What’s New
The University of California at Los Angeles erupted in violence early Wednesday as counterprotesters reportedly accosted the campus’s pro-Palestinian encampment.
The clash, which the university said had featured “horrific acts of violence,” is the latest flashpoint in the erection of and reaction to the encampments that have sprung up in recent weeks at colleges across the country.
The Details
According to the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper, counterprotesters “threw wooden planks, cones, a Bird scooter, and water bottles at the encampment.” At least one counterprotester heaved a piece of metal fencing. Someone also shot fireworks at the protesters.
The chaos at UCLA unfolded in real time on social media, with videos posted of alarming violence, exploding fireworks, and protesters being attacked with tear gas.
The Bruin reported that members of its staff were not allowed to retreat to safety in a campus building, and that four of its reporters were assaulted as they walked across campus late at night.
Campus police officers stood back as the violence spread, according to the newspaper, until the university called on Los Angeles police officers to stop the fighting. The university canceled classes on Wednesday.
“The violence unfolding this evening at UCLA is absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said on Wednesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “LAPD has arrived on campus.”
In a statement late Tuesday, Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California system, said the encampment had broken university rules and the law. “The University of California must be as flexible as it can involving matters of free expression, including expression of viewpoints that some find deeply offensive,” he wrote. “But when that expression blocks the ability of students to learn or to express their own viewpoints, when it meaningfully disrupts the functioning of the university, or when it threatens the safety of students, or anyone else, we must act.”
The Backdrop
Following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, college campuses have become a proxy battleground between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists.
The highly charged environment has intensified as Israel’s war has continued, killing tens of thousands of people in Gaza.
After Columbia University enlisted the New York Police Department to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment last month, similar protests began popping up on campuses around the country. Some college administrators, sometimes with the help of the police, have pushed hard to disperse the demonstrators. Hundreds have been arrested.
The Stakes
Leaders of both public and private colleges say they support free-speech principles. At the same time, they are under enormous pressure to maintain order on their campuses, limit legal risk, and mitigate antisemitic speech that has cropped up at some protests.
The perilous path they walk was evident on Tuesday night when, on the opposite coast, Columbia University’s president, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, summoned the NYPD to clear an academic building that protesters had taken over. The department sent hundreds of officers to do so, eliciting criticism from some observers who decried the optics of deploying the city police on a college campus in such large numbers.
Meanwhile, Gene D. Block, UCLA’s chancellor, is under fire for allowing violence to explode in the encampment late Tuesday night. The Bruin’s editorial board wrote early Wednesday that Block had failed to protect protesting students. “Will someone have to die on our campus tonight for you to intervene, Gene Block?” the editorial read. “The blood would be on your hands.”
