US rocked by night of Gaza protests at universities
The US is reeling from a night of intense protests that saw rival protestors clash in LA and hundreds arrested in New York as police forces fought to restore peace to major universities all over the country.
At UCLA, counter-protestors attacked a large encampment of pro-Palestine protestors with sticks and poles, removing their makeshift wooden barricades leading to violent clashes. Earlier, Gene Block, the UCLA chancellor, labelled the encampment on the central courtyard illegal and said that police would start making arrests.
Mary Osako, a vice-chancellor at the university, said: “Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support. The fire department and medical personnel are on the scene. We are sickened by this senseless violence and it must end”.
Meanwhile, at Columbia University in New York City, police raided a pro-Palestine encampment that had taken over the famous Hamilton Building. Between Columbia and City College in Harlem, police arrested around 300 protestors. Columbia said it asked the police to “restore safety and order to our community”.
New York Mayor, Eric Adams, said the campus takeover was orchestrated by outside agents. “There are people who are harmful and they’re trying to radicalise our children and we cannot ignore this,” Adams told reporters. When asked whether the police response was an incursion on students’ right to protest, Adams said that while free speech is “the cornerstone” of our society, “there is nothing peaceful about barricading buildings, destroying property or dismantling security cameras”.
Rebecca Weiner, a deputy commissioner for the New York Police Department, said that some protestors were already known to police and that this operation was about stopping the “normalisation and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism that has now become pretty common on college campuses”.
Elsewhere, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison police arrested around a dozen protesters while in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter, at Tulane University, police were accused of using excessive force to subdue protesters.
Fresh protests are planned at six British universities this evening and tomorrow, including Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds and Newcastle. Back in February, protestors at the University of Glasgow staged a 15-day sit-in in protest of the university’s investment in the defence industry and then voted for a pro-Palestine rector who vowed to use his role to stand up for the people of Gaza.
The crisis in the Middle East has been firmly imported into schools and universities in the West. What’s more, the political polarisation that defined the anti-racism riots and protests of 2020 seems to be alive and well. Those running British universities will be well aware of the old adage that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. They will be hoping this latest affliction is not contagious.
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