Questions grow over claims by Eric Adams and NYPD that ‘outside agitators’ behind Columbia protests

New York mayor Eric Adams and police officials are blaming “radicalizaton” 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 Gaza 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 the Wednesday 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.

One reporter asked if authorities are concerned about a “new breed of homegrown terrorist”.

Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence & counterterrorism, said this was not a concern but that authorities are instead focused on “radicalisation”.

Mr Adams acknowledged that the “outside agitator” terminology was used during the 1960s Civil Rights movement to delegitimize protesters.

He added: “But this police department cannot be caught up on Western politically correct terminology, we have to be caught up on public safety.”

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,” Commissoner Sheppard said. “This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities.”

However, social media users point out that 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.

The Independent reported 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.

The NYPD referred The Independent to Wednesday’s press conference when contacted for comment.

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.

In California, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators clashed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Tuesday night with police intervening in the violence. The Los Angeles Police Department has yet to release how many people were arrested.

SWAT teams were deployed to a demonstration at the University of Arizona on Tuesday night. Police declared the gathering an “unlawful assembly” before using tear gas and tearing down a pro-Palestinian encampment, according to the Daily Wildcat student newspaper.

Conflict broke out between protesters and counter-protesters throughout the night on the Tucson campus with some counter-protesters removing parts of the encampment, the student newspaper reported. Officers arrested at least four people, the Arizona Daily Star reports.