Just like every other authoritarian government wanting to diminish and discredit legitimate protests, New York City officials are blaming “outside agitators” for much of the student movement at Columbia University. In so doing, city officials send the message that the protests are not homegrown, but imported from the outside.
By attributing the protests to persons not affiliated with the university (students, professors, staff), city authorities score several objectives:
- 👉Delegitimize the protest movement. In plain terms, the Mayor and NYPD infantilize the students, professors and staff of the university by implying that they are incapable of acting on their own: Our students are not smart enough to conduct the protests by themselves.
- 👉Diminish the importance of the protest movement. Our students and professors would never go so far as demand freedom for Palestine from the claws of Zionist Israel.
- 👉 Justify the use of violence by NYPD. The Police seem to be saying, “our violent action is aimed at the ‘outside agitators’, not at the students.
New York mayor Eric Adams and NYPD officials are blaming “radicalization” by “outside agitators” for the Columbia University protests that resulted in more than 100 arrests on Tuesday night.
“After speaking with [Columbia] throughout the week, at their request and their acknowledgement that outside agitators were on their grounds... we went in and conducted an operation,” Mr. Adams said, at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Hundreds of NYPD officers in riot gear stormed Columbia’s campus overnight after protesters occupied Hamilton Hall 24 hours earlier. Police used drones for surveillance and then a “SWAT ramp” was attached to the roof of a truck for officers enter the barricaded building and clear protesters. Some 109 people were arrested. In total, 282 protesters were arrested at New York schools on Tuesday as violence flared at campus protests across the country. However official explanations given by New York officials on Wednesday were swiftly called into question by Columbia professors and reporters.
At a Wednesday (May 1) press briefing, journalists pushed city officials for more details on the “agitators” asking if they had been identified and how many were involved in the Columbia protests. Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence & counterterrorism, said this was not a concern but that authorities are instead focused on “radicalization”. Mr.. Adams acknowledged that the “outside agitator” terminology was used during the 1960s Civil Rights movement to delegitimize protesters.
Later on Wednesday, Columbia faculty members rejected claims from Mr.. Adams and the police that the protests were led by “outside agitators.” “When I was a student, back in the 60s, we were told we were led by a bunch of outside agitators by politicians nobody remembers the name of today,” said Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi at a press conference on campus.
He said that Columbia’s school administrators will “go down in infamy” for their actions against protesters and calling in the NYPD to remove them. Police officials also described makeshift weapons used by the “agitators.” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard appeared on MSNBC morning show, Morning Joe, on Wednesday with a bike chain that he said protesters used to barricade Hamilton Hall.
“This is not what students bring to school,” Commissioner Sheppard said. “This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities.” However, the same bike chain is sold by Columbia’s public safety office to students.
The NYPD also faced questions over press access during clearing of protests. On Wednesday, Mr.. Adams said the national press was able to report from the scene. “National independent journalists acknowledged what the police department did yesterday and they were on the ground to see it,” he said. But reporters said that the NYPD prevented media from accessing the campus and closed off entire city blocks around the university on Tuesday.
Later, the NYPD confined at least a dozen reporters and legal observers for nearly an hour with a group of protesters, refusing to allow them to leave a cordoned-off area as they loaded arrested students on to buses.
For weeks, Gaza protests have roiled college campuses across the US as demonstrators have demanded that schools divest from Israel in light of the heavy bombings in the territory that followed the Hamas militant group’s 7 October attack.
CNN anchor Erin Burnett pressed New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on his claims of “outside agitators” at the recent pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
“Do you have any ability at this point to tell us how many of those were ‘outside agitators’ and how many of them were students at Columbia University?” Burnett said on her CNN show Wednesday.
Adams responded that there was “clear evidence of training that was conducted by an outside agitator, that was not a student, did not belong on the campus.”
“In addition to that, we saw people participating and allowing people access to Hamilton Hall,” Adams continued, referring to the building on Columbia’s campus that was taken over by protesters Tuesday morning.
Adams then said he “received a letter from the school” and that in that letter, the school claimed that there were “outside individuals who were on the grounds, [participating in] this activity.”
Burnett then questioned if there would be a “breakdown” from Adams’s office or the New York City Police Department on how many of the people arrested Tuesday night were actually Columbia students.
“Here’s what we can do, we’re allowed to do,” Adams said. “We’re going to give the complete list of those who are arrested and turn it over to the school, and the school will make the determination. We’re not going to release student’s name, but the school can make the determination of giving you a breakdown … of the difference between students and nonstudents. They would have that authorization to do so.” Violence erupted at Columbia the previous night, as NYPD cracked down on pro-Palestinian protesters at the school. The New York mayor said Tuesday at a press conference that the protests at Columbia were “co-opted by professional outside agitators”
Adams on Wednesday said “outside agitators” are influencing college protests; these “agitators are not affiliated with the university” and are known to the department, according to NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner.
“There are a number of different individuals who we know from over the years associated with protests, not just in our city but in other cities as well, who are linked to and who see doing training around the change of tactics,” Weiner said.
Adams said these alleged professionals are impacting the students. “Young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children,” Adams said. “And I’m not going to allow that to happen as the mayor of New York.”
Student organizers said the takeover was inspired by previous campus anti-war movements after negotiations over the University’s financial ties to Israel fell through, according to students with Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
“This escalation is in line with the historical student movements of 1968, 1985, and 1996, which Columbia repressed then and celebrates today,” wrote the organizers in a statement to Instagram.
The NYPD and University have faced criticism for their response to student protests, which students and faculty have called brutal and “heavy-handed.” “We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the heavy-handed, militaristic response to student activism that we are seeing across the country,” wrote representatives of the American Association of University Professors in a statement.
“At this critical moment, too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests.”
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