universities took decisive action,” he said, as more than 100 students and professors gathered in a street adjoining the campus to protest the school’s decision to call the police. Columbia “must prevent this mob from taking back the campus and continuing to disrupt student life,” Solomon said.
Shafik said the occupiers had vandalized university property and were trespassing, and her staff shared pictures of piles of furniture turned into barricades inside Hamilton Hall. She said the events filled her “with deep sadness.”
“I am sorry we reached this point,” she wrote in an email to the university community on Wednesday, saying that property damage was not “political speech” and promising efforts to reunite a frayed campus.
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said the preliminary charges for those arrested range from trespassing to criminal mischief to burglary.
According to Caban, there have been more than 2,400 protests and demonstrations across New York City since October 7.
Holding a padlock and thick chain cut from the protesters’ barricade at Columbia, Caban said the NYPD will never be locked out and will always keep their city safe.
While law enforcement was on standby, police emphasized that the call for Tuesday night’s operations came at the last minute.
Mayor Adams said he’d been speaking with Columbia administrators all week and Tuesday night’s request for law enforcement action came after Columbia’s acknowledgment of outside agitators on the ground.
Adams said police communicated with Columbia and made officials aware of intelligence that there was a real desire for protesters to take over buildings and escalate what was already happening.In the letter requesting NYPD presence, Columbia itself stated the protest’s escalation was caused by outside agitators, Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said.
“At their request, we went in and conducted an operation to allow Columbia University to remove those who have turned the peaceful protest into a place where antisemitism and anti-israel attitudes were pervasive,” Adams said.
Recognizing the history of the phrase “outside agitators” and its use during the Civil Rights movement to negate protests, Adams said there were individuals on Columbia’s campus who should not have been there.
Adams said these external actors have a history of escalating situations by trying to create chaos and not peacefully protest.
While students did break into Hamilton Hall, Adams said they were led by individuals not related to the university.
Adams described this as a “movement to radicalize young people” and a global problem with young people being influenced by “those who are professional at radicalizing our children.”
Rebecca Weiner is the Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism for the NYPD and is also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia’s School for International Public Affairs.
According to Weiner, a number of individuals known for protesting in New York and across the country who are linked to protest training were associated with campus protests.
Weiner noted that the shift in NYPD’s involvement was not about suppressing student ideas but about recognizing the change of tactics used by the protesters such as wearing all black, breaking doors and windows, barricading themselves and using makeshift weapons.
Throughout the encampment, police found leaflets detailing where to protest and symbols associated with chaos and disruption.
Weiner said police have seen a normalization on college campuses of rhetoric – both in language and protest tactics – associated with terrorism.
“That change in tactics, combined with the presence of known individuals on campus to the lead up of what happened in Hamilton Hall, is why there was a real public safety concern,” Weiner said.
Police would not identify how many outside protesters were arrested on Tuesday night or any groups they might be involved with.
While Weiner said there’s concern about radicalization, she wouldn’t describe it as a new breed of homegrown terrorism.
Adams said the city must find a peaceful middle of allowing young people to protest without violence and find the balance of keeping schools, students and the city safe.
Police showed a video of NYPD footage to indicate the majority of the arrests were peaceful. However, there’s heavy criticism from media who were barred from campus during the arrests and said their reporting indicated there were more violent arrests than police are saying.
Police were also called in to clear encampments and make arrests overnight at Tulane University in New Orleans, the University of Arizona and City College of New York in Harlem.