Columbia president blames protesters after police arrest 300 on New York campuses; UCLA cancels all classes after violence – live

We’re now closing this blog – but you can follow all the latest news and reaction from campus protests across the US in our new live blog:

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Here’s what happened earlier today:

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• Dallas officers arrested at least 19 people when they cleared a protest encampment at the University of Texas campus in the city on Wednesday afternoon.

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• Michael Drake, the president of the University of California system, has ordered an independent review of the UCLA administration’s planning, after a late-night attack on a pro-Palestinian student encampment resulted in at least 15 people being injured, the Los Angeles Times reports.

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• Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, confirmed that 280 people on the Columbia University and Cuny campuses had been arrested on Tuesday. Bragg has not confirmed reports from city and police officials that “outside agitators” had infiltrated student-led protests.

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• Cuny students with the university’s Gaza Solidarity encampment criticized New York police officers for their “brutal and spineless” arrests of protesters. “We will not be intimidated by these brutal and spineless tactics … We will not stop until these demands are met,” read a statement from students posted on social media.

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• California governor Gavin Newsom condemned the violence at UCLA. Posting on X, he criticized the “limited and delayed” law enforcement response on Tuesday night, describing it as “unacceptable”.

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• UCLA cancelled all classes on Wednesday after counter-demonstrators attacked pro-Palestine protesters overnight. “Due to the distress caused by the violence that took place on Royce Quad late last night and early this morning, all classes are cancelled today,” read a statement from the university.

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• Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president, sent an email following the use of New York police to lead mass arrests at Tuesday’s protests on campus. In the email sent Wednesday, Shafik said that NYPD had been used because “students and outside activists [were] breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our Public Safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property … ”.

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• New York police said the wife of a man convicted of terrorism was not at protests on Columbia’s campus on Tuesday, walking back claims from city and police officials. NYPD deputy commissioner Rebecca Weiner said the woman, who has yet to be publicly identified, was not a part of any protests last night and that police “have no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing on her part”, the New York Daily News reported.

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• At least one high school started their own encampment in solidarity with university students at Columbia and beyond, according to a flyer from students at Iowa City’s City high.

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• Police tore down encampments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison early on Wednesday, in yet another crackdown on a peaceful student protest. Several protesters, mostly students, were detained by police.

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At the University of Texas at Dallas, state troopers have cleared a protest encampment, the Associated Press and the BBC report.

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“The effect of the state troopers has utterly changed the mood. There’s a lot of anger now, and chants of ‘shame on you’, ‘where were you in Uvalde’ and ‘why are you in riot gear’ are now echoing in Dallas,” BBC reporter Tom Bateman writes.

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In Dallas State troopers have just forced down table barricades and have torn down gazebos and tents.
Some protesters linked hands, then dragged off by riot police. Chants not of “shame of you", and "where were you in Uvalde"

Now a standoff pic.twitter.com/ddIx7d8OvZ

— Tom Bateman (@tombateman) May 1, 2024

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In a press release, the head of the University of California at Los Angeles called the people who attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment last night “a group of instigators” who came to campus to carry out an “utterly unacceptable” physical attack.

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“No one at this university should have to encounter such violence,” Gene Block wrote, urging those who experienced violence to make a report to the university police department, whose lack of intervention during the attack has been widely condemned, including by California’s governor.

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He also said the attack “may lead to arrests, expulsions and dismissals”.

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A university spokesperson did not respond to requests to confirm how many people, including UCLA students, had been injured during the attack. The Los Angeles Times reported that the number of injured people was unclear, and that early estimates ranged from 15 to 25 people.

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From Block’s statement:

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Late last night, a group of instigators came to Royce Quad to forcefully attack the encampment that has been established there to advocate for Palestinian rights. Physical violence ensued, and our campus requested support from external law enforcement agencies to help end this appalling assault, quell the fighting and protect our community.

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However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable. It has shaken our campus to its core and – adding to other abhorrent incidents that we have witnessed and that have circulated on social media over the past several days – further damaged our community’s sense of security.

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… We are still gathering information about the attack on the encampment last night, and I can assure you that we will conduct a thorough investigation that may lead to arrests, expulsions and dismissals. We are also carefully examining our own security processes in light of recent events. To help in these efforts, I urge those who have experienced violence to report what they encountered to UCPD, and those who have faced discrimination to contact the Civil Rights Office. We are grateful for the support of law enforcement and their efforts to investigate these incidents.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Drake, the president of the University of California system, has ordered an independent review of the UCLA administration’s planning, after a late-night attack on a pro-Palestinian student encampment resulted in at least 15 people being injured.

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Among the most essential questions from the perspective of faculty members, David Myers, a UCLA professor of Jewish history, said, was: “Where were the police?”

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JUST IN: @UofCalifornia Prez Drake has ordered an independent review of @UCLA's planning in wake of violent attack on pro-Palestinian encampment. Review needed due to "sufficient confusion" over UCLA’s actions and mutual aid response, he says.

— Teresa Watanabe (@TeresaWatanabe) May 1, 2024

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This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live news coverage from Los Angeles.

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Earlier today, the office of California governor Gavin Newsom publicly condemned an “unacceptable” campus law enforcement response after masked counter-protesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment on UCLA’s campus, sparking hours of uninterrupted violence and frantic messages from students at the encampment who said that police had abandoned them.

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News outlets on the ground reported that attacks on the pro-Palestinian student encampment continued from 11pm to 3am, with security guards and campus law enforcement retreating or failing to intervene. Newsom’s office called this response “limited and delayed” and said it “demands answers”.

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The law enforcement agencies involved are not being quick to provide those answers. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles police department deferred all comment to UCLA’s campus police department, saying it was the “lead agency” at the incident.

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UCLA’s campus police, who according to UCLA’s student newspaper arrived on scene and then retreated within minutes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UCLA’s press office also did not respond to questions from the Guardian about the law enforcement delays.

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Initial reporting on the ground suggested that many different law enforcement agencies failed to stop the middle-of-the-night attacks. While officers from multiple local and state law enforcement agencies eventually arrived on scene close to 2am, police in riot gear were present for at least an hour while violence continued right in front of them, and they did not intervene, the Los Angeles Times and CalMatters reported.

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