(ABC News) Protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have been allegedly “co-opted” by what New York City police officials described as professional outside agitators bent on sowing chaos and violence.
Top police brass in New York said at a news conference Wednesday that protesters unaffiliated with Columbia University have been escalating violence.
“I know that there are those who are attempting to say, ‘Well, the majority of the people have been students.’ You don’t have to be the majority to influence and co-opt an operation. That’s what this is about,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The mayor added, “We’re going to protect our city from those who are attempting to do what is happening globally. There is a movement to radicalize young people and I’m not going to wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it.”
“These external actors are obviously not students and their presence on campus is a violation of Columbia’s clearly stated policy,” Adams said during a press briefing Tuesday. “This is to serve their own agenda. They are not here to promote peace or unity or allow the peaceful displaying of one voice. But they’re here to create discord and divisiveness.”
On Tuesday night, police arrested nearly 300 people at Columbia University, and at City College of New York in Harlem, the latter where Adams said officers had bottles and garbage cans thrown at them as they moved in to make arrests.
The mayor said demonstrators who occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall were guided by people who have no connection to Columbia University. He further said those arrested were at the time still being processed by police, who were determining who is a student and who is not.
The arrests at Columbia and CCNY Harlem came hours after Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD deputy commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said officers have observed outsiders on campus with whom they are familiar from other protests staged in the city over the years.
