LOS ANGELES — The University of California, Los Angeles will resume in-person classes Wednesday after a former lecturer who sent campus members a video referencing a mass shooting and an 800-page manifesto with specific threats was taken into custody Tuesday by police in Boulder, Colorado.
Matthew Harris, who was let go by UCLA last year following widespread complaints about his behavior as a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy, was taken into custody peacefully at 11:07 a.m. after a three-hour-long barricade at his apartment, Boulder police said. Officials said his manifesto contained references to Boulder “in a university and schoolyard setting.”
“The level of violence we saw in the manifesto was obviously alarming,” said Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold. “It was very violent and it was very disturbing.”
Boulder police made contact with Harris in October but did not say more about the incident. In November, Harris attempted to buy a firearm in Jefferson County, Colorado, and was denied the purchase. Officials said Harris was in a national database that included a provision that he was not allowed to purchase or possess a firearm. No criminal charges were filed.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday that he believes the UCLA campus is safe.
In a campus message Tuesday, UCLA officials told students they were “greatly relieved” that Harris is in custody and offered campus counseling for anyone needing it.
“The threats made yesterday were frightening for many of us and caused our community to feel vulnerable at an already challenging time,” said Suzanne L. Seplow, assistant vice chancellor for student development and health, and Michael Deluca, assistant vice chancellor for campus life.
Several students, however, complained that UCLA was too slow in alerting the campus about the threats and announcing that classes would shift online for safety.
Sherrilyn Roush, philosophy department chair, sent an alert to department members at 3:27 p.m. Monday that Harris had begun contacting UCLA with threatening emails and YouTube videos and said campus police and behavioral specialists were “investigating with urgency.”
By 6:30 p.m., someone posted on Reddit a subsequent department alert recommending that professors hold classes remotely as the material included a video titled “UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting” and an “800-page manifesto with specific threats toward some members of the department.” Several emails from philosophy department leaders and multiple instructors obtained by the Los Angeles Times on Monday night alerted students that in-person classes would not be held.
UCLA tweeted its first campuswide message at 9:25 p.m. saying that UCLA police were aware of a “concerning email and posting” sent to some Bruins. Police were engaged with out-of-state law enforcement and would keep the community informed, the tweet said.
That created an instant backlash on Twitter. “What @UCLA and @UCPDLA are failing to inform students and staff of is that this “concerning email” is a major mass shooter threat at UCLA,” one person tweeted.
It was not until 11:57 p.m. that UCLA tweeted that all classes would be held remotely “out of an abundance of caution.” Campus police were “actively working with out-of-state & federal agencies,” the tweet said. At the time UCLA did not release information about the location of the person of interest.
Asked about the delay in notifications, a UCLA spokesman pointed to the statement Tuesday by administrators Seplow and Deluca thanking campus police and other law enforcement for “thoroughly investigating these threats as soon as we learned of them and for coordinating to locate and arrest the individual in Colorado.”
But Lizette Garcia, a 22-year-old sociology student, said she was “speechless” that the notification of remote classes came so late and failed to mention the mass shooting threat that had been circulating for hours on social media. She was in a Zoom class Monday evening when her phone started blowing up with messages about Harris and his threats on a GroupMe chat with her classmates. For the rest of the evening, Garcia stayed glued to her phone, scouring Reddit threads, Twitter and GroupMe chats for details about what was happening. She checked her email repeatedly, waiting to hear from UCLA officials and her professors about it.
In the middle of midterms season, Garcia put all her homework and studying aside, unable to focus. The Orange County, California, resident said she didn’t want to go to bed without knowing whether classes would be held remotely and criticized the late notification as “pretty unprofessional.”
Jorge Cruz, a doctoral student in Chicano studies, also found out about the threats through a WhatsApp group chat, a teacher’s assistant and the Daily Bruin student newspaper before any official university notice. But he didn’t fault UCLA.
“I don’t blame the university,” said Cruz, 29. “On the back end, they were probably trying to verify all the facts. I think they handled it the best way they could.”
Moore said the LAPD became aware Monday night of “online media posts involving YouTube videos and a manifesto” from a former UCLA lecturer, indicating that he was “potentially planning for a mass violence or shooting event at UCLA.”
The chief said that the department’s mental evaluation unit had previous contact with the individual in the spring of 2021 and that the department took the online threats seriously.
On Sunday, Harris sent an email just before 1 a.m. to his former students, replete with racist slurs against Jewish and East Asian people. Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck confirmed in an Instagram video Monday night that UCLA staff members were aware that Harris had messaged students.
According to an email sent to members of the psychology department and obtained by the Times, UCLA police told a member of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology that “at this time we’re not concerned about anything happening.”
Harris’ YouTube channel contained more than 300 videos, the majority of which were uploaded Monday. By midnight, the channel displayed a message saying that the account had been terminated.
A video titled “UCLA PHILOSOPHY (MASS SHOOTING)” was posted Sunday and contained disturbing imagery, including footage of the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival and clips from the 2003 movie “Zero Day,” which is loosely based on the Columbine High School mass shooting.
In several videos, Harris makes racist comments. He also cryptically names specific locations on the UCLA campus as he says they’re added to his “list.”
He talks off-camera while he plays a video game in which he runs around a virtual city, firing a gun at cars and people.
In one video, he repeats, “Do you make explosives?”
“Someday the s--- might actually hit the fan,” Harris said.
The Times obtained a partial copy of Harris’ email to the UCLA philosophy department.
He makes references to race and uses several profanities. He included links to his manifesto and videos, including the video that appeared to threaten a mass shooting.
“da war is comin,” he wrote. “forward dis (expletive) to our tha goldhead caucasoid princess.”
In reviews left on bruinwalk.com, a site where students can post anonymous reviews of professors and other staff members, two students described Harris’ disturbing and erratic behavior as a lecturer.
Harris “is extremely unprofessional and has sent his personal p*rnographic content to a student,” according to one review.
In a separate post, another student described Harris’ class as their least favorite at UCLA “ever” and said many students had complained to the department about his behavior.
A philosophy department newsletter from spring 2019 stated Harris would join the university as a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy after completing his dissertation at Duke University.
“He works on philosophy of race, personal identity, and related issues in philosophy of mind,” the newsletter stated.
Harris was placed on leave last year while campus officials investigated reports that he sent a video with pornographic content to a student, according to the Daily Bruin. His term as a postdoctoral fellow was set to end in June.
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(Times staff writers Kevin Rector and Richard Winton contributed to this report.)
