Biden says 'order must prevail' on US campuses amid protests

A demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag inside a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Toronto campus in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on May 2, 2024. [AFP]

US President Joe Biden insisted Thursday that "order must prevail" on college campuses after weeks of turmoil, clashes with police and mass arrests involving student protests against Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.

Biden, who had remained tight-lipped as the student unrest expanded, spoke just hours after hundreds of police moved in to forcibly clear a sprawling encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, tearing down barriers and detaining more than 200 protestors.

For weeks, authorities on campuses from New York to California have tried to thread the needle between the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, resulting in more than 2,000 arrests in two weeks as university terms end.

"We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent," Biden, who has faced criticism from all sides of the political spectrum over the demonstrations, said in a televised statement from the White House.

"But neither are we a lawless country. We're a civil society, and order must prevail," he added.

Earlier, UCLA students clad in white helmets linked arms and formed a line facing off against officers, who were detaining protesters and leading them away.

"About 300 protesters voluntarily left, while more than 200 resisted orders to disperse and were arrested," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said.

Police used flashbangs to disperse the crowds gathered outside the encampment who chanted "Let them go!" as helicopters hovered overhead.

Officers blocked stairs accessing the site, with students dressed in yellow jackets and serving as medics telling AFP they were being largely prevented from reaching the area.

In another part of the encampment, students carrying umbrellas, helmets and plastic shields squared off against police in mostly tense silence, with sporadic chants of "Free Palestine!" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

The large police presence, including LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers, came after law enforcement were criticized for being slow to act during violent clashes late Tuesday, when counter-protesters attacked the encampment of pro-Palestinian students.

UCLA said classes would be remote on Thursday and Friday due to the "emergency on campus," and warned students to avoid the protest area.

Wave of unrest

Demonstrators have gathered on at least 40 US university campuses since last month, often erecting tent camps to protest the soaring death toll in the Gaza Strip.

Officers detained several people at Fordham University in New York and cleared a protest set up inside a school building, officials said.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters dug in, blocking an avenue near the center of the campus in Cambridge during the height of Wednesday afternoon's rush hour commute.

The University of Texas at Dallas saw police remove an encampment and arrest at least 17 people for "criminal trespass," the school said.

Police said about 300 arrests were made at Columbia and another New York university this week.

The mayor's office said Thursday night that almost half of those arrested at the two schools Tuesday night were people unaffiliated with the schools.

Balancing act

Like university leaders, Biden's administration has also tried to walk the fine line between free speech and complaints of intimidation.

Republicans have accused him of being soft on what they say is anti-Semitic sentiment among the protesters, while he faces widespread opposition in his own party for his strong support for Israel's war on Gaza.

"There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for anti-Semitism, or threats of violence against Jewish students," Biden said Thursday.

Biden's Republican election rival Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly praised the police response and called for a full crackdown, denouncing "radical left lunatics" in comments from the New York courthouse where he is on trial over a hush-money scheme.

"To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students," he told a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday.

The Gaza war started when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also took about 250 hostages.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,500 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.