Biden calls for peace after campus clashes

After a week of tumultuous pro-Palestinian protests and sizable arrests at prominent campuses on the East and West Coasts, US President Joe Biden has 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 media. “They gotta be stopped now.”

Biden has rejected the idea of sending the National Guard to campuses, as some Republican lawmakers, have called for. But in his comments on 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 2000, 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 (local time) as police officers clad in body armour 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.

“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.”

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

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

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

Thousands of kilometres away on the East Coast, police and pro-Palestinian protesters squared off at Dartmouth College and 90 protesters were arrested.

Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock said the stand being taken by protesters has consequences.