Biden calls for peace following major clashes on prominent campuses

After a night of tumultuous pro-Palestinian protests and sizable arrests at prominent campuses on the East and West Coasts, President Biden on Thursday forcefully urged demonstrators to remain peaceful in his first extensive statements on the unrest that has swept universities nationwide.

Biden decried the tactics and violence seen on some campuses while supporting the rights of students to make their voices heard.

“We’ve all seen the images,” Biden said. “Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. … Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law.”

The unscheduled remarks were Biden’s most comprehensive yet on the two weeks of contagious pro-Palestinian demonstrations disrupting college life in many parts of the country. They come as former president Donald Trump and other Republicans seize on the escalating clashes to depict the United States as out of control. “These are radical left lunatics,” Trump told reporters Thursday morning. “They gotta be stopped now because it’s going to go on and on and it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Biden has rejected the idea of sending the National Guard to campuses, as some Republican lawmakers, have called for. But in his comments Thursday, he strongly condemned antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

The protests have “put to the test two fundamental American principles,” Biden said. “The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.”

The White House denied Biden was reacting to political pressure in his remarks.

The brief statement at the White House came as the number of arrests of protesters surged past 2,000, following sweeps in which police used stun grenades to clear an encampment at UCLA and arrested dozens at campus across the country, including a 65-year-old professor, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The University of Minnesota reached an “initial agreement” to end the pro-Palestinian encampment there, but clashes continues in other parts of the country.

Video showed a chaotic scene at UCLA on Thursday as police officers clad in body armor fired stun grenades, flattened tents and arrested students before dawn at an encampment of hundreds calling for the university to divest from Israel. At one point, protesters appeared to shoot a fire extinguisher at officers, sending up a white cloud. Authorities said more than 130 were arrested on the campus.

Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science at UCLA, said he was among about 10 faculty members who were arrested along with students. He said he saw officers fire bean bag guns at protesters.

“Once again, we will find ourselves teaching this moment in our classes,” Barreto said. “We were there to protect the students, but once again there was violence.”

UCLA officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.

“Our community is in deep pain. We are reeling from days of violence and division,” UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block wrote in a statement Thursday. “And we hope with all our hearts that we can return to a place where our students, faculty and staff feel safe and, one day, connected again.”

The union representing more than 48,000 University of California system academic workers is weighing when to vote on a possible strike over UCLA’s handling of protests.

“This is a fluid situation and this is all moving pretty quickly,” said Rafael Jaime, co-president of UAW Local 4811, adding that the union is “in dialogue” with the university and encouraging them to “do everything it can to de-escalate the situation.”

The union’s leadership voted Wednesday morning to hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week, saying UC “management must change course.” Any strike would cause “a significant disruption” to research and instruction throughout the UC system,” Jaime said.

UAW Local 4811 represents graduate students, post-docs and other academic workers who serve the system year-round but does not include faculty.

Thousands of miles away on the East Coast, police and pro-Palestinian protesters squared off at Dartmouth College early Thursday.

Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck said she was among the 90 protesters arrested, describing in a telephone interview Thursday how police pushed her to the ground, knelt on her back and fastened her hands in zip ties after she and other members of the faculty formed a protective cordon around student protesters.

Orleck, 65, said she was charged with criminal trespass and is forbidden from entering Dartmouth’s campus as a condition of her bail. Video showed Orleck confronting officers, before she was taken to the ground.

“Brutal is the word that I’m using. It was punitive,” she said. “I told them: ‘I’m 65 years old. I’m old enough to be your mother!’”

Dartmouth officials did not directly address the claims of police violence, but Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock said in a statement that the stand protesters took has consequences.

“People felt so strongly about their beliefs that they were willing to face disciplinary action and arrest,” Beilock wrote in a statement. “While there is bravery in that, part of choosing to engage in this way is not just acknowledging – but accepting – that actions have consequences.”

Yale students also said police “violently assaulted” people carrying out a peaceful protest on the campus Wednesday night.

In a statement from students and community members, protesters said the university police arrested two people without giving the group any warnings. Officers, according to the protest group, then tackled protesters, slammed their faces into the ground, and “shoved and grabbed” people.

The university confirmed that two students and two non-students had been arrested Wednesday night, but said the students had been warned before the arrests. The university did not respond to specific allegations from the student group.

“The group refused to disperse after repeated warnings from the Yale Police Department that they were violating university policies by occupying parts of campus without permission,” said Karen Peart with Yale’s media office.

There were also a number of arrests and other clashes across the country Thursday.

The Portland Police Bureau arrested 12 people – including four students – at Portland State University, as they cleared a library occupied by protesters since Monday.

Twelve people, including 10 students, were arrested at the University of New Hampshire, Tania deLuzuriaga, a spokeswoman for the university, said Thursday. Those arrested by UNH police are charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing.

The crackdowns troubled some lawmakers. Members of the Arizona State Senate and House Democratic caucus wrote to university officials across the state urging them to rescind harsh punishments for protesters and expressing alarm that “students were brutalized” by police on some campuses during protests.

“It is essential you do not undermine the principles of academic freedom and free speech,” the caucus wrote.

The House on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at empowering the federal government to crack down on campus protests by codifying a definition of antisemitism that encompasses not just threats against Jews, but also certain criticisms of Israel itself, but the road ahead in the Senate could be longer.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday that Senate leaders had conducted “hotlines” – polling the members of both parties to see whether the Senate would be able to pass the House bill through unanimous consent – avoiding a lengthy procedure and debate.

But “there are objections on both sides,” Schumer said. “So we’re going to look for the best way to move forward,” leaving the door open to a possible vote – and potentially lengthy Senate debate – on the matter later this month.

There were moments of calm amid the clashes.

The University of Minnesota reached an “initial agreement” to end the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, according to interim president Jeff Ettinger.

“While there is more work to do, and conversations are still planned with other student groups affected by the painful situation in Palestine, I am heartened by today’s progress,” Ettinger wrote in a note to encampment organizers late Wednesday evening.

“While we do not condone tactics that are outside of our policies, we appreciate student leaders’ willingness to engage in dialogue.”

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Leo Sands in London; Andrew Jeong in Seoul; and Justine McDaniel, Abigail Hauslohner, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Clara Ence Morse, Praveena Somasundaram and Yasmeen Abutaleb in Washington contributed to this report.