From the Liveblog of
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Head of UCLA says school should have removed anti-Israel encampment before violence erupted
WASHINGTON – The head of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) tells a US House panel that the school should have been ready to immediately remove an anti-Israel encampment that became the site of a violent clash with counter-protesters last month.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is one of three US university leaders testifying at a hearing of the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives’ Education Committee into the wave of protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza that has unfolded on American campuses over the past two months.
“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk,” Block tells the panel.
UCLA was the site of an April 30 overnight mob attack on anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian activists that was one of the most violent scenes of the recent protests.
Yesterday, the university removed the head of its campus police for its handling of the protests, which included inaction during the attack and the arrests by state and local police of 210 people the next night.
“The recent images from UCLA are appalling. What is more appalling is that it was completely preventable,” says Ilhan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman on the panel. “You, the UCLA leadership and law enforcement stood by for hours as the mob of agitators gathered near the encampment with the clear intention to cause violence.”
Block disputes that assertion.
The heads of Northwestern University in Illinois and Rutgers University of New Jersey also testify at the sixth event the committee and its subcommittees have held on schools’ responses to tensions that have flared since Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.
House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx says that each university had failed to enforce its own rules, preserve campus safety and protect Jewish students.
“Today’s hearing is the beginning, not the end, of the committee’s investigation of your institutions,” Foxx tells the university presidents.
Some of the most contentious questioning is aimed at Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern, which reached an agreement with protesters to end their demonstration. The Anti-Defamation League, a group dedicated to fighting antisemitism, has criticized the university for that agreement.
“President Schill, we’ve heard accounts of horrific violence and harassment of Jewish students on your campus, but you admitted you have not suspended a single student since October 7 for antisemitic conduct,” says Foxx. “You’ve refused to answer basic questions on topics.”
