Police, College Officials Say Campus Clashes Stoked by ‘Outside Agitators’

Helmeted police in riot gear have restored order at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) following a night of clashes between counter-demonstrators and pro-Palestinian protesters .

The skirmishes embroiled the Westwood campus in hours-long chaos of swinging pipes, pepper spray and fireworks.

By daybreak, police from dozens of Los Angeles-area law enforcement agencies were in force at UCLA, where university officials were sorting through the havoc that unfolded early May 1 after they declared “unlawful” the “Palestinian Solidarity Encampment” erected on campus April 25 by pro-Palestinian protesters.

While all was calm at UCLA, the scene was anything but tranquil at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where police were deploying “chemical irritant” munitions against protesters.

At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, police have arrested at least a dozen while evicting protesters from an ad hoc encampment, kicking off another day of countrywide campus agitation by pro-Palestinian groups demanding an end to the war in Gaza and divestment from Israel.

Through April 30, more than 1,000 students and activists had been arrested on 22 university and college campuses in 16 states since the April 18 arrests of 100 Columbia University students on the Morningside campus in Manhattan in New York City.

Since this past weekend, protests have embroiled at least 50 universities and colleges across more than 30 states, marking the largest groundswell of campus unrest since the 1980s anti-apartheid and the 1960s and 1970s Vietnam War protests.

Police on April 30 also cleared protester encampments amid demonstrations at Boston’s Emerson University, where more than 100 arrests were made and four officers injured, and at Atlanta’s Emory University, the University of Texas, The Ohio State University, the University of North Carolina, and California’s Cal Poly Humboldt.

Orchestrated Confrontations

University officials, law enforcement authorities, and local government leaders say the unrest on many campuses is being orchestrated by non-student agitators who are “professionals” in sowing civil discord. At some colleges—such as UCLA—the protestors are being increasingly confronted by counter-demonstrators, raising fears of outright violence between clashing groups.

Hundreds of New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers on late April 30 stormed Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall to end pro-Palestinian protesters’ two-day occupation, leading dozens in handcuffs down Amsterdam Avenue to jail-bound buses.

No injuries were reported and at least 300 protesters, including some at City College of New York, were arrested, the NYPD said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an April 30 press conference identified “outside agitators” in videos leading the protests at Columbia University, including 2012-13 Occupy movement orchestrator Lisa Fithian, who Mother Jones refers to as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant.”

The university in an April 30 statement maintained there were only “dozens” of students out of 37,000 enrolled among the hundreds of protesters on campus and in Hamilton Hall.

Protests in New York are being “co-opted by professional outside agitators,” Mr. Adams said, reiterating that claim on May 1, insisting the seizure of Hamilton Hall  “was led by individuals who were not affiliated with the university.”

It was the presence of “professional agitators” that “elevated concern” among officials, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner told reporters.

“The situation had deteriorated to the point where the safety of students, staff, and the public was at risk,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said.

Authorizing the NYPD to remove the protesters “was a tough decision,” Mr. Adams said, but “the action had to end” and the campus restored to order.

“Outside agitators” are also spearheading protests on campuses across the country, he warned.

“There is a movement to radicalize young people. And I’m not going to wait until it is done to acknowledge the existence of it,” he said.

Violence erupted on UCLA’s campus around midnight on May 1 after the university declared the encampment illegal and word spread that NYPD had routed protesters from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.

The chaos included direct confrontations between organized counter-demonstrators and pro-Palestinian protesters sparring with team tactics and improvised weapons.

According to numerous media reports, including UCLA’s campus newspaper, a large pro-Israel contingent—many in black outfits, wearing white masks and goggles, and welding pipes and lumber—stormed onto campus chanting “USA! USA! USA!” and tried to tear down the makeshift plywood barricades framing the ‘Palestinian Solidarity Encampment’ erected four days earlier.

“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight, and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” UCLA Vice Chancellor Mary Osako said in a statement.

But many are questioning why it took police more than an hour to respond to UCLA’s call for assistance and then, according to witnesses, allowed violent clashes to persist until well after 3 a.m.

And in Los Angeles as well as in New York and elsewhere, “outside agitators” are being blamed for the violence.

At UCLA, university and law enforcement officials say the counter-demonstrators were organized non-students led by “outsider agitators.”

The “Palestinian Solidarity Encampment” in a statement called the alleged instigators “Zionist aggressors” and claimed that “most of them are not students.”