Violence broke out between police and student protesters on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with hundreds of people arrested in New York.
The New York Police Department broke through a second-story window of a Columbia building that had been breached by rioters and released the protesters, with video of the arrests quickly going viral on social media.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D)’s office said Wednesday that about 300 people were arrested.
“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized and locked down, we had no choice,” a school spokesperson said. said in a statement. “Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
The spokesperson added that the university believes those who took over the building were not affiliated with the school.
While other protesting schools saw many trapped on campus with no affiliation to their institutions, Columbia had its campus closed to people without ID for about two weeks.
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) entered the UCLA campus to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters after they were called in due to skirmishes between the camp and pro-Israel counter-protesters.
“The violence unfolding tonight at UCLA is absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable. The LAPD has arrived on campus,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) posted on social platform X before 2 a.m. local time on Wednesday morning.
Violence broke out at the protest before 11pm on Tuesday night after counter-protesters attempted to forcibly dismantle the pro-Palestinian camp, local station KTLA reported. KTLA is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.
It is not known how many were injured.
The police presence and arrests were denounced as dangerous by progressives, who point to other schools that have found ways to reach agreement with activists.
“If any children are hurt tonight, the responsibility will fall on the mayor and university presidents. Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalation path,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) wrote in X. “This is the opposite of leadership and puts public safety at risk. A nightmare in the making. I ask the mayor to reverse course.”
Northwestern University and Brown University were able to reach agreements with protesters this week to have their camps peacefully torn down. At Brown, the switch means the board will vote in the fall on whether to divest from Israel.
Republicans, despite their calls for campus leadership to control the protests, are attacking schools, including Columbia University, during Tuesday night’s events.
“Amid absolute chaos at Columbia University, Joe Biden is absent because he is afraid to confront the problem,” President Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted on X with a video of the police raid.
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