It is never OK to use physical violence against people with whom you disagree. This should be obvious, but the events that unfolded on the UCLA campus early Wednesday show the consequences when that message is lost.
Late Tuesday night, a large group of people attacked the anti-war encampment on the Westwood campus. They weren’t campus authorities acting on the university’s order that the camp was “unlawful,” but rather people who disagreed with the pro-Palestinian protesters and decided to clear the camp themselves. It turned ugly quickly.
In this era of a video camera in every pocket, we can watch it all in jarring clarity through the many clips posted on social media. It’s shocking to view people rush the barricades, trying to remove the metal and wood barriers and attack one another with fists and sticks and pepper spray.
It’s disheartening to hear the vile slurs hurled by counterprotesters and the screams from protesters after a firework launched into the middle of the encampment explodes. This violence continued over the course of hours, although campus officials knew it was going on, and had summoned law enforcement to the campus. Student journalists covering the incident were attacked.
Looking back it should have been easy to see this clash coming. Tension had been brewing since the pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment last week and it escalated after Israel supporters set up a protest space nearby, as has been documented by the Daily Bruin.
University of California President Michael V. Drake was right to call for a review of the campus administration’s actions. We hope it can determine whether the university could have done more to prevent this from blowing up Tuesday night, why campus security stood by as the violence escalated and why it took about three hours for officers from the Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol to control the situation. UC leaders have a responsibility to maintain safety and the melee made the campus unsafe for students and personnel.
Several faculty have criticized the response as a failure by university, city and state authorities. “Why didn’t the police, UCPD and LAPD, show up? Those in the encampment were defenseless in the face of a violent band of thugs. And no one, wherever they stand politically, is safer today,” David Myers, a professor of Jewish history at UCLA, said.
Anyone who is found to have participated in the violence should be held accountable, as Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, otherwise such attacks are bound to continue as the campus protest movement grows nationwide.
Protesters in encampments on college campuses know they could face arrest over trespassing or failure to disperse, which is what happened Thursday morning as police cleared the UCLA encampment and arrested more than 200 people. That’s part of the deal when undertaking acts of civil disobedience. But protesters should not be subject to physical attacks from people who disagree with them.
Free speech and protest are foundations of the United States — and it’s been a cornerstone of American university life for decades. It’s unacceptable for anyone to try to silence an opinion they don’t agree with through intimidation and violence.
