The University of California, Los Angeles has not only authorized the use of police violence, including tear gas and rubber bullets, against its own students, but has even enabled violent counter-protesters to harass, intimidate, and brutalize their student population, seemingly due to their activism in support of Palestinian human rights. Its seeming disregard for the safety of its own students and affiliates has made it among the most dangerous university campuses today for Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other anti-genocide students.
UCLA has touted its commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The institution has previously taken credit for the work of student protesters advocating for racial equality and indigenous rights in the civil rights era, claiming that “for a century, UCLA has been a model for student activism and civic leadership.” However, when Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other anti-genocide student protesters attempted to take part in that century-long tradition of student activism, UCLA not only reportedly failed to protect them from external attacks but further sought to silence them.
On May 2, UCLA authorized police officers in riot gear to clear the UCLA student encampment protesting against genocide in Gaza, where more than 200 protestors were arrested. Officers in “body armor, helmets and face shields” reportedly launched flares over the encampment, and at least one officer is seen on video “shooting rubber bullets into the crowd.” A professor reports that “students and faculty were left on the ground bleeding, gassed or concussed while private security personnel and LAPD riot police stood by without intervening.” While California Highway Patrol denied claims that its officers fired indiscriminately at protesters, “independent accounts from the scene and reviews of video, including by CalMatters and The Times, found officers did shoot into crowds, and aimed weapons at parts of protesters’ bodies that they should not have.”
While UCLA saw it fit to use police violence against students protesters, it reportedly did not see reason to intervene when, the previous evening on April 30, masked pro-Israel counter-protesters entered campus with “bear mace and other chemical irritants, hammers, knives, stink bombs, high grade fireworks, baseball bats, [and] metal and wooden rods” and brutally attacked students at the encampment for hours with no law enforcement intervention. Videos emerged of counter-protesters beating students with poles and wooden boards, shooting fireworks at the encampment, spraying individuals with chemical irritants, and perpetrating other acts of violence, leaving multiple students in need of serious medical attention. Counter-protesters could be heard on video threatening and mocking the student protesters, even chanting “the score is 30,000!”—a disturbing reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel at the time.
Even after officers began to arrive more than two hours later, counter-protesters continued to attack the encampment, as officers stood by and refused to protect the protesters from the pro-Israel mob. Protesters had reportedly begged campus security to intervene. A UCLA alumnus was reportedly told that “the violence ‘was their fault.’” Students, family, and friends reportedly inundated the UCLA Police Department with calls “only to be told that the situation was ‘under control’ and have operators hang up in their face.” Weeks following the incident, university officials “still had not explained why security officers stood by for hours while the attack was underway.”
However, the April 30 attack was the culmination of days of violence and harassment targeting student protesters, during which UCLA not only failed to intervene but even seemed to enable the counter-protesters. In the week leading up to April 30, counter-protesters reportedly entered the encampment and verbally harassed the student protesters, yelling obscene slurs, racist insults, and violent threats, including “f*** Allah,” “Hamas would kill you f***,” “Palestine is a graveyard,” and “you’re a terrorist.” They reportedly sexually harassed Black women, threatened to rape them, and called them ‘slaves’ and other racial slurs. Counter-protesters also reportedly physically assaulted students in the encampment, spraying them with chemical irritants and emptying a backpack full of mice injected with an unknown substance into the encampment. Reports indicate that UCLA campus security did not intervene to keep the pro-Israel mob away from the encampment, nor did the university administration take any tangible action to protect the student protesters from the violent counter-protesters.
It appears that UCLA enabled the harassment of its students: while the university did not authorize the students’ peaceful protest, it reportedly granted permission for counter-protesters to place a massive flat screen TV with powerful speakers adjacent to the encampment, which played graphic footage including a children’s song reportedly used by “Israeli soldiers as a form of ‘noise torture’ on Palestinian captives.” Even after the dust had settled, the university did not appear to investigate or hold accountable the counter-protesters who carried out such acts of violence, tacitly endorsing racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination against their own students.
