A group of demonstrators gathered Thursday morning on the UCLA campus on the same day that the school’s chancellor was testifying before a House committee about earlier protests and the law enforcement response.
Video from NewsChopper4 showed two tents, barriers made out of wooden pallets, tables fencing and other items, and a group of people gathered on the campus between Kerckhoff and Moore halls.
Video also appeared to show campus security personnel at the site.
A group calling itself Students for Justice in Palestine posted on Instagram that it had established a “second encampment at Kerckhoff patio.”
A significantly larger encampment was set up in April on the Westwood campus during protests over the war in Gaza. That encampment was dismantled in a pre-dawn law enforcement operation earlier this month that resulted in about 200 arrests.
On April 30, counterdemonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, and no one was arrested. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries.
Sporadic disruptions continued following the dismantling of a pro-Palestinian encampment and some 200 arrests. The university closed fore a day, then shifted to online classes. On May 6, about 40 people were arrested during protests on the campus over the war in Gaza.
Chancellor Gene Block is one of three college presidents and chancellors who testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee about the demonstrations and allegations of antisemitism on campuses.
Block, who is set to retire at the end of July, is scheduled to testify two days after it was reported that the university’s police chief was removed from his job and reassigned. Chief John Thomas faced criticism over his handling of the demonstrations that included an attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Block announced that Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief, would lead a new Office of Campus Safety that will oversee the UCLA Police Department.
The war in Gaza began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
House Republicans have summoned the leaders of Northwestern University and Rutgers University to testify about concessions they gave to pro-Palestinian protesters to end demonstrations on their campus.
The chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, also was scheduled to appear Thursday in the latest in a series of hearings by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce into how colleges have responded to the protests and allegations of antisemitism.
Tensions over the Israel-Hamas war have been high on campuses since the fall and spiked in recent weeks with a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments that led to over 3,000 arrests nationwide.
House Republicans have summoned the leaders of Northwestern University and Rutgers University to testify about concessions they gave to pro-Palestinian protesters to end demonstrations on their campus.
The chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, also was scheduled to appear Thursday in the latest in a series of hearings by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce into how colleges have responded to the protests and allegations of antisemitism. Tensions over the Israel-Hamas war have been high on campuses since the fall and spiked in recent weeks with a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments that led to over 3,000 arrests nationwide.
After the first of those hearings in December, an outcry of criticism from donors, students and politicians led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who gave cautious, halting answers to questions about whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ conduct policies.
In April, the committee turned its attention to Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who took a more conciliatory approach to Republican-led questioning. Shafik’s disclosure of disciplinary details and concessions around faculty academic freedom upset students and professors at Columbia. Her testimony, and subsequent decision to call in police, escalated protests on campus that inspired students at other colleges to launch similar demonstrations.
Thursday’s hearing expands the scope of the committee’s inquiry for the first time to large, public universities, which are more strictly governed by First Amendment and free speech considerations. Earlier hearings largely focused on private, Ivy League colleges.
Originally, the presidents of Yale University and the University of Michigan were called to testify. But the committee shifted its attention to Northwestern and Rutgers after those colleges struck deals with pro-Palestinian protesters to limit or disband encampments.
Expected to testify Thursday are Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern; Gene Block, UCLA’s chancellor; and Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers.
The concessions that Northwestern and Rutgers agreed to were limited in scope. Like some other colleges that reached agreements with protesters, they focused on expanding institutional support for Muslim and Arab students and scholars on campus.
At Northwestern, the administration agreed to re-establish an advisory committee on its investments that includes student, faculty and staff input. The university also agreed to answer questions about financial holdings including those with ties to Israel.
Rutgers agreed to meet with five student representatives to discuss the divestment request in exchange for the disbanding of the encampment. The university also stated it would not terminate its relationship with Tel Aviv University.
The committee’s chair, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., criticized the schools for their decision to negotiate with protesters.
“The Committee has a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of your duty to your Jewish students,” she said in a statement. “No stone must go unturned while buildings are being defaced, campus greens are being captured, or graduations are being ruined.”
UCLA’s oversight of its campus protests has been under scrutiny since counter-demonstrators with Israeli flags attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. The counter-demonstrators threw traffic cones and released pepper spray in fighting that went on for hours before police stepped in, drawing criticism from Muslim students and political leaders and advocacy groups.
On Wednesday, the police chief at UCLA was reassigned “pending an examination of our security processes,” according to a statement from the school.
Eilon Presman was about 100 feet from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”
The 20-year-old junior, who is Israeli, realized the activists were pointing at him.
“Human chain!” they cried.
A line of protesters linked arms and marched toward him, Presman said, blocking him from accessing the heart of UCLA’s campus. Other activists, he said, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to block his view of the camp.
“Every step back that I took, they took a step forward,” Presman said. “I was just forced to walk away.”
Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate in UCLA’s Bruin Plaza after arrests were made at the Westwood campus Monday.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s been a week since police swarmed the UCLA campus and tore down the pro-Palestinian camp, arresting more than 200 people. But the legacy of the encampment remains an issue of much debate, particularly among Jewish students, who make up nearly 8% of the university’s 32,000 undergraduates.
In the days leading up to April 30 — when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the camp with fists, bats and chemical spray, and police took hours to stop the violence — frustration had swelled among many Jews: Viralvideos showed activists restricting the passage of students they targeted as Zionists.
Some Jewish students said they felt intimidated as protesters scrawled graffiti — “Death 2 Zionism” and “Baby Killers” — on campus buildings and blocked access with wooden pallets, plywood, metal barricades and human walls.
The pro-Palestinian student movement includes various strains of activism, including calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, support for Hamas and demands that universities divest from firms doing business with Israel. But on campuses across the country, no word has become more charged than “Zionist.”
A pro-Israel activist peels a pro-Palestinian sticker off a sign on May 2 as a protest encampment was dispersed.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In its most basic definition, a Zionist is somebody who believes that the Jewish people have a right to statehood in their ancestral homeland as a place of refuge from centuries of persecution — in other words, that Israel, established as a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust, has a right to exist.
Using that definition, the Anti-Defamation League considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism. But protesters — including many Jews — draw a sharp distinction, arguing that it is Zionism that fuels Israel’s right-wing government and the assault on Gaza that they say amounts to genocide against Palestinians.
Some of the Jewish students who took part in the encampment played a role in excluding Zionists.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, a small but rapidly growing group on campus, argue they had a moral responsibility to pressure university officials to divest from Israel.
UCLA facilities employees clean up and dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus May 2.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The camp and its checkpoints, they said, were not hostile to Jews. Restricting fellow students from entering was just a pragmatic move to protect protesters inside from physical, verbal or emotional abuse.
“We are committed to keeping each other safe,” said Agnes Lin, 22, a fourth-year art and art history student and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Anyone who agreed to the UC Divest Coalition’s demands and community guidelines, she said, was welcome.
“What is not welcome is Zionism,” she added. “Or anyone who actively adheres to a very violent, genocidal political ideology that is actively endangering people in Gaza right now.”
In practice, students who supported the existence of Israel were kept out — even if they opposed Israel’s right-wing government and its bombardment of Gaza.
Senior Adam Thaw, 21, said activists blocked him and others from accessing a public walkway to Powell Library.
After telling him they were not letting anyone through, a male activist eyed his Star of David necklace: “If you’re here to espouse that this is antisemitism, then you can leave.”
Senior Adam Thaw is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot go?” said Thaw, who is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
As complaints from Jewish students mounted, UCLA declared the encampment “unlawful.” In an April 30 statement, Chancellor Gene Block said most activists had been peaceful, but the tactics of some were “shocking and shameful.”
“Students on their way to class,” he said, “have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus.”
::
The campus was dark and hushed when Sabrina Ellis joined dozens of activists at 4 a.m. to set up the encampment on the lawn of Dickson Court.
After pitching tents and erecting barricades of wooden pallets and sheets of plywood, Ellis, a 21-year-old international student from Brazil, took shifts guarding the entrance.
Ellis didn’t call it a checkpoint. The goal was to exclude and physically block “agitators” — anyone who might be violent, record students or disagree with the cause.
“Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement,” Ellis said. “It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.”
The longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace — who wore a large Star of David over her T-shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders — said the camp “was not profiling based on religion.”
But as activists blocked Zionist students from public campus space, they faced charges that they engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Sabrina Ellis, a junior and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, was part of the pro-Palestinian encampment from the beginning.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Before allowing anyone in, Ellis said, a protester read the demands of the encampment, which included calling for UC and UCLA to divest all funds from companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation,” boycott all connections with Israeli universities, sever ties with the Los Angeles Police Department and demand a permanent cease-fire.
Then, activists ran through their safety guidelines: Ask before taking a photo or video; wear a mask to limit the spread of COVID; do not post identifying information or photos; and no engagement with counterprotesters.
If students didn’t agree, “we would just kindly tell them that they’re not allowed to come in,” Ellis said.
Some Jewish students were shaken by the experience, arriving at Hillel upset and even crying.
“They were genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get access as protesters asked them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or looked at their necklace,” said Daniel Gold, executive director of Hillel at UCLA.
::
For pro-Palestinian activists who are Jewish, the camp was a peaceful space to promote justice, a welcoming interfaith community with therapist-led processing circles and candlelit prayer services.
Blue tarps and blankets were put down in the middle of the lawn for Islamic prayers and a Passover Seder and a Shabbat service.
On the first evening, about 100 activists, many Jewish, sat in a circle to pray, sing, drink grape juice and eat matzo ball soup, matzo crackers and watermelon.
“It was really beautiful,” said Lin, the art major. “We were trying to hold these spaces to show that Judaism goes beyond Zionism.”
An encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza on April 29.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Other Jewish students were more wary as they navigated the camp.
Presman, who moved to the U.S. when he was 12 and identifies as a Zionist, was alarmed when he scanned the quad on the first day. He saw signs saying “Israelis are native 2 HELL,” he said, and banners and graffiti showing inverted red triangles, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate a military target.
“Do people know what that means?” he wondered.
Tucking his Star of David under his T-shirt, Presman said, he entered and approached activists, introducing himself as an Israeli citizen.
“Maybe we can find common ground,” he said, asking, “one human being to the other?”
Some students put their hands up, he said, blocking him as they walked away. Others treated the conversation as a joke. One protester, he said, told him that everything Hamas did was justified.
Presman said he had one good conversation: An activist who identified as anti-Zionist admitted not being 100% educated on what Zionism was, but agreed that Israel should exist. They came to the conclusion the activist was a Zionist.
Pro-Palestinian encampment participants reinforce the camp barriers at UCLA on May 1.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
But most of Presman’s exchanges, he said, ended negatively when activists realized he was defending Zionism. He said he was called a “dirty Jew” and “white colonizer.”
Other students — even those who did not fully support the encampment — said they did not experience such slurs.
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
Entering the camp after a classmate vouched for her, Burnett was disturbed by anti-Israeli signs and graffiti that named Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas. But she also bonded with protesters, including a woman in a hijab.
“Of course, some protesters deny Oct. 7 or condone violence as long as it can be put under the guise of decolonial resistance, which is obviously horrific,” Burnett said. “But that’s not the case of many students inside the encampment.”
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Burnett contrasted what she saw as a peaceful, friendly mood inside the camp with the pro-Israel counterprotests where people held up benign slogans, such as “Bring the Hostages Home,” but engaged in hostile behavior.
As counterprotesters converged for a Sunday rally, she said, a pro-Israel activist spat on her and told she should have been slaughtered in the kibbutzim on Oct. 7.
Just as some pro-Palestinian activists demonized all Zionists as evil and pro-genocide — ignoring the wide range of viewpoints within the Zionist community — Burnett thought some pro-Israel counterprotesters were dehumanizing student activists in the encampment and spreading a “mass hysteria narrative.”
As the encampment expanded — and organizers set up entrance points near Royce Hall and Powell Library — some Jewish students took videos that swiftly went viral.
“It’s time to go,” a protester wearing a yellow safety vest and kaffiyeh told a student in one video as he guarded an entrance near Powell Library. “You don’t have a wristband.”
Tools that police said could be used to enter and barricade a building, including metal pipes and bolt cutters, were among the items found when about 40 people were arrested during protests Monday at UCLA, the university’s police department said.
The individuals were arrested in a parking structure on the Westwood campus during a day of demonstrations over the war in Gaza that forced school officials to move all classes to remote learning. Tensions were already high on the campus, where days earlier a sizeable protest encampment that went up weeks ago was cleared by authorities in a pre-dawn police operation.
During Monday’s unrest, officers said they took people at the parking structure into custody to determine whether they were students, staff or faculty members. The campus is closed to anyone not affiliated with the university every day between midnight and 6 a.m.
“Multiple individuals in the group were in possession of tools and items that could be used to unlawfully enter and barricade a building, including heavy-duty metal pipes, bolt cutters, epoxy adhesive, super glue, padlocks, heavy-duty chains, and documentation encouraging violence and vandalism,” UCLA police said in a news release.
Metal pipes, epoxy adhesive and super glue, padlocks, bolt cutters and other items that UCLA police say were found after dozens of protesters were arrested Monday May 6, 2024 at the Westwood campus. Credit: UCLA Police Department
The items found included literature titled, “The Do-It-Yourself Occupant Guide, 2024 Edition.” The guide’s introduction says the updated edition “comes in light of a nationwide resurgence of student occupations in 2024, beginning with Columbia University in New York, in response to an ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
Police provided images of the document and tools in a news release. It was not immediately clear how many people in the group were in possession of the tools and documents.
At about the time of the detentions in the parking structure around 6 a.m. Monday, officers responded to UCLA’s Moore Hall, where several people gathered inside and outside the building. Moore Hall was closed at the time. Campus police said a UCLA-registered student organization posted a statement on social media encouraging people to occupy the building.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said 21st Century Policing Solutions will try to find the responsible for the violence. NBC Los Angeles’ Alex Rozier reports.
“It became apparent that the individuals at Parking Structure 2 had formed a plan to use bolt cutters, padlocks, epoxy adhesive, super glue, heavy duty chains, and metal poles to break into Moore Hall to occupy and vandalize the location,” police said.
At about 8:30 a.m., dozens of people left Moore Hall and walked to Dodd Hall, which was open and being used for midterm exams. They eventually left the building and joined a protest at Bruin Plaza before leaving the area.
Conflict and crisis on campuses throughout California for the last two weeks. Now get ready for the lawsuits and the investigations. NBC4’S Conan Nolan talks with Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Hollywood) whose district includes UCLA. He is the Democratic Caucus Chair in Sacramento. He’s calling for a federal civil rights investigation into the campus administration for failure to protect Jewish students from harassment and assault as well as their failure to protect Palestinian protesters from outside attacks such as the melee on Wednesday.
Forty-two people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a crime. Two were taken into custody for obstructing a peace officer. They were booked and cited at a jail in the San Fernando Valley, then released from custody. Four of the 44 people arrested Monday had been arrested May 2 after failing to leave the Royce Quad tent encampment after a dispersal order, university police said.
Thirty of those arrested were UCLA students and nine had no affiliation with the school, police said. Two said they were members of the media, but did not have press credentials, according to police.
Over the weekend, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block announced a newly created Office of Campus Safety to administer policing and emergency management. On May 23, Block is expected to testify before Congress about UCLA’s response to antisemitism on the campus and actions to protect Jewish students.
Violence broke out April 30 at the UCLA protest encampment when fights broke out between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter demonstrators.
The war in Gaza began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
On Monday, the Israeli army ordered tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah to start evacuating. The warning is a signal that a ground invasion could be imminent months after the Hamas militant group attack.
The Rafah border crossing with Egypt has been shut down since Israel’s military took control of the Palestinian side early Tuesday. A first ship carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza was on its way Thursday to a floating platform built by the U.S. military. The plan is for cargo to be transferred at the pier to smaller U.S. boats that will deliver it to shore.
It is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest case in the history of the UCLA Police Department: how to identify dozens of people who attacked a pro-Palestinian camp at the center of campus last week.
UCLA detectives are now scanning hundreds of images in an attempt to identify the attackers. They intend to use technology that captures facial images and compares them to other photos on the internet and social media to put names to faces, according to law enforcement sources.
The same technology has allowed police to identify suspects in smash-and-grab retail burglaries. It also was the heart of the Jan. 6 investigation, in which videos of those storming the U.S. Capitol helped the FBI identify many of the assailants and led federal prosecutors to charge more than 1,300 people. In those cases, investigators often were able to find social media images of the assailant wearing the same clothing as during the attack.
“Technology has made the entire community into the eyes of law enforcement,” said retired Los Angeles police Capt. Paul Vernon, who led an effort after a mini-riot following the Lakers’ NBA championship victory in 2010 that resulted in dozens of arrests based on videos, social media posts and security footage. “Photo recognition has gotten a lot easier.”
Vernon said an investigator also could gather cellphone data from the immediate area to prove an individual was there at the time of the incident. In some cases, assailants may have posted to their social media accounts, essentially bragging about their actions. Officers wearing body cameras may have also captured some of the behavior, he said.
The attackers likely came in vehicles, so UCLA police will be examining data from license plate readers for movements near campus on May 1. Security cameras on streets neighboring the campus where they likely parked could yield more clues.
On Monday night, Block outlined actions the school is taking in the aftermath of last week’s violence. University police will work with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to identify and prosecute the assailants “to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. The university “also connected with the FBI about possible assistance,” Block said in a statement.
Despite the technology, the probe faces hurdles. Some of the attackers wore masks, making it harder to identify them. In those instances, detectives will look for a moment before or after the attack when the perpetrators’ faces were revealed, an official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation told The Times.
There is also deep anger among some protesters in the camp because it took so long for police to stop the attack. That distrust could take a toll. Many of the students who were injured, some of whom were hospitalized with their wounds, have gone to groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Southern California but haven’t spoken with campus police.
UCLA is a small police department, so it is reaching out to other agencies and private entities to access the technology needed in the investigation, law enforcement sources said. But so far, UCLA hasn’t made a public appeal seeking information on specific suspects.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, the FBI made arrests based on information from relatives, work colleagues, teammates, former friends and ex-significant others after the FBI released photos of suspects. An army of web sleuths and politically knowledgeable social media watchers known as “sedition hunters” also dedicated themselves to identifying the mob and turning their names over to the FBI.
Images from the UCLA attack are springing up on Instagram. In one case, a man can be seen using a plank to hit a pro-Palestinian protester and then punching and kicking others. Dressed in a black sweatshirt, white sweatpants and a black cap, his bearded face is not hidden. Police can use that image to track him down or ask for help identifying him.
“Holding the instigators of this attack accountable and enhancing our campus safety operations are both critical,” Block said. “Our community members can only learn, work and thrive in an environment where they feel secure.”
UCLA has moved swiftly to create a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the police department, in the wake of what have been called serious lapses in handling protests that culminated in a mob attack on a pro-Palestinian student encampment last week.
Chancellor Gene Block announced Sunday that Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, will serve as associate vice chancellor of a new Office of Campus Safety. He will oversee the Police Department — including Police Chief John Thomas, who is facing calls to step aside — and the Office of Emergency Management.
Braziel previously was tapped to review police actions in the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting; riots in Ferguson, Mo.; the shootout with police killer Christopher Dorner; and other cases. He will report directly to Block in a unit that will focus solely on campus safety — an arrangement that has proved effective at major universities across the country, the chancellor said. Previously, the campus police chief and the Office of Emergency Management reported to Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck.
Block also announced a new advisory group to partner with Braziel. Members include UC Davis Police Chief Joseph Farrow, the respected chair of the UC Council of Police Chiefs; Vickie Mays, UCLA professor of psychology and health policy and management; and Jody Stiger, UC systemwide director of community safety.
“Protecting the safety of our community underpins everything we do at UCLA. In the past week, our campus has been shaken by events that have disturbed this sense of safety and strained trust within our community,” Block said in a message to the campus community. “One thing is already clear: to best protect our community moving forward, urgent changes are needed in how we administer safety operations.
“The well-being of our students, faculty and staff is paramount.”
The move is intended to immediately address campus security shortfalls that left UCLA students and others involved in the protest encampment to fend for themselves against attackers for three hours before law enforcement moved in to quell the melee.
Three sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly, told The Times that Thomas failed to provide a repeatedly requested written security plan to campus leadership on how he planned to keep the campus safe in various scenarios, including rallies, skirmishes and violence. He failed to secure external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security in safeguarding the encampment area before the mob attack, despite authorization to do so with as much overtime payment as needed, the sources said.
Thomas also assured leadership that it would take just “minutes” to mobilize law enforcement to quell violence. It actually took three hours to assemble enough officers before they moved in to intervene.
Thomas, in an interview late Friday night, disputed that account as inaccurate and said he did “everything I could” to safeguard the community in a week of strife that left UCLA reeling.
A large group of counterprotesters, some dressed in black outfits with white masks, stormed the area Tuesday night through Wednesday morning and assaulted campers, tore down barricades, hurled wood and other objects into the camp and at those inside. Campers, some holding lumber and wearing goggles and helmets, sought to defend themselves with pepper spray and other means. Several were injured, including four Daily Bruin student journalists.
University of California President Michael V. Drake has initiated an independent review into UCLA’s response, which Block has said he welcomes. The chancellor also has launched an internal review of the campus security processes. A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom has also called for answers to explain “the limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA.”
Drake hailed the appointment of Braziel, saying he brings “a wealth of experience in community policing, emergency response operations, and institutional reviews.”
“I fully support this appointment and believe that it is an important step towards restoring confidence in our public safety systems and procedures,” Drake said in a statement Sunday.
The UC external investigation is expected to move quickly and focus more on lessons to be learned rather than individuals to be blamed, a UC source said.
But internal calls for Thomas to step aside are growing, the sources said. And the vice chancellor he reports to — Beck — is also being scrutinized.
Beck has not responded to requests for comment about his actions around the protests and encampment.
One UC source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, described Thomas as a “dedicated public servant” who had properly raised red flags about the encampment from the moment the first tents went up. But his warnings to take the encampment down went unheeded, the source said.
“To point a finger at the police chief is ridiculous,” the source said. “This completely falls in the lap of Michael Beck.”
The UC police union issued a statement Saturday reiterating that the external review should focus squarely on the failures of administrators, not law enforcement.
“UC administrators are solely responsible for the University’s response to campus protests, and they own all the fallout from those responses,” said Wade Stern, president of the Federated University Police Officers’ Assn., which represents the 250 officers of the 10 UC police departments. “UC’s written guidelines make clear that UC administrators decide what the response to campus protests will be, who will respond, and the role of campus police is only to implement that response.”
Several top LAPD leaders not authorized to discuss the incident told The Times that Thomas had tarnished the reputation of Los Angeles law enforcement with what they called his lack of planning and poor communication with other agencies. They said they had to scramble for officers and wait until enough could be assembled to safely intervene at about 1:40 a.m.
Critics said his attempts to justify his actions to The Times, while others were focused on addressing the crisis, showed selfishness and had fueled more calls for him to step aside.
Thomas said he was not ready to step aside. He asserted that he had provided daily briefings to campus leadership, the number of resources, the response protocol and assigned roles for those deployed.
He said he was restricted in planning because of a directive from campus leadership not to use police, in keeping with UC community guidelines to first rely on communication with protesters and use law enforcement as a last resort.
When campus leadership directed him to secure outside help and spare no cost for enough officers and private security to safeguard the community, Thomas said he attempted to secure it from the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. But he said he was told by an LAPD lieutenant that problems with the payment system between the city and state prevented completion of the effort before the melee broke out.
Thomas acknowledged that he did tell leadership that it would take just minutes to deploy police forces, but he was referring to a general response — not a force large enough to handle the size of the crowds that clashed that night. But three sources confirmed he was directly asked how long it would take for outside law enforcement to quell any violence.
The Times reported Thursday that the UCLA Police Department had asked other campuses for additional police officers five days before the attack. The reporting was based on documents the paper reviewed and information from the head of the UC police officers union. Only a few on-duty UCLA police officers were on hand to protect the encampment Tuesday night. Questions are being raised as to why he did not increase the number of UC police that night after being directed to use whatever resources were needed to keep the community safe.
“I did everything I could to increase the police presence that we couldn’t provide because of our small department,” he said.
On the night of the attack, Thomas said he was watching a Dodgers game at home and was alerted to the mob violence by Beck. Thomas said he immediately called the LAPD to ask for deployment to the campus and notified his UCLA watch commander to call for mutual aid from law enforcement with the cities of Beverly Hills, Culver City and Santa Monica, along with sheriff’s deputies.
When he arrived on scene, he said, 19 officers from UCLA, the LAPD and three of the mutual aid agencies had arrived but had not moved in to quell the violence. An LAPD lieutenant told him the force was too small; Thomas said he asked why they couldn’t go in with the forces they had, and the lieutenant told him he was directed to wait.
It took more than 90 minutes for sufficient forces to arrive and intervene. The next day, UCLA called in police who dismantled the encampment and arrested more than 200 protesters early Thursday morning in clashes that lasted hours.
The campus will resume normal operations Monday. Faculty are being encouraged to resume in-person instruction as soon as possible but may continue remote classes through Friday without departmental authorization. Law enforcement officers are stationed throughout the campus, according to a BruinAlert sent Sunday morning.
But sources said that tension over the protests and the fraught politics have continued to bitterly divide both campus members and the outside community, making it difficult to speak freely. They said they hoped Block’s actions would represent a turning point.
“The chancellor made it clear that Bruin community safety comes first and his swift, decisive actions are really welcomed,” a source said.
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
About 20 UCLA faculty members protested Saturday night outside the UCLA Hammer Museum’s celebrity-heavy gala, calling for amnesty to be granted to pro-Palestinian students arrested on campus this week and demanding that Chancellor Gene Block resign immediately.
As a well-heeled crowd in cocktail attire filed into the museum for the annual Gala in the Garden, sipping bespoke cocktails and noshing on small bites from passed trays, English department professor Jonathan Grossman blamed Block for what he and his colleagues said were dual wrongs done to pro-Palestinian student activists. On Wednesday, they said, students received unnecessarily rough treatment from police as their encampment was cleared. The night before, he said, police failed to protect the same students from violent counterprotesters’ attacks.
Elizabeth O’Brien, a professor in the history department, said she was present Tuesday night and witnessed “a horrifying mob” attack pro-Palestinian students for four hours.
“Along with a colleague, I begged the police to intervene,” O’Brien said. “A police officer threatened us with a weapon in response to our pleas to protect the students from the mob.”
O’Brien showed what she said was an X-ray of broken bones in one of her student’s hands.
“She was just protesting peacefully, and they shot her with rubber bullets,” O’Brien said, adding, “Chancellor Block failed egregiously to protect the students.”
UCLA’s police chief, John Thomas, denied allegations of security lapses and said he did everything he could to keep students safe. In a statement, Block described the attack on pro-Palestinian protesters as “a dark chapter in our campus’s history” and said the university was re-examining its procedures as a result.
The Hammer’s gala, which usually draws one of the starriest crowds in L.A.’s museum fund-raising circuit, had a confirmed guest list that a spokesperson said included Jane Fonda, Ava DuVernay, Keanu Reeves, Will Ferrell, Joel McHale and Owen Wilson. Singer k.d. lang was scheduled to perform.
Jodie Foster was on hand to honor Ann Philbin, the longtime Hammer director who has announced her forthcoming retirement. Before introducing Philbin, Foster acknowledged the Gaza protests at UCLA as well as at other universities around the country. Speaking out, Foster said, is what the arts are all about.
“We’re all so keenly aware of what’s happening in the world and the protests,” Philbin said to the gala crowd, adding that the violence on UCLA’s campus tempered the joy of the evening. “I recognize what a difficult time this is for celebration and I appreciate that you’re all here.”
She added later: “We will defend the sacrosanct right to freedom of expression and the right to protest.”
Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik prepares to testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee during a hearing on Columbia University’s response to antisemitism in Washington, DC, on April 17. Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP/File
After two weeks of tumult and calls for her resignation, the president of Columbia University says she is “committed” and will “rebuild the community on our campus.”
The group of protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus, “crossed a new line,” President Minouche Shafik said in a video message released on X Friday.
Shafik called the past two weeks on campus “among the most difficult in Columbia’s history.”
“The turmoil and tension, division and disruption have impacted the entire community,” Shafik said in the message, which was just over three minutes long.
Columbia University students “paid an especially high price,” as a result of the protests, she said.
“You lost your final days in the classroom and residence halls. For those of you who are seniors, you’re finishing college the way you started, online,” Shafik said
The University tried multiple times to come to resolution via dialogue, Shafik said.
“Academic leaders talked to students for eight days and nights,” she said. “(The) University made a sincere and good offer, but it was not accepted.”
While many of the protesters on campus were mostly peaceful and “cared deeply,” Shafik said the group that occupied Hamilton Hall “crossed a new line.”
Shafik called the occupation a “violent act” that affected the safety of students.
“Every one of us has a role to play in bringing back the values of truth and civil discourse that polarization has severely damaged. Here at Columbia, parallel realities and parallel conversations have walled us off from other perspectives,” Shafik said.
Shafik said she was born in the Middle East “in a Muslim family with many Jewish and Christian friends.” Through her two decades of international work Shafik said she’s realized “people can disagree and still make progress.”
“The issues that are challenging us, the Palestinian Israeli conflict, antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias have existed for a long time,” Shafik said. “And Columbia, despite being a remarkable institution, cannot solve them, single handedly.”
Shafik urged students to be an example of a better world, one in which people who disagree “do so civilly.”
“We have a lot to do, but I am committed to working at it every day and with each of you to rebuild community on our campus.”
On the morning before a mob attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment at UCLA, campus Police Chief John Thomas assured university leadership that he could mobilize law enforcement “in minutes” — a miscalculation from the three hours it took to actually bring in enough officers to quell the violence, according to three sources.
Days earlier, campus leadership had directed Thomas to create a safety plan that would protect the UCLA community after the encampment was put up last week and began drawing agitators, the sources said. The chief was told to spare no expense to bring in other UC police officers, offer overtime and hire as many private security officers needed to keep the peace.
But Thomas did not provide a plan to senior UCLA leadership — even after he was again asked to provide one after skirmishes broke out between Israel supporters and pro-Palestinian advocates at dueling rallies Sunday.
The account of Thomas’ actions leading up to the attack was provided by three sources who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UCLA also declined to comment.
But internal calls are growing for the police chief to step aside as University of California President Michael V. Drake initiates an independent review of UCLA’s response, the sources said. The police chief reports to Vice Chancellor Michael Beck, who oversees the UCLA Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management. Beck did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom has also called for answers to explain “the limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA.”
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block described the attack in a statement as a “a dark chapter in our campus’s history” and said the university was “carefully examining our own security processes in light of recent events.”
Key questions involve when officials decided to bring in help from other agencies and whether help could have arrived sooner. Outside police forces generally do not enter the campus without the university’s approval, since it functions as an independent municipal entity although it is on state land.
The Times reported Thursday that the UCLA Police Department had asked other campuses for additional police officers five days before the attack. The reporting was based on documents the paper reviewed and information from the head of the UC police officers union.Only a few on-duty UCLA police officers were on hand to protect the encampment Tuesday night.
The mutual aid requests made Thursday and Friday, April 25-26 — which would have provided UCLA with more officers as they dealt with the camp and a dueling area erected by pro-Israel activists — were both canceled by Thomas because the protests were peaceful, the sources said.
The responsibility to call for mutual aid through the UC Systemwide Response Team — a group of about 80 officers across the 10 campuses — has to be made by the host university’s chief of police, according to the UC police procedures manual. Internal questions have been raised as to whether, following skirmishes Sunday, Thomas issued another request after being directed to maintain a peaceful environment.
The union issued a statement this week placing the responsibility for the UC police response in the hands of “campus leadership,” saying the strategic direction was controlled by administrators. The three sources said, however, that such direction to prepare a plan, with enough officers to ensure safety, was given to Thomas multiple times.
The attack began Tuesday about 10:30 p.m., when a large group of agitators — some wearing black outfits and white masks — arrived on campus and assaulted campers, ripped down barricades, hurled objects at the encampment and those inside and threw firecrackers into the area.
Campers, some holding lumber and wearing goggles and helmets, rallied to defend the site’s perimeter. Some used pepper spray to defend themselves. Several were injured, including four Daily Bruin student journalists.
Only a few on-duty UCLA police officers were on hand to protect the encampment, one source told The Times. Thomas told the Daily Bruin his officers came under attack while helping an injured woman and had to leave.
Law enforcement sources said it took time for the LAPD, California Highway Patrol and other agencies to mobilize the large number of officers needed. A larger force began moving into the area after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday and fully contained the situation after 3 a.m.
UCLA declared the encampment unlawful Tuesday and asked participants to leave or face possible discipline. The next day, the campus called in police, who dismantled tents and arrested more than 200 protesters in clashes early Thursday that lasted for hours. Several protesters were injured.
The UC Board of Regents held a closed-door meeting Friday to discuss the campus protests.
Mounted police officers walk past as pro-Palestinian activists at an encampment set up on McGill University’s campus in Montreal, on May 2. Christinne Muschi/AP
Protests in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli siege in Gaza have spread across university and college campuses in the US and around the world.
While clashes and standoffs with police at Columbia University, Portland State, and UCLA have captured global attention, protests are also being held on campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Although demands among protesters vary at each university, the majority have called for colleges to divest from companies that support Israel and the war in Gaza.
Here’s a look at some of the pro-Palestinian campus protests around the world:
Australia: Pro-Palestinian protest camps have appeared in at least seven schools across the country, including the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney.
United Kingdom: Pro-Palestinian protests have been held at universities across the country since the early days of Israel’s war in Gaza, with some setting up encampments. Students in the English cities of Newcastle, Leeds, Bristol, and Warwick have set up tents outside their university buildings.
France: In Paris, pro-Palestinian protests erupted at Sciences Po, one of France’s most highly ranked universities, and the Sorbonne university.
India: Protests have been held at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, in solidarity with students protesting at Columbia.
Canada: Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have swept campuses across the nation, including at McGill University, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia.
Lebanon: Hundreds of students gathered at campuses in Lebanon, waving Palestinian flags and demanding their universities boycott companies that do business in Israel.
John Dickerson reports on protesters’ calls for colleges to divestment from Israel, why thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico, and the new nuclear reactor operating in Georgia.
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More than 200 UCLA students, faculty and staff were arrested early Thursday morning after police destroyed the campus’ Palestinian solidarity encampment, wielding batons and less-lethal munitions to break up the crowd and disassemble the barriers to the tent community that was erected one week ago.
The encampment, which stretched across the lawn by Royce Hall, was established last Thursday by hundreds of students calling for the University of California, Los Angeles, to divest from all companies with ties to Israel and disclose the finances of the school’s foundation.
UCLA’s encampment is just one of dozens of similar campus protests across the country since Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which was launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that left about 1,200 people dead and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, Israel Defense Forces have killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials.
Since April 18, when students at Columbia University in New York City began protesting Israel’s offensive in Gaza, more than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 college campuses nationwide.
By Thursday evening, hours before the UCLA encampment was destroyed, it hosted a vibrant community of students, faculty members and volunteers, and was equipped with donations of extra clothing, blankets, food, personal protective equipment, first-aid supplies, hygiene products, a space to pray and legal observers.
“We have a program here. We have workshops, teach-ins, self-defense classes,” said Ismael, a 22-year-old UCLA student who requested to be identified only by his first name. Ismael came to the encampment on Sunday straight from the airport after a camping trip, he said. Asked why he chose to participate in the protests, he said, “I’m against genocide.”
“Honestly, it was the most beautiful thing that’s happened on campus throughout my eight years at UCLA,” Can Açiksöz, a professor in UCLA’s anthropology department, said. “It was multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith … it was very beautiful to witness that the students could build these bridges.”
‘The Playbook Of Authoritarianism’
After initially tolerating the protests, university officials declared the encampment illegal on Tuesday, warning of consequences if protesters did not disband.
“UCLA supports peaceful protest, but not activism that harms our ability to carry out our academic mission and makes people in our community feel bullied, threatened and afraid,” university Chancellor Gene Block said. “These incidents have put many on our campus, especially our Jewish students, in a state of anxiety and fear.”
A large group of counter-protesters — some of whom held Israeli flags — descended on the campus late Tuesday night, attempting to tear down the barricades that surrounded the lawn.
Students, faculty and university staff told HuffPost that counter-protesters threw sticks, metal rods, traffic cones, chairs and electric scooters at the encampment, and sprayed chemical irritants that left lingering rashes. Some protesters said they were pulled into the crowd of counter-protesters and beaten.
Protesters reported that Los Angeles Police Department officers stood by and watched the violence unfold for hours without intervening.
“Why aren’t you helping?” Ismael recalled asking police officers. “Despite everything, we maintained our stance on peaceful protest,” he said, still wearing his bracelet from the emergency room, where he sought treatment for what he believes was pepper spray and tear gas.
Aidan Doyle, a 21-year-old junior at UCLA, said he was repeatedly pulled into the crowd of counter-protesters, who whipped him with sticks, threw a battery at his eye and sprayed him with chemical irritants. At one point, he said, he found himself looking at the nozzle of what he believed was a pepper spray gun. “It was the most painful experience of my life,” Doyle said of the attack, his shirt still bloodied and his hands still covered in red rashes.
UCLA junior Aidan Doyle, 21, described being attacked by counter-protesters as “the most painful experience” of his life.
Jessica Schulberg/HuffPost
Several protesters said the counter-protesters appeared too old to be college students and that they shouted racist, homophobic slurs and threats of rape. One protester’s mother, who was at the encampment Wednesday, said counter-protesters called her son shahid, an Arabic word for martyr, and threatened to physically hurt him.
“The students were great at de-escalating” and “did not respond in kind,” Açiksöz said on Wednesday. “It speaks volumes about their composure and commitment to nonviolence, even in the face of absolute violence.”
“What is happening at UCLA right now is a strategy that I recognize from Turkey,” Açiksöz tweeted at the time of the counter-protesters’ attack. “The police outsourcing violence to fascist mobs.”
“I compared it to Turkey because this was something that I experienced, personally, many times during my years of student activism,” Açiksöz said in an interview on Thursday. “You have groups of ultra-nationalists or classical fascists attacking students while the police is present and doing nothing. And then the police come and sweeps up and arrest the students who are attacked, rather than arresting the attackers themselves.”
“This is the playbook of authoritarianism everywhere, from Egypt to Israel to Turkey to India.”
The LAPD reportedly intervened after nearly three hours. The police department made no arrests and used no force, it said on X, formerly known as Twitter. UC President Michael Drake reported that 15 people were injured, although protesters say the actual number was higher.
On Wednesday, 398 UCLA faculty members, as well as 680 faculty and staff members from other University of California campuses, issued a letter to Block demanding that there be no police or disciplinary action against students participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The California Federation of Teachers and some faculty at UCLA have called for Block to immediately resign for his “failure of leadership.” Block is set to retire in July and is one of three university leaders summoned to testify before Congress this month about antisemitism on college campuses.
Before the counter-protesters violently clashed with people in the encampment on Tuesday, the group had installed a large video screen facing the encampment that played loud footage from the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks all day and night.
The jumbo screen was part of a pricey counter-protest from an organization called The Bear Jews of Truth. According to two separate GoFundMe pages, the organization raised more than $133,000 in donations to erect the video display at UCLA and bring similar screens to other universities across the country. One of the pages says the group plans to bring a large screen to George Washington University in the District of Columbia in May.
An archived version of one of the fundraising pages shows plans to bring “something very big for the ucla encampment.”
“We are working to bring a huge screen and big loud speakers right next to them and just play nonstop clips and interviews from Oct. 7,” the page said.
The pro-Israel counter-protest has been supported by celebrities including comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica Seinfeld, a cookbook author, as well as billionaire hedge-fund investor Bill Ackman, according to the Daily Beast.
Students within the encampment told HuffPost the video screen was a “form of torture” and reported a number of other tactics leveraged by the counter-protesters on Tuesday night, including launching fireworks, creating louds noises that sounded like gunshots and incessant cellphone alarms.
An encampment of people protesting Israel’s attacks on Gaza is set up on the UCLA campus by Royce Hall.
‘We’re Just Kids’
The UCLA administration canceled classes on Wednesday, and protesters spent the morning cleaning up the encampment and repairing the barriers around the site. A volunteer medic provided treatment for protesters injured the previous night. Participants also passed out goggles, helmets, ear plugs and gloves as rumors circulated that police intervention was imminent.
Nurse practitioner Kristine Bustos, 38, volunteered as a medic, providing care to injured students.
Jessica Schulberg/HuffPost
By Wednesday evening, a heavy police presence surrounded the perimeter of the encampment. Protesters barricaded the doors to Royce Hall, from which they anticipated police officers might enter. A group of faculty members lined up in front of the doors to form a human barrier to protect the students.
Encampment participants were organized into red, yellow and green categories, based on their willingness to risk arrest. Organizers made sure that participants who could not risk arrest were positioned close to exits and that those who planned to stay until removed had protective equipment.
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the doors to Royce Hall on Wednesday night in anticipation of police intervention. Graffiti was painted on the building.
Jessica Schulberg/HuffPost
The standoff lasted for hours, with periodic dispersal orders blaring over a loudspeaker. Some protesters, many of whom had barely slept the previous night, suspected that police were waiting until the middle of the night to enter the encampment, hoping people would get tired and leave.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, police launched a multi-front operation into the encampment, using flash-bang devices and so-called “less-lethal” bullets against students who were armed with makeshift shields and umbrellas. Although protesters pushed back initial incursions from officers, the camp was fully cleared by morning.
UCLA students erect barricades and fly the flag of Palestine on the campus.
“The police attacked not only the encampment but students all over the campus,” Açiksöz said. “There were groups of students, maybe 1,000 students or so, surrounding the encampments in different directions, and everywhere that I went, I saw students being chased by stun grenades and batons.”
By Thursday morning, hundreds of students and faculty had been arrested and were being released from detention at the Inmate Reception Center and the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. The released protesters were greeted by public defense attorneys and family members, and by jail support volunteers who passed out bagels and coffee.
Los Angeles Public Defender Ricardo García said in a statement that his office was providing “on-the-ground support to arrestees” but that it was not yet clear what charges, if any, would be presented.
LAPD and the California Highway Patrol referred questions to the UCLA Campus Police, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Block, the UCLA chancellor, released a statement to the UCLA community Thursday afternoon about the decision to direct campus police and outside law enforcement to help clear the encampment after the administration failed to reach an agreement with encampment leaders.
“In the end, the encampment on Royce Quad was both unlawful and a breach of policy. It led to unsafe conditions on our campus and it damaged our ability to carry out our mission,” Block wrote. “It needed to come to an end.”
Later Thursday, in an alumni town hall, Block acknowledged the protesters’ demands but did not signal any willingness to meet them. He also said that UCLA’s commencement ceremonies will go forward, though he expects some disruptions.
Outside the Inmate Detention Center on Thursday morning, students walked outside red-eyed from lack of sleep and tear gas that still stung their eyes. One 21-year-old psychology major who was released Thursday said that the last two days on campus were like a “war zone” and that she witnessed police removing people’s hijabs and masks, and forcing students to walk by the video screen put up by pro-Israel counter-protesters on their way to arrest.
“They did this on purpose,” she said. “They told us, ‘Let’s do a media walk.’ It was a kind of a threat meant for public humiliation.”
She was one of a few hundred students, faculty and staff remaining at the encampment at 5:50 Thursday morning, eager to keep the police out of the encampment. She recalled how officers kettled her classmates, pushing through their makeshift barriers with batons and shields.
“We’re just kids,” she said. “We didn’t have much to go off of.”
Later Thursday, the encampment had been cleared by the university, and dozens of tent-shaped patches of grass marked what had been the makeshift solidarity encampment.
Some protesters talked about rebuilding the community, and others expressed caution.
“I think it’ll come back,” said a senior bioengineering major who was arrested Thursday morning. He received a concussion after being struck on the head twice Tuesday and pepper-sprayed in the eye.
“We just want our demands to be met. We want the university to step up and acknowledge that and be open about how they’re spending their money.”
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With the help of bulldozers, items including tents, chairs and yoga mats were removed Thursday morning from the UCLA encampment occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters and shoved into a large gray dumpster.
Packages of unopened plastic water bottles lay on the grass. Nearby, two white trucks held pieces of wood that had been used by protesters to barricade the camp. A group of four UCLA graduate students walked over to Dickson Court, the area on campus where the encampment once stood, carrying medical masks and other supplies for protesters, only to learn the camp had been taken down.
They decided they would give the donations to one of the other Southern California universities with encampments.
Such camps have spread to college campuses across the nation in a student movement unlike any other this century. Protesters are calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza. On Tuesday, police arrested at least 25 protesters at Cal Poly Humboldt, where war demonstrators had taken over buildings, spurring school officials to close campus.
“I think it’s really important to stand up for what you believe in,” said a 29-year-old UCLA graduate student who requested anonymity because of the fear of reprisals. “I’ve been here a few times to give donations to people here in the encampment, and every single time, people have met me with grace and a lot of respect.”
She and her friends have brought donations of water, chips, masks and protective eyewear to the protesters throughout the week.
“I feel honored that our school is partaking in something that’s making a difference, hopefully,” said a 24-year-old graduate student who was part of the group.
Outside Dickson Court, pro-Israeli students also gathered to watch the clean-up process.
A 20-year-old UCLA undergrad, who requested anonymity because he said he feared being attacked, participated in a counterprotest on Sunday. A crowd of people from the Jewish community gathered in front of the camp and sang the Israeli national anthem, brought out a DJ and held a dance party, he said.
The undergrad, who said he is Jewish, was disheartened by the encampment, he said. But he stressed that he didn’t participate in any of the other counterdemonstrations and condemned the violence that began Tuesday night just before midnight.
Over several hours, counterdemonstrators hurled objects — including wood and a metal barrier — at those inside. Fireworkers were launched into the camp, and some counterprotesters tried to force their way in. Fights broke out, and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
“It was deplorable,” the undergrad said of the attack on the encampment. Violent counterprotesters “need to be punished under the maximum extent of the law. They do not represent our movement, and as such they must be punished for not acting in accordance with the law and the values they purport to uphold.”
He said he’d lost a lot of friends since the Israel-Hamas war broke out because of their different perspectives.
“It’s unfortunate because, for me, this is quite personal because I am from the Middle East,” he said. “I have family in Israel, I have family in Iran, and seeing the chaos break out in the region where my ancestry is from, it’s cutting to see individuals who have no connection to the ongoing violence say that I don’t know what I’m talking about or they can’t be friends with me because of their political stance.”
With the camp now razed, some protesters told The Times on Thursday they feared the pro-Palestinian protest’s momentum in Westwood might have stalled.
“There’s a lot of anger and frustration and desire to keep protesting, but we’re really still figuring out what that would look like,” said a 19-year-old UCLA freshman who declined to give her name.
Many seemed eager to return to protesting at UCLA, though what awaited them was unclear. A current and former student from Occidental College said they’d heeded “a call for bodies” at UCLA put out Wednesday night but figured they wouldn’t be called again with the encampment gone.
Some staff seemed more optimistic the protests would quickly be revived.
“I might go back on Friday,” said a staff member who was arrested Thursday, though she noted her plans might be dampened by sleep deprivation. When she was arrested, she said she was standing with 10 to 15 faculty or staff who were booked along with her.
Like many on Friday, the staff member declined to give her name due to fear of retaliation from the university, saying she worked in a part of the school where some colleagues seemed wary of the protests.
Some students said they were unclear whether they would face academic repercussions from protesting — although they said they’d seen some unambiguous emails from the university saying there could be “disciplinary action including suspension or expulsion.”
UCLA facilities teams were busy throughout the morning and into the afternoon on Thursday taking down structures, removing protestors’ belongings and hauling away mounds of trash following days of pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israeli counter-protests.
Even though the encampment was cleared by Thursday night, the area remained blocked off so crews could remove the graffiti that was sprayed on buildings and the sidewalks.
Images: Officers clear protest encampment at UCLA
Pro-Palestinian protestors made Royce Quad their temporary home for one week, bringing in sleeping bags, chairs, tables, supplies and food while they called for a ceasefire in Gaza and demanded UCLA cut off ties
“I care a lot about the legacy of UCLA and think both efforts to protest and demonstrate as well as efforts to keep the campus pristine reflect the values of UCLA,” said UCLA Political Science major Dane Catom.
Even though Catom supports the group’s right to protest, he was upset to see the damage left behind.
“I don’t agree with the vandalism, some people say it’s a form of protest. Me, personally, I disagree with that. I think it diminishes the arguments and the message that is pushed. And frankly, it upset me. It disappointed me,” said Catom.
Protesters who were arrested at the UCLA campus overnight are not likely to face severe punishments. The I-Team’s Eric Leonard reports.
The buildings surrounding the encampment were both vandalized with graffiti and parts of the scaffolding were ripped from the library, which was undergoing repairs before the protestors moved in. Pieces of plywood from the construction site were also used by the protestors to create a barrier around their camp.
“I don’t think destruction of the property is the first move, but I think if it’s what we need to do to get people’s attention and say this is not ok what’s happening it’s a way to get the public’s attention and a way to show our government we don’t like what’s happening,” said Melanie Meyer.
Meyer lives in Silverlake and drove to UCLA to check out the encampment. She said she was impressed by the protestors and felt their demonstration was an opportunity to join an important conversation.
“For some students, this is an extension of their education right, I think just because they express a strong sentiment doesn’t mean they should be barred from the community, if anything there should be a more open discussion,” said Meyer.
NBC4 reached out to the school’s administration to get the exact numbers on the amount of garbage removed and the cost of the cleanup operation. They have not yet responded.
A joint effort was orchestrated by several law enforcement agencies to tear down protesters’ encampment and barricades at UCLA. NBC Los Angeles’ Kathy Vara reports.
Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the UCLA campus after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counter-protesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.Watch live video from the scene abovePolice detained a handful of people on campus, tying their wrists with zip ties. The law enforcement action came after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loud speakers if people did not disperse. Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside of it in support.As police helicopters hovered overhead, the sound of flash-bangs, which produce a bright light and a loud noise to disorient and stun people, could be heard as police moved in. Chants of “where were you last night” could be heard.Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters and made an opening toward dozens of tents of demonstrators. Police also began to pull down canopies and tents.Demonstrators were holding umbrellas like shields as they faced off with dozens of officers. Some of the protesters warned their fellow demonstrators to be ready with water in case police release tear gas or other irritant.The police action occurred a night after the UCLA administration and campus police waited hours to stop the counter-protesters’ attack. The delay drew condemnation from Muslim students and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.Demonstrators rebuilt the makeshift barriers around their tents on Wednesday afternoon while state and campus police watched.Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.In the Mideast, Iranian state television carried live images of the police action, as did Qatar’s pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images of Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks as well.The tense standoff at UCLA came one night after violence instigated by counter-protesters erupted in the same place.The law enforcement presence and continued warnings stood in contrast to the scene that unfolded the night before, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, though no arrests were made. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.By Wednesday afternoon a small city sprang up inside the reenforced encampment, now full of hundreds of people and tents on the campus quad. Some protesters said Muslim prayers as the sun set over the campus, while others chanted “we’re not leaving” or passed out goggles and surgical masks. They wore helmets and headscarves, and discussed the best ways to handle pepper spray or tear gas as someone sang over a megaphone.A few constructed homemade shields out of plywood in case they clashed with police forming skirmish lines elsewhere on the campus. “For rubber bullets, who wants a shield?” a protester called out.Outside the encampment, a crowd of students, alumni and neighbors gathered on campus steps, joining in pro-Palestinian chants. A group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people demonstrated nearby.The crowd continued to grow as the night wore on as more and more officers poured onto campus.Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he came to UCLA on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”Elsewhere, police in New Hampshire said they made 90 arrests and took down tents at Dartmouth College and officers in Oregon came onto the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.The chaotic scenes at UCLA came after New York police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.An Associated Press tally counted at least 38 times since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools.UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” perpetrated the previous night’s attack, but he did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” he said. “It has shaken our campus to its core.”Block promised a review of the night’s events after Newsom denounced the delays.The head of the University of California system, Michael Drake, ordered an “independent review of the university’s planning, its actions and the response by law enforcement.”“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the Los Angeles campus Wednesday.Speakers disputed the university’s account that 15 people were injured and one hospitalized, saying the number of people taken to the hospital was higher. One student described needing to go to the hospital after being hit in the head by an object wielded by counter-protesters.Several students who spoke during the news conference said they had to rely on each other, not the police, for support as they were attacked, and that many in the pro-Palestinian encampment remained peaceful and did not engage with counter-protesters. UCLA canceled classes Wednesday.At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.This is all playing out in an election year in the U.S., raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October — apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.Meanwhile, protest encampments elsewhere were cleared by the police, resulting in arrests, or closed up voluntarily at schools across the U.S., including The City College of New York, Fordham University in New York, Portland State in Oregon, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulane University in New Orleans.
LOS ANGELES —
Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the UCLA campus after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counter-protesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.
Watch live video from the scene above
Police detained a handful of people on campus, tying their wrists with zip ties. The law enforcement action came after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loud speakers if people did not disperse. Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside of it in support.
As police helicopters hovered overhead, the sound of flash-bangs, which produce a bright light and a loud noise to disorient and stun people, could be heard as police moved in. Chants of “where were you last night” could be heard.
Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters and made an opening toward dozens of tents of demonstrators. Police also began to pull down canopies and tents.
Demonstrators were holding umbrellas like shields as they faced off with dozens of officers. Some of the protesters warned their fellow demonstrators to be ready with water in case police release tear gas or other irritant.
The police action occurred a night after the UCLA administration and campus police waited hours to stop the counter-protesters’ attack. The delay drew condemnation from Muslim students and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP via Getty Images
Police react while pro-Palestinian students stand their ground after police breached their encampment at the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles, California, early on May 2, 2024.
Demonstrators rebuilt the makeshift barriers around their tents on Wednesday afternoon while state and campus police watched.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.
In the Mideast, Iranian state television carried live images of the police action, as did Qatar’s pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images of Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks as well.
The tense standoff at UCLA came one night after violence instigated by counter-protesters erupted in the same place.
The law enforcement presence and continued warnings stood in contrast to the scene that unfolded the night before, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, though no arrests were made. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.
By Wednesday afternoon a small city sprang up inside the reenforced encampment, now full of hundreds of people and tents on the campus quad. Some protesters said Muslim prayers as the sun set over the campus, while others chanted “we’re not leaving” or passed out goggles and surgical masks. They wore helmets and headscarves, and discussed the best ways to handle pepper spray or tear gas as someone sang over a megaphone.
A few constructed homemade shields out of plywood in case they clashed with police forming skirmish lines elsewhere on the campus. “For rubber bullets, who wants a shield?” a protester called out.
Outside the encampment, a crowd of students, alumni and neighbors gathered on campus steps, joining in pro-Palestinian chants. A group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people demonstrated nearby.
The crowd continued to grow as the night wore on as more and more officers poured onto campus.
Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he came to UCLA on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
Elsewhere, police in New Hampshire said they made 90 arrests and took down tents at Dartmouth College and officers in Oregon came onto the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.
The chaotic scenes at UCLA came after New York police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.
An Associated Press tally counted at least 38 times since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” perpetrated the previous night’s attack, but he did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.
“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” he said. “It has shaken our campus to its core.”
Block promised a review of the night’s events after Newsom denounced the delays.
The head of the University of California system, Michael Drake, ordered an “independent review of the university’s planning, its actions and the response by law enforcement.”
“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the Los Angeles campus Wednesday.
Speakers disputed the university’s account that 15 people were injured and one hospitalized, saying the number of people taken to the hospital was higher. One student described needing to go to the hospital after being hit in the head by an object wielded by counter-protesters.
Several students who spoke during the news conference said they had to rely on each other, not the police, for support as they were attacked, and that many in the pro-Palestinian encampment remained peaceful and did not engage with counter-protesters. UCLA canceled classes Wednesday.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.
This is all playing out in an election year in the U.S., raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.
In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October — apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.
The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
Meanwhile, protest encampments elsewhere were cleared by the police, resulting in arrests, or closed up voluntarily at schools across the U.S., including The City College of New York, Fordham University in New York, Portland State in Oregon, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulane University in New Orleans.
The noise — unsettling and dissonant — has been a constant inside the barricaded pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
Soon after protesters, most of them students at the Westwood campus, pitched tents on Dickson Court on April 25, pro-Israel counterdemonstrators showed up with megaphones. Some shouted racist, homophobic and anti-Islamic slurs, according to campers interviewed.
They set up a giant video screen near the camp that played and replayed videos of Hamas militants. They broadcast a running torrent of loud, disturbing sounds over a stereo — an eagle screeching, a child crying — and blasted a Hebrew rendition of the song “Baby Shark” on repeat, late at night, so that campers could not sleep.
They returned night after night.
A woman kneels in prayer before a line of CHP officers at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)
Inside the encampment, pro-Palestinian protesters, who occupied scores of tents on the grassy expanse, said they tried to maintain a tranquil space during the daylight hours when they felt some sense of control. They led Islamic prayers, observed Shabbat and hosted grief circles that included breath work and trauma therapy.
“It’s still an emotional, heavy space, but it’s also a very open, welcoming and loving space,” said Marie, a 28-year-old graduate student who, like many protesters interviewed, declined to provide her full name because she feared for her safety, physically and online. “Unfortunately, we experience the harassment and the terrorizing at night, which can be really upsetting.”
On Tuesday night, Dickson Court exploded into savagery and chaos. A large, mostly male crowd of masked counterdemonstrators tried to break into the encampment, ripping down wood and metal barriers, spraying bear mace, igniting stink bombs and tossing fireworks near the camp perimeter — and in at least one case inside the camp.
They aimed their green lasers at camper’s faces, prompting shouts of, “Shield your eyes!”
“They attacked us from physical and psychological fronts,” said Mona, a third-year student who also declined to provide her last name. “The outside aggressors have been working hard to create a harsh environment and make us feel unsafe.”
A pro-Palestinian protester, second from right, is assaulted by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
After Tuesday’s late-night melee — and a slow campus response that a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called “unacceptable” — the encampment remained. And the pro-Palestinian protesters, who are demanding divestment from Israel and an end to the country’s military actions in Gaza, were defiant.
Kaia Shah, 23, a postgraduate researcher who has acted as a spokesperson for the encampment, said demonstrators got notice Tuesday from a university liaison that the encampment was unlawful and that students who continued to occupy the space could face suspension or expulsion.
Nonetheless, she said, “We plan on staying here until we get UCLA to divest.”
Shah described the scene Tuesday night as “violent and terrifying chaos,” and said her throat burned from inhaling all the mace in the air. She and another female demonstrator said some of the counterprotesters threatened to sexually assault women inside the encampment.
Shah said that, at one point, she saw police cars — it was unclear from which agency — pull up, turn around in a circle and leave. “The cops came and left as we were getting violently attacked by the Zionists,” she said.
Dueling chants rang out.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA huddle behind a makeshift barricade under attack by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
From inside the camp, they shouted: “Free, free Palestine!” and “Hold the line for Palestine!”
Outside, some counterdemonstrators screamed: “Second Nakba!” referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Others chanted: “USA! USA!”
As the violence unfolded, Citlali, a 25-year-old from Santa Ana who works for the organization Youth Organize! California and declined to provide her last name, said she frantically texted her younger brother, a student who was inside the encampment.
“Hey can you answer? Are you okay?? It’s okay to retreat,” she texted.
She said her brother was sprayed with bear mace and left the encampment Wednesday morning to wash up in his dorm room. “It’s gut-wrenching,” Citlali said. “I couldn’t sleep until 4 a.m. when he texted me that he was OK.”
After sunrise Wednesday, the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a list of their needs at the encampment: gas masks, skater helmets, shields, “super bright flashlights with strobe,” EpiPens, inhalers, hot lunches, gluten-free food.
Campus security teams, faculty members and California Highway Patrol officers guarded entrances to the encampment Wednesday morning.
Hannah Appel, an assistant professor of anthropology, stood at one entrance, where people dropped off medical supplies, face masks and water bottles. Only students with wrist bands indicating they were previously in the encampment and those who had someone on the inside vouching for them were allowed to enter, Appel said.
“Because of the escalated violence last night, we have to be very vigilant and careful about who can come in and out,” Appel said, before stepping aside to let a student squeeze through the barricades.
Vanessa Muros, an archaeology researcher at UCLA, showed up outside the encampment with finger cymbals, maracas and a tambourine. She said a call was sent out to students and faculty who participated in a band during a 2022 UC academic workers’ strike. The musicians were asked to help boost morale at the encampment.
“Apparently morale is low in there, and playing music or just making noise will help rally people together,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian protesters clash with pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Muros has worked at UCLA for 19 years and said she has never seen such mayhem on campus. “It’s upsetting, and I feel like the administration will blame the chaos on the students who have been peacefully protesting,” she said.
Renee Tajima-Peña, a senior faculty member, stood in a line outside Royce Hall to make a donation for the protesters: solar phone chargers, a poncho, some respirators.
“The story has been that all these students are irresponsible or causing problems,” she said. “I teach here and this encampment has been beautiful.”
This screengrab shows a campus police officer removing a hijab off a protester’s head at Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona. Mass Liberation AZ
Video taken over the weekend at Arizona State University shows a campus police officer removing a hijab from a protester’s head during her arrest.
The blurred video, obtained by Mass Liberation AZ and provided to CNN by attorney Zayed Al-Sayyed, who represents the women, shows several ASU Police Department officers surrounding a woman whose hands are held behind her back as one of the officers removes her hijab.
People nearby can be heard yelling, “You’re violating her privacy,” and “Give it back.”
The officers then pull the woman’s sweatshirt hood over her head and a bystander yells, “So she can wear a hood but not her hijab?” At one point one of the officers blocks the woman from the view of those taking the video, as a person yells, “let her go!”
A lawyer representing her and three other women who said it also happened to them is demanding accountability.
Al-Sayyed, who said the arrests took place early Saturday, did not identify the women but indicated that three of them are students at the university and all four are Phoenix-area residents. They are facing criminal trespass charges.
Upon being taken into custody, Al-Sayyed said, the women explained the significance of a hijab and “begged” to keep their hijabs, but he said they were told that their hijabs had to be removed for safety reasons.
“They never expected that an officer … who’s sworn to protect and serve is going to violate their most basic protected right under the United States Constitution, which is the right to practice their religion. So they’re hurt,” Al-Sayyed said.
After being detained and bused to jail, the women were not given their hijabs back, Al-Sayyed said.
Around 15 hours later, when he was finally given access to his clients, Al-Sayyed said he was able to bring them new hijabs.
The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-AZ), condemned the university police for the recorded incident and others like it and called for a full investigation.
“This act represents a blatant infringement upon the religious liberties of peaceful protesters. It is profoundly distressing for the affected women, and ASU Police must conduct a thorough investigation into this matter,” Azza Abuseif, executive director of CAIR-AZ, said in an email to CNN.
In a statement to CNN, the university said, “This matter is under review.” CNN has reached out to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for comment.
Clashes broke out early Wednesday at the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA, hours after the university declared that the camp “is unlawful and violates university policy” and warned that students who did not leave would face possible suspension or expulsion.
Just before midnight, a large group of counter-demonstrators, wearing black outfits and white masks, arrived on campus and tried to tear down the barricades surrounding the encampment. Campers, some holding lumber, rallied to defend the encampment’s perimeter.
Videos showed fireworks being set off and at least one being thrown into the camp.
The violence is the worst on campus since counter-protesters, who support Israel, set up a dueling area near where the Gaza war protesters were camping.
After midnight, some tried to get into the camp and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
Some security guards could be seen observing the clashes but did not move in to stop them. UCLA said police have been called.
“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,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA Strategic Communications said in a statement.
Mayor Karen Bass released a statement saying that “LAPD is responding immediately” to UCLA’s request for support.
Officer Jorge Estrada confirmed that LAPD officers were on their way to the campus after UCLA police requested assistance.
Some on campus said they were stunned no officials stepped in to stop the clashes. Ananya Roy, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography, condemned UCLA’s lack of response to the counter-protestors.
“It gives people impunity to come to our campus as a rampaging mob,” she said early Wednesday. “The word is out they can do this repeatedly and get away with it. I am ashamed of my university.”
One representative of the camp said counter-demonstrators repeatedly pushed over the barricades that outline the boundaries of the encampment, and some campers said they were hit by a substance they thought was pepper spray. Some people in the camp were being treated for eye irritation.
The Westwood campus became the first in the University of California system to move against an encampment. Others have been set up at UC campuses at Berkeley, Riverside and Irvine along with colleges and universities across the nation. In the biggest wave of campus protests since the 1960s, scores of students, faculty members and staffers are demanding an end to Israel’s actions in Gaza and divestment from firms that sell weapons or services to the country.
UC has generally taken a lighter touch in handling protests than USC, Columbia and other campuses that have called in police, who have arrested hundreds of students.
The crackdown came on the same day that the House committee investigating antisemitism announced UCLA Chancellor Gene Block would appear to testify about his campus actions to stop bias and harassment against Jewish students. The May 23 hearing is also set to include the presidents of Yale and the University of Michigan. The hearings have derailed the careers of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Block has already announced he is stepping down as chancellor on July 31.
In a statement Tuesday, UC President Michael V. Drake said he “fully” supported UCLA’s action. UC must be “as flexible as it can” in matters of free speech, he said, but must act in cases where student learning and expression are blocked, university functions disrupted and safety threatened.
“The University of California campuses will work with students, faculty and staff to make space available and do all we can to protect these protests and demonstrations,” he said. “But disruptive unlawful protests that violate the rights of our fellow citizens are unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.”
He did not specify what behavior at UCLA he found unacceptable.
On Friday, the UC Board of Regents has scheduled a closed-door meeting to discuss the student protests.
UC guidance — developed after widespread furor involving a 2011 incident at UC Davis, where police pepper-sprayed students who were peacefully protesting social and economic inequality during the Occupy movement — has led campuses to use a flexible approach in allowing protests as long as they are peaceful and don’t impede campus operations, learning or teaching. Police action should be a last resort, the guidance says.
But Block said Tuesday that, while many demonstrators have been peaceful, others have used tactics that have “frankly been shocking and shameful.”
“We have seen instances of violence completely at odds with our values as an institution dedicated to respect and mutual understanding,” Block said in a message to the campus community. “In other cases, students on their way to class have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus.
“UCLA supports peaceful protest, but not activism that harms our ability to carry out our academic mission and makes people in our community feel bullied, threatened and afraid,” he wrote. He added that the incidents had put many on campus, “especially our Jewish students,” in a state of anxiety and fear.
High levels of fear also have been reported by pro-Palestinian students, which Block did not mention — an omission that outraged some campus members.
“It is quite shocking and demoralizing that the chancellor notes only the antisemitism faced by Jewish students when in fact there has been a significant number of incidents of racism and violence against Palestinians, Muslims and in fact anyone considered a supporter of Palestinian rights,” said Sherene Razack, a professor of gender studies.
The “Palestinian Solidarity Encampment,” which was set up Thursday, said in a statement that “Zionist aggressors,” most of them not UCLA students, had been “incessantly verbally and physically harassing us, violently trying to storm the camp, and threatening us with weapons.” But campus security did nothing to protect them, the statement said.
The group decried UCLA’s move to end the encampment as a “cowardly intimidation tactic” and a “continuation of a long history of attempts to shut down student activism and silence pro-Palestinian voices.”
Dan Gold, executive director of Hillel at UCLA, supported the university’s action, saying Jewish students have been bullied, harassed and intimidated around the encampment — including at least 10 who said they were denied access to nearby walkways after encampment monitors asked them if they were Zionists. A Star of David with the words “step here” was drawn in the area, he said.
“This encampment violates a long list of university policies, and the result of not enforcing these rules that every other student and student group follows to a T is chaos and unrest — and worse, it allows for even more intense forms of hate to persist and grow,” Gold said.
Block said the campus was aiming to keep all sides safe by “significantly” increasing the security presence with more law enforcement officers, safety personnel and student affairs staff. Law enforcement is investigating recent acts of violence, and barriers that demonstrators used to block access to buildings have been removed, Block said. Students involved could face suspension or expulsion.
UCLA added that it “encouraged” students to use established university procedures to find appropriate locations to gather and protest.
An anonymous Jewish student alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday that Columbia University is failing to provide a safe learning environment for students during the ongoing pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, argues the university has “become a place that is too dangerous for Columbia’s Jewish students to receive the education they were promised.”
The complaint, filed against Columbia’s board of trustees in the Southern District of New York, alleges that a subset of protesters have committed acts of violence, harassed Jewish students and faculty membersand incited hate speech and acts of violence.
The lawsuit includes numerous redacted sections to protect the identity of the plaintiff, who is described as a “Jewish student in her second year” and whose education has been disrupted by the hostile environment on campus.
The lawsuit takes particular issue with the decision by Columbia to go to a hybrid learning model last week amid the unrest on campus.
“Jewish students…get a second-class education where they are relegated to their homes to attend classes virtually and stripped of the opportunity to interact meaningfully with other students and faculty and sit for examinations with their peers,” the lawsuit said. “The segregation of Jewish students is a dangerous development that can quickly escalate into more severe acts of violence and discrimination.”
Columbia declined tocomment on the lawsuit.
The university’s president Minouche Shafik acknowledged in a statement Monday that many Jewish students and other students have “found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks.”
“Many have left campus, and that is a tragedy. To those students and their families, I want to say to you clearly: You are a valued part of the Columbia community,” Shafik said.
