Top New York prosecutor says 280 people arrested at campus protests; independent review into UCLA violence – as it happened

15 people injured, one hospitalized, as “instigators” attack UCLA

University of California president Michael Drake says 15 people were injured, including one who was hospitalized, during “a protest that turned violent”, the Associated Press reports.

Columbia students’ final exams will be administered remotely, campus announces

In the wake of mass arrests at Columbia, the university “is strongly encouraging students to leave campus and go home early for the semester”, the Associated Press reported:

The Provost at Columbia University in New York says all final exams and any remaining class sessions should be held remotely for students at its Morningside Heights campus. Any papers, projects or presentations due this week also are being delayed until next week.

The university has been paralyzed by demonstrations, and police have cleared out a building that had been occupied by anti-war protesters.

The university’s student newspaper reported the news earlier in the day:

What will commencement speakers do as universities crack down on student protests?

It’s May. More than a thousand people across the country have already been arrested as pro-Palestinian campus protests spread across the United States.

The Americans scheduled to give inspiring commencement addresses at the universities where students are being jailed are starting to respond.

Yesterday, two commencement speakers scheduled to address law students at the City University of New York reportedly withdrew from the event. One, ACLU president Deborah Archer, explained why:

There’s another standoff between police and demonstrators in the heart of Manhattan this evening, with students at Fordham University’s pro-Palestinian solidarity encampment preparing for arrests by the police.

You can follow Fordham’s student newspaper for up-to-the-minute updates:

Bragg added that his office has not determined how many arrested protesters are “outside agitators”, as city and police officials have alleged.

Bragg said that part of the DA’s investigation will be to identify those arrested and that the student status of protesters is “certainly something we will learn as we proceed”.

Cuny students with the university’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment group have criticized New York police officers for their “brutal and spineless” arrests of protesters.

In a statement posted to X, student protesters say the encampments were peaceful and “engaged in craft workshops, teach-ins and choir performances” earlier in the day.

The students voted unanimously to remain in the encampments overnight.

The students then say that the Cuny president, Vincent G Boudreau, requested NYPD officers, who “viciously attacked” demonstrators.

“Police broke the ankle of an undergraduate student, broke the teeth of two protesters, attacked and burned many students, faculty and at least one journalist with pepper spray at close range, and beat many more with batons,” the student group said in the statement.

The student group added: “We will not be intimidated by these brutal and spineless tactics … We will not stop until these demands are met.”

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, has called for the release of students who have been arrested.

In a series of posts to X, Fain said the UAW “will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice”, adding:

Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong.

Classes remain cancelled at Portland State University in Oregon as a number of protesters continued to occupy a university library on Wednesday.

The university’s president, Ann Cudd, said the administration plans for “a return to classes and regular university operations as soon as possible”.

Protesters began occupying the library on Monday night, and have been warned by university leaders and city officials to leave or face possible charges. About 50 people left the library overnight after the administration offered not to seek criminal charges, expulsion or other discipline, AP reported.

“I urge anyone in the campus community who is able to communicate with friends, family or colleagues inside the Library, to encourage them to leave,” Cudd wrote in an email to university staff and students on Tuesday.

We are trying our best to keep everyone safe while ending this unlawful occupation of our library.

Jared Hoffmann, a Jewish student at the City College of New York, studying documentary filmmaking, said:

The protesters are here in support of the encampment, for SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine and I suspect they’re protesting the brutality of the war in Gaza.

[The students] certainly have strong convictions … a feeling that Zionism itself is aligned with all of the brutal oppressive powers on Earth and various political structures and they consider this an unjust war beyond any sort of any doubt.

I don’t think there’s been an enormous amount of antisemitism, but certainly you can feel within some of the anger and the zealotry of the protesters that there’s a particular zeal to protest against Israel that you might not feel in other protests. It’s a little easier to lump Israel in with KKK and the NYPD as oppressive forces perhaps and that’s connected to some antisemitism.

Eliana Basher, 19, a Jewish BA student in international studies at City University of New York said:

I’m a student. I’m here in solidarity to support the Palestinian Liberation Movement. I’m also a half-Jewish person and I’ve seen what Zionism does firsthand and how it twists the minds of individuals to make them believe that they are superior just because of the fact that they are Jewish. All these corporations in America, they are funding a genocide and I will not have my hands dirty.

Some people think that because you’re Jewish … you’re not going to be safe in these spaces but I really don’t think that’s true whatsoever. I think this is a space for everyone, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whoever you are, white, Black, it doesn’t matter. If you are here to support this movement, you are here and that’s that.

Cuny, [are] are very obviously hoping that this ends today … they’re hoping that this will be the last of it and that we won’t try again but we’re not going to back down.

[Campus administrators] totally just disregard the fact that there’s been 30,000 or 40,000 Palestinian people killed, and they prioritize the lives of the hostages instead. Death is death. It’s all violence.

The Guardian’s Amana Fontanella-Khan spoke to a City University of New York protester, Sam Hernandez, who spoke about why she attended an action in solidarity with students.

Students are making a fair demand that the school divest from genocide. They used the police to shut them down. I saw people shoved and pushed by cops.

I haven’t seen any politicians support us and the media coverage has been biased. They want to make the protesters look like they are wrong. If you are paying tuition, you should have a right to say how your money is used. We all have a say. We all pay taxes. Standing up for what’s right isn’t a crime.”

At University of Wisconsin, Madison, police arrested scores of protesters who demonstrated against what a UN expert, students and politicians have called a genocide in Gaza.

Here are photos showing the police presence on campus:

The Guardian’s Dani Anguiano is on UCLA’s campus, speaking with students about attacks on pro-Palestinian demonstrators yesterday.

UCLA students who witnessed the moments leading up to a violent attack on pro-Palestinian protesters described a harrowing scene.

A large group of counter-protesters wearing black with white masks made their way to an encampment and began striking students with planks of wood and pepper spray, Daniel Harris, a student at the school, said on Wednesday morning.

The fourth-year student had been observing the protests in recent days and said they were largely peaceful until the violence overnight.

It was surreal seeing the masked counter-protesters march through campus, he said.

“This is stuff that only happens in movies,” he said he thought at the time.

Meghna Mair, a second-year undergraduate who said she took part in pro-Palestinian protests last week, also witnessed the masked group march through campus on their way to the encampment.

“I knew where they were going,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was so sickened and horrified.”

The UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine have issued a statement following protesters being attacked by counter-demonstrators on Wednesday.

Protesters on UCLA’s campus have been demonstrating against what students and a UN expert have called a genocide. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s attacks in Gaza, a series of military offensives that many have called a genocide.

In a Wednesday press release, the student group wrote: “The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror. For over seven hours, zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, and threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment.”

Students added that counter-protesters broke down barriers “in an attempt to kill our community”.

The student group added: “The university’s hypocrisy [is] all too apparent, as signs of this escalation were reported, documented, and indicated early on … the university would rather see us dead than divest.”

Read the full post here.

Here’s the Guardian’s Dani Anguiano, who is reporting from UCLA’s campus.

The mood was tense around UCLA’s tree-lined campus on Wednesday, following violent clashes between protesters overnight.

A helicopter hovered overhead while groups of security guards and law enforcement stood around a sectioned off area of campus filled with tents.

Students slowed as they passed the barricades, taking in the scene.

“I think all of us are in a state of shock because of the violence,” said Noah, a UCLA law student who only felt comfortable using their first name.

The Guardian’s Amana Fontanella-Khan spoke to a Cuny faculty member at yesterday’s protest who shared why they attended an action in solidarity with students.

Vinny Djugashvili, who teaches at Cuny, said: “I’m here because it’s the only decent and reasonable thing to do.”

Asked whether he worries about professional reprisals, he says: “I’d rather not be unemployed. But if it’s between a job and conscience, you have to choose conscience every time.”

“The most amazing thing is that the students – who are mostly led by women – pose such a threat to these institutions. You have to ask what this is really about. They say it’s about antisemitism. They say it’s about freedom of speech. If you’ve been on the encampment, there were so many people of Jewish background who were there. It’s a multi-racial encampment. They say that all genocides must end. All occupations must end. That threatens something very essential to how this system works. These students have hit on something essential. These students are the most inspiring people I’ve met. I’m honored to stand by them.”

The Columbia University encampment, where students protested what a UN expert has called a genocide in Gaza, has been swept by New York police.

But images show the physical imprints left by student protestors.

Squares on Columbia’s lawn show where the students’ tents previously set up.

From Politico’s Irie Sentner:

Students at Fordham University have started their own encampment in solidarity with student protestors nationwide.

Fordham students have set up protests inside the university, hours after New York police swept similar encampments at Columbia University and Cuny.

Police officers are posted outside the encampment.

Those without a student ID are not being permitted to enter the building, as a small protest in support of students happens outside.

From reporter Sophie Hurwitz:

New York police have tried to characterize a standard bike lock found on Columbia’s campus as a tool brought in by outside “professionals”, much to the mockery of others online.

The latest comments from New York police come as law enforcement alleges that outside agitators were present at protests on Columbia’s campus, triggering police response. That allegation has not been verified.

Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard claimed that a chain and a bike lock were used to secure doors in Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.

Sheppard said that such tools were “not what students bring to school”. “This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities,” Sheppard said of the bike lock.

In a viral post, people on X pointed out that the chains are commonly used by cyclists to secure their bikes.

Moreover, bike locks are available for sale by Columbia University’s public safety department as apart of their “Crime Prevention Discount Bike, Locker and Laptop Lock Program”.

From the New York Times’ Aric Toler:

Donald Trump suggested that pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses were done to take attention away from issues at the US-Mexico border.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump attempted to thread the theory that demonstrations in support of a Gaza ceasefire were done to “take the FOCUS away from our Southern Border”.

Do you think that the Radical Left Lunatics that are causing all of the CHAOS at our Colleges and Universities are doing so in order to take the FOCUS away from our Southern Border, where millions of people, many from prisons and mental institutions, are pouring into our Country? Just askin’…???

The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani described the scene at the City University of New York in Manhattan, as scores of student protestors were arrested.

As the protesters (from Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, New School University and Columbia) reached the City University of New York (Cuny) around 7.00pm, dozens of police officers rushed to stand in front of the campus gates, which were already secured with barricades.

The protesters demanded they be allowed in, and nudged towards the barricades. They chanted slogans throughout including: ‘Cuny, Cuny, your hands are red, 40,000 Palestinians are dead.’ They also criticized the police for being Israel trained. Police pushed some of the protesters to the ground, and several people were arrested. One young woman wearing a hijab was in tears after a police officer charged into her. This was around 7.30pm.

The students were upset and frustrated at being blocked, but they were non-violent. The police were clearly escalating the situation. By 8pm, there seemed to be hundreds of police on the scene, many carrying truncheons and zip ties.

The students were trying to find a way onto campus but were being directed into streets which were blocked off by barricades or police.

We could hear lots of sirens coming from all directions. Several buses arrived which were later used to transport the detained protesters. They were young, non-violent and incensed at the US and university support for Israel.

The police response was excessive.

The Guardian’s video department has compiled a summary of the violence at UCLA overnight.

ABC showed footage of LAPD officers moving to disperse the crowd.

They corralled the pro-Israel counter-protesters and moved them away from the encampment.

No arrests appeared to be made immediately, with officers focusing on separating them from the encampment.

Katy Yaroslavsky, a member of Los Angeles city council representing district 5, said the clashes were “out of control”.

“Everyone has a right to free speech and protest, but the situation on UCLA’s campus is out of control and is no longer safe. I’m grateful to LAPD and Mayor Bass for stepping in to ensure the safety of everyone on campus,” Yaroslavsky posted on social media.

According to footage from Fox News, a group of men attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment shortly after midnight.

Someone shot a firework at the encampment, which exploded. Others used pepper spray against the protesters, with some of them spraying it in return. The men forcefully tore down the camp while the protesters attempted to repair it.

Several loud explosions were heard to go off, as students screamed.

Fox News reported that campus security were not present on the scene.

The clashes continued for several hours.

The spokesperson for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said the university had asked for police to intervene, and that the force would respond.

Police in riot gear who have arrived on campus have not immediately intervened, according to the Associated Press.

According to Reuters, people threw things and shoved and kicked one another. Some armed with sticks beat others. At one point, a group piled on one person who lay on the ground, kicking and beating them until others pulled them out of the scrum.

The clashes took place just outside a tent encampment, where pro-Palestinian protesters erected barricades and plywood for protection — and counter-protesters tried to pull them down. Police vehicles could be seen nearby, but officers did not immediately intervene.

Fireworks were set off and objects thrown in footage shown by KABC.

The clashes began in the early hours of Wednesday shortly after Gene Block, the UCLA Chancellor, said the campus’s pro-Palestinian encampment was “unlawful” and said students who remained in it would face disciplinary action.

Aerial footage from broadcaster KABC, an affiliate of ABC, showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack wooden boards being held up as a makeshift barricade to protect pro-Palestinian protesters, some holding placards or umbrellas, Reuters reports.

We’re pausing our live coverage here. If you’d like to read more, the Guardian’s full report on the arrests made at Columbia University can be found here.

In a letter to New York police requesting assistance on campus, the City College of New York said that protesters had ignored requests and their conduct had interfered with the safety of the campus.

Sharing the request on X, New York police deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry said the actions of protesters raised serious safety concerns for the university communities.

Let me be abundantly clear. New Yorkers will not stand for lawlessness. Our officers will continue to protect the public with the utmost professionalism.

A striking feature of New York’s campus protests is how many student-protestors say they are unwilling to talk to the press because they had not been “media-trained.”

Pressed on their reluctance, some protesters at CUNY said the media had been under-reporting and distorting what has been going on, both in regards to the Israel-Hamas war and the international protests against Israel that followed.

“All we’re saying is we’re not happy university tuition fees are being used to fund wars, and we want to see what we can do about it, but without violence,” one protester said.

Others at CUNY were unimpressed by the attitude toward law enforcement.

“They’re also human beings”, said a demonstrator. “They’re following orders. Who do they call when there’s a shooting?”

Earlier we reported that a number of students had left Columbia as the arrests began and moved north to the City College Of New York (CUNY) campus where a protest sit in was still in effect.

A NYPD official told the Guardian that the situation at CUNY was “a work in progress.

Images from the campus show a significant police presence, facing off against protesters.

Soon after police moved into Columbia, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that if any student was hurt in the operation, responsibility would fall on the mayor and university presidents.

She urged New York mayor Eric Adams to “reverse course”.

Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making.

A reminder that this is the second time in a matter of days that police have been brought in to breakup protests at Columbia University.

On 18 April, Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik confirmed that she had authorised police to begin clearing an encampment on the campus.

More than 100 students were arrested and their tents were torn down. Some students were suspended as well.

As a result, hundreds of faculty members held a mass walkout on 22 April to protest against the school’s decision to have police arrest students. The protest encampment returned at the same time.

We’re getting some reaction from other students at Columbia university.

Fabien Lugo is a first-year accounting student who says he wasn’t involved in the protests. But he’s told Associated Press (AP) that he opposes the university’s decision to call in police.

“They’ve shut down everything. This is too intense,” he said. “It feels like more of an escalation than a de-escalation.”

Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “leftist Zionist” student at Columbia, says it’s been hard to concentrate on school for weeks.

She says her exams have been punctuated with chants of “say it loud, say it clear, we want Zionists out of here” in the background, she told AP.

As police shut down anti-Israel protests at Columbia, making dozens of arrests, students were reportedly moving north to the CUNY campus where a protest sit in was still in effect.

The comprehensive police operation at Columbia has involved hundreds of officers who have held a perimeter of closed streets surrounding the university.

The takeover of Hamilton Hall – named after one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton – followed the failure of talks with university authorities aimed at winning the protesters’ agreement to dismantle an encampment of about 120 tents.

What were the students demanding?

Nothing less than Columbia’s divestment from companies they say profit from Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, has rejected divestment calls. But the university offered an accelerated timeline to review student divestment proposals by the institution’s Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers such questions. In a febrile atmosphere, protesters dismissed it as insufficient.

What other factors are in play?

Some Jewish students have said they have felt threatened and allege they have been subjected to antisemitic slurs. Similar complaints have been levelled at other protest-hit campuses.

Protesters – some of whom are Jewish – counter that instances of antisemitism are being exaggerated and conflated with condemnation of Israel, and leveraged in an effort to snuff out legitimate criticism of the state.

How much does this resonate beyond the university campus?

The spectre of enduring protests, creating the impression of chaos and disorder on America’s university campuses, could undermine Joe Biden’s re-election chances.

Fox News has already sensed the potential for a campaign issue, running round-the-clock footage of the scenes from Columbia in a switch of focus from the US-Mexico border, previously seen as the Republicans’ biggest potential vote-winner.

Worse still for Biden, the Democratic party’s student organisation, College Democrats of America, has endorsed the protests, saying in a statement: “As representatives of youth across the country, we reserve the right to criticise our own party when it fails to represent youth voices.”

By contrast, the protests were denounced on Tuesday’s by Biden’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, who called them “absolutely the wrong approach”.

More images of police loading detained students into buses outside of Columbia have come in. It’s being reported that at least 50 people were arrested after police entered the university to clear out Hamilton Hall – an academic building that was being occupied by pro-Palestine protesters.

A huge number of police have now left the area around the campus, but a significant presence remains.

New York police deputy commissioner, Kaz Daughtry, has posted an update saying Columbia requested assistance to “take back their campus”.

He said that police were “dispersing the unlawful encampment and persons barricaded inside of university buildings and restoring order.”

Former president Donald Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News on Tuesday evening to comment on the chaos at Columbia, as live footage of police clearing Hamilton Hall aired. Trump praised the officers.

“But it should never have gotten to this,” he told Hannity. “And they should have done it a lot sooner than before they took over the building because it would have been a lot easier if they were in tents rather than a building.”

The Guardian has published video of the moment that police entered the occupied building at Columbia, Hamilton Hall.

A long line of police officers were seen climbing into the occupied building through a second-story window, using a vehicle with a ladder to gain access to the upper floor.

Reuters is reporting that dozens of other officers swarmed over the nearby protest encampment, as onlooking students standing just outside the campus jeered them with shouts of “Shame, shame!”

Before long, officers were seen leading handcuffed protesters to police vehicles outside campus gates.

Police boarded about 50 detainees on to a bus, each of them with their hands bound behind their backs with zip ties, the entire scene illuminated with flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles.

The New York Times is reporting that there were five buses in total, however it’s unclear how many were filled with detained protesters.

“Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled “let the students go”.

The occupation of Hamilton Hall came after protesters’ defied a 2pm Monday deadline to abandon their camp at Columbia or face suspension. The university promptly began suspending participating students.

Posts on an Instagram page for protest organisers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment on campus and join them at Hamilton Hall. Those signs of supports surfaced as the UN human rights chief said he was “troubled” by how law enforcement has dealt with the recent wave of campus demonstrations.

The student radio station, WKCR-FM, broadcast a play-by-play of the hall’s takeover – which occurred nearly 12 hours after Monday’s 2pm deadline for the protesters to leave an encampment of about 120 tents or face suspension.

That ultimatum came after the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, announced that efforts to reach a compromise with protest organisers had failed. She said that the institution would not bow to demands to divest from Israel.

At an evening news conference held a few hours before police entered Columbia, mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.

Police said they based their conclusions in part on escalating tactics in the occupation, including vandalism, use of barricades to block entrances and destruction of security cameras.

Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.

We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now.”

One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on a student visa, disputed assertions that outsiders had initiated the occupation.

“They’re students,” he told Reuters.

Live television images show a huge police presence on the Columbia campus.

Reuters reported that officers in a riot unit yelled “we’re clearing it out” as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building occupied building.

“Shame! shame!” jeered many onlooking undergrads still outside on campus.

Police were seen trying to enter the building through a window:

Protesters blocked the entrance to Hamilton Hall with tables, linked arms to form a barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.

Earlier on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Columbia said that students who took over the academic building now face expulsion.

Dozens of protesters took over Hamilton Hall, an academic building on the New York campus, barricading the entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag out of a window.

Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang said:

We made it very clear [on Monday] that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules … Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences. Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation – vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances – we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday.

Hamilton Hall was one of several buildings occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protest on the campus.

Now student protesters there have overtaken it once again, displaying a large banner that reads “Hind’s Hall”, renaming it in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza City who was killed by Israeli forces earlier this year.

Images from around Columbia show a large police presence close to the entrance to the university. After entering the university, it’s understood that a police contingent moved towards Hamilton Hall, the building being occupied by protesters.