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Tense Protests Rock Major U.S. Colleges Over Israel-Hamas War. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 24, 2024 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[15:01:48]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. We do have some breaking news. We are monitoring major protests rocking several colleges across the country right now, all having to do with the Israel-Hamas war in Austin. And this is from moments ago here at the University of Texas.

A large group of students walked out of class today as part of a pro- Palestinian demonstration, and they were met with a heavy response from troopers who appeared to make a number of arrests.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: There was a large student protest also underway in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. And, of course, we've seen student encampments on the campuses of Brown and Columbia University as well. We want to go to USC now with CNN's Nick Watt, who is on the scene for us.

Nick, it is a tense scene behind you. We've heard chants of, let him go. What is actually happening behind you?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, so what is happening behind me, Boris, is one of the protesters was arrested and put into that squad car you see right there. The car was then surrounded by protesters demanding, let him go, let him go, let him go. It appears that they might actually be letting him go.

This is just a perfect example of the issue that college campus officials have across this country of how to police these events. Before they moved in to try and move tents and other things off this little park, it was a peaceful demonstration. There were speakers. It was peaceful. About 200 people.

As soon as public safety officers from the university moved in, it very quickly got verbal, and then it very quickly got violent after that. There was pushing and shoving, cursing, swearing, a great deal of anger and then this arrest, which is what we are seeing behind me right now.

Meantime, over on the park where the tents were pitched, protesters have now picked those tents up and are marching with the tents, so they're not breaking down. They're not breaking any university ordinances, but they are still making their points known. A lot of anger, and these protesters are saying that they are not going to leave.

Now, initially, they came here about 4:30 this morning, pitched some tents. They were told by the college to take them down and they did. Then they felt that they were being silenced. They say that the college officials were "nitpicking" by getting at them for hanging banners on trees and for pitching the tents, and that is when things very, very quickly changed. Things very quickly turned contentious and turned violent. Back to you.

KEILAR: All right, Nick. Stand by, if you would, as we keep an eye on this, and we're keeping an eye on that police car there as well.

WATT: Yes.

KEILAR: Amelia Kimball of the student newspaper The Daily Texan at UT Austin is back with us now. Amelia, you're watching the protests at the University of Texas. It sort of reached a fever pitch just moments ago. Tell us what you're seeing now.

AMELIA KIMBALL, ASSOCIATE MANAGING DIRECTOR, THE DAILY TEXAN: Students have largely moved from the original location of the demonstration to the main lawn on campus and students are starting to lay out blankets and pitch tents.

SANCHEZ: And, Amelia, earlier you had mentioned to us that there was some very basic sort of disagreement between the organizers of the demonstration and officials on campus.

[15:05:07]

Administrators who had effectively tried to ward students off of this idea of demonstrating. Walk us through how we got to what we're seeing now.

KIMBALL: Yes, absolutely. So, from what I understand, the university had told organizers of the event not to proceed with it and students did proceed anyway. Hours before any students gathered, there was a large number of state troopers on campus and the police presence has only increased, including University of Texas police and Austin police.

Protesters were ordered to disperse just a few minutes into the demonstration. And then the police threatened arrest and numerous arrests have been made. Numerous students have been put in squad car - put in a squad car. And there have been multiple physical confrontations between police officers, state troopers in full riot gear with batons, et cetera, and students.

KEILAR: And, Amelia, talk to us a little bit about what students there on campus have been saying. Obviously, there are so many - there are completely different opinions when it comes to this war, but there's also this fine line between free speech and then students feeling that they are in a safe environment where they can learn. What are you hearing from students? KIMBALL: There is significant support for the demonstrators. There is a small contingency of counter-protesters with Israeli flags and signs. Some students are in class right now. I just watched one student go into office hours, so I think that some students and professors are proceeding as usual, and others are either participating in the demonstration or kind of gathering along the sidelines, and watching and showing support for demonstrators.

SANCHEZ: Amelia, I asked you this previously, but I was hoping you might be able to give us a bit more clarity on what it's been like on campus since October when Hamas launched its attacks against Israel and Israel responded in Gaza. Have you - have we seen an escalation since then? What has it been like for these groups that have organized these demonstrations over the last few months?

KIMBALL: Yes. So, today's demonstration is by far the biggest and the most impactful that we've seen since October. There were some demonstrations and a walkout from classes in October, fall of last year. And there have been a few demonstrations, but this is a severe escalation.

I think the environment on campus has been fraught, but the movement has not. Movement didn't pick up a ton of speed, really, I would say, until today.

KEILAR: And, Amelia, I don't know if you're watching this. But we were just seeing all of these students push back there. And now we see why, that police have come into the frame and are attempting, it looks like, to blockade students or what are you seeing here? What's happening?

KIMBALL: Yes. Yes, I'm about 10 feet away from all that. So, students had largely moved to the main lawn and protests - or police, excuse me, just started to move in and are now walking into the students' crowd. There's now a physical clash between students and police.

KEILAR: You're seeing a physical clash between students and police?

KIMBALL: Yes, police - they just walked into the crowd.

KEILAR: Okay. And we're seeing that and we're going to keep an eye on that. Amelia, stand by for us. And you let us - okay, Amelia, describe for us what is happening, what you're seeing? You said you're 10 feet from this.

KIMBALL: Police have moved into the crowd. They appear to have detained at least one student. Students on the sidelines are moving in and filming. Students are chanting, let him go, let him go. Students are standing their ground.

SANCHEZ: Amelia, please stand by and give us an update on the situation as it develops. We want to stay on these images and bring in CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem, who is closely been monitoring these situations.

And, Juliette, what we just watched there is something that is typical of law enforcement protocol in situations like this. You saw law enforcement officers in a line approach the crowd and essentially extract someone from the crowd that they deemed potentially to be a risk or to be out of line. And in a closed line, they move that person back and take them into custody and speak to them.

[15:10:02]

Perhaps apprehend them is a better way to describe it, as opposed to being taken into custody.

What are you seeing unfold right now and what security concerns do you have, not only for those folks that are trying to keep the peace, but for students on campuses that are just trying to go to class?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, exactly. Because we've seen that some schools have closed down or gone to Zoom. So there's no singular approach. I'd give a little bit of a historical precedent here.

Look, we haven't - university police, local police have not dealt with sort of extensive student protest since Black Lives Matter, which happened during COVID. So it had a very different feel than this does now in terms of everyone out and about. Classes are ending. There's a lot of dead time, so to speak, for students.

And so colleges and universities have to do three things and I'm pretty clear about this. One is they do have to allow space for students to protest. I said, you've got to give them an outlet. Students are allowed to protest, this should not be a shock to anyone with teenagers or young adult children. They have strong feelings and they're passionate because if you just immediately go to arrest, it's going to cause, I think, some of the - what we're seeing on air, which is nothing's happening and then lots is happening.

You want to give students space as long as you're protecting students who want to go to classes, Jewish students, if they're targeted.

The second is you have to have off-ramps. You have to - in terms of these colleges and universities, you've got to give students rules about what they are and are not allowed to do. Maybe this happened at USC, but they have to be clear about, yes, you can protest. No, you can't block a building. And this is what's going to happen if you block a building.

And then third is, of course, then exert your outcomes, right? I mean, in other words, these kids who are violating these rules, these students, then have some sort of punishment. And whether you need the police or something like that is each college and university's decision.

But in the absence of violence at this stage, it is - it behooves a lot of colleges and universities to think through essentially how they are going to try to de-escalate this. This is on their property. And that includes things, I'll be honest, like access controls. Are all of these students - can we check IDs at gates, some of the universities are different. Look, I'm working with a lot of colleges and universities right now because they do want to de-escalate. They want to give students a chance but - to protest, but they want to protect other students who may feel threatened and then those who simply aren't involved with this at all. And I think we're going to find hopefully a medium between those two things, especially as we lead up to graduation.

KEILAR: Yes, I think that really is the balance here, Juliette. I mean, when you think back, even in the '60s, the free speech movement, we're seeing this thing with the car is sort of reminding us of what happened in Berkeley there. These moments sometimes of law enforcement moving in actually create sometimes a moment of escalation, which isn't to say in some of these protests that we have seen, listen, at Columbia, there are a lot of students, we've had them on the program, where they are not feeling safe.

So it is a fine line, certainly between free speech, knowing who is part of these protests. But how should law enforcement, be approaching this in a very real way at the moment as they go in and assess these protests that they're going into, where it does just appear to be pushing towards escalation.

KAYYEM: Yes. So the - and I know people want, but - depending on what your ideology is, maybe you want the kids punished sooner rather than later, but that does put people at risk. In other words, it is incumbent on police, I've said this a million times on air for any issue as well as these institutions to try to de-escalate, even if we don't like what's going on, or we may not agree with what's going on.

So one size does not fit all, it's going to depend. So one is, what are the rules of engagement? We cannot put police officers, especially non-university police officers, as we've seen in some of these jurisdictions, just out there fully armed, terrifying students who are, maybe they just view themselves as just expressing their dismay with the war or their criticisms of the Biden administration. So what are the rules of engagement?

The second is, is there a reach out, as we're seeing in some of these colleges and universities, to these student organizations to engage them on what is and is not appropriate activity? In other words, we don't have to treat the protesters as enemies, they just disagree with the institution or they disagree with the government. And that can help de-escalate as well.

And then third is the punishment that we're talking about.

[15:15:00]

If someone is violent, if someone is threatening students, if someone ought not to be there and is exacerbating the tensions.

But you definitely - you don't - we often say, like, we don't want to get to DEFCON 1 in an hour, right? If something's gone wrong, if you have a peaceful protest to now - maybe it's just a little bit of escalation here or some escalation here. And that's - I'm not happy about it, but that's the kind of planning that colleges and universities are going to have to address now, because we are entering a sort of downtime for students, I know this, I have my last class in an hour, downtime for students as well as graduation.

So in other words, give them an outlet, give them off ramps and then have them suffer outcomes if appropriate. And that's - and each university and college is going to be different.

SANCHEZ: Sure. Juliette, please stand by for us as we monitor these tense interactions, at times physical struggles between demonstrators and police. We've seen several arrests and have heard reports of several arrests as well on campuses, ranging from the University of South California - Southern California in Los Angeles to the University of Texas at Austin.

All this as House Speaker Mike Johnson is set to speak at Columbia University with a congressional delegation roughly in the next half hour or so, speaking out about the anti-Semitism that has been on display at some of these demonstrations.

We're going to take a quick break as we monitor the situation. You see students running there in Austin. We're going to step away for a moment, but we'll get you the very latest on CNN in just a few minutes.

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SANCHEZ: We're continuing to follow breaking news, pro-Palestinian protests breaking out on college campuses from coast to coast.

KEILAR: That's right. Protests about the war in Gaza, and we are seeing it escalate here. We've been following, of course, Columbia University, but we're now also watching USC in Los Angeles and UT Austin there in Texas, where we've just seen police presence grow and sort of the - I guess, animosity in a way between law enforcement and some protesters definitely escalate. We've seen that with a lot of people just obviously observing what's going on, but there's been quite a bit of chaos there at those scenes.

We have reporters across the country. CNN's Omar Jimenez is at Columbia.

Tell us about what you're expecting, especially because the House Speaker Mike Johnson, is set to speak.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to be here within - this afternoon. And what you're looking at right now, you're just seeing the encampment that is here now for an eighth day here at Columbia University. It really first went up to coincide with the university president when she testified on Capitol Hill about anti-Semitism on campus. That was when the encampment went up.

It was not long after that that the NYPD was called in to clear out the encampment. It did seem to anger many students and faculty here, and it was part of what prompted a revival of the camp, and it also prompted faculty to walk out in protests of students that were then arrested and or suspended.

And then fast forward to last night, the university president gave a midnight deadline for this camp to clear out. That - or she said they would have to find alternative ways to clear out this camp. Midnight came and went. Nothing happened. A few hours later, a university spokesperson said they actually have been making good progress in talks, and so that deadline has been pushed out 48 hours.

But of course, at the crux of all of this is the protests, they say, that this is because they want Columbia to divest from companies that profit from Israel. But also, at the same time, there is a Jewish population at this university, some of whom we've spoken to, who say that the protest makes them feel uncomfortable, threatened, even - so a few went as far as to say - as feel not safe on campus, even though there are some Jewish students who have gone into the encampment as well.

And then you contrast this type of demonstration with some of what we've seen off campus. A lot of demonstrations have happened at the gates of Columbia University. That's where we've seen, while students can't participate in that, a lot of non-students have come to that and that's where we have tended to see a little bit more violent messaging, a little bit more anti-Semitic messaging there. So much so that even some of the students have tried to distance themselves from some of those protests.

But again, bottom line, we're entering into an eighth day here. Speaker Johnson is expected to be here this afternoon, not too long from right now, where we do expect him to call for the resignation of the university president here, because he feels that she has done a weak job to keep Jewish students safe on this campus. So we expect that call to happen officially a little bit later this afternoon and, again, comes on an eighth day of this encampment that clearly, we've seen methods of which spread to campuses across this country, whether it's camping out or protests, solidarity with this campus, solidarity with Gaza in general. And clearly, this is something that has manifested pretty quickly.

KEILAR: All right. Omar, thank you so much for that live for us at Columbia.

And let's bring in now a Jewish Columbia student, Parker De Deker, who has talked about his experience when it comes to what's going on at Columbia.

Parker, I know you recently left campus because of the situation. You were watching what is - has unfolded at Columbia.

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We're now watching and I'm sure you can see as well what's happening at USC and UT Austin. Tell us what you think about what you're seeing around the country. PARKER DE DEKER, JEWISH STUDENT AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: I think what's happening right now is there seems to be a large amount of dissonance between what is peaceful protest and what is advocacy and what is learning and leading into violent forms of protest. And so I think what's really happening right now is there's a movement that's galvanized by the want and need for social advocacy and want for change in the Gaza Strip with the war between Hamas and Israel.

I think there are a lot of students who feel personally invested in this social issue. And so I fully stand with the students who want to be involved in this form of advocacy and this form of protest, because in the United States, speaking out and being involved in this form of protest is absolutely essential. But what we're also seeing now is that universities like my own at Columbia, at Yale and other universities across the country are seeing the blurring of the lines between peaceful protest, and that's moving into peaceful protest and now we're seeing a violent hate speech towards Jewish students, Jewish students associated with Israel, the Zionist movement in Israel, Jews who identify as Zionist.

And so we're seeing this delineation where now the lines are being blurred. And so Jewish students who may or may not be involved in counter protest or just simply showing their Jewish identities now feel their own safety being compromised at these universities across the country.

SANCHEZ: Parker, what is that felt like for you personally when you've experienced those moments that go from perhaps advocacy and the freedom of expression to then threats directed toward you for your faith?

It feels almost like a betrayal, because I think people in the Jewish community will tell you, we will - we understand what it feels like to be marginalized. Our ethnic population has been marginalized for thousands of years. And so we will continue to stand with groups that have been marginalized. And the Jewish community always wants to stand for social advocacy. That's what we stand for.

We've done a lot of fundraising, whether it's with the LGBTQIA movement, the BLM movement, we've done a lot with other movements in the United States and trying to want to use our own level of experiences and wanting to advocate for other movements as well. And now you see it in this movement, we want to advocate for peace in the Middle East, just like everybody else.

We want there not to be war between Israel and Hamas. We want there to be a ceasefire contingent upon the hostages being released and the hostages in Israel who were taken on October 7th being returned to their families. We want peace in the Middle East, just like everybody else. But it seems that our identities now have become a pawn in this political game, where people can't separate our Jewish identities from the occurrences and the incidents and the behavior of the Israeli government.

And so we're being linked together. Me as a Jewish individual in the United States has no power over the Israeli government abroad. And now we're being linked together and we find ourselves being subjected to forms of anti-Semitism and that's really, really hard as a Jewish student and it's disheartening, especially because universities are told and are promoted as to be a place where we can participate in civil discourse, and we can have critical conversations and foster meaningful learning and challenge our own biases.

But now we're going to universities, and there is so much tension between these two groups, and the protests are becoming so loud that we can't even have these conversations anymore. And that's the part that's so damaging, is Jewish students don't feel we can participate in these conversations.

KEILAR: Parker, I want to ask you, you have Speaker Johnson coming to campus amid this. What are you hoping to hear from him and is this the right time for him to be there?

DE DEKER: I'm hoping for two things. First and foremost, I'm hoping for Speaker Johnson to understand that anti-Semitism against Jewish individuals is not a political ploy. These are our own lived experiences, and it shouldn't be used as something to make a political stance or political movement, and this is Jewish safety we're talking about. These are our identities. Our stories shouldn't be weaponized.

And so I think it's really important that Speaker Johnson's message is emphasized and rooted in advocacy for the Jewish community in wanting our utmost safety. Second of all, I think he should really work into creating bipartisan solutions to issues of not only anti-Semitism, but also other forms of hatred in the United States.

We have seen a rise in anti-Semitism, especially now, but also rises in a lot of other forms of hatred over the past few years in United States. I think if this can be anything and serve as an example, it requires our politicians and Congress to come together in unity to take steps to address this in bipartisan solutions.

I also hope that he understands that going into this university, I know there's been a lot of call that it's expected that he's going to call for the resignation of our university president, Minouche Shafik. I urge him that, if he's calling for President Shafik's resignation, he understands that it's going to create a lot of turmoil within our university as well. We have seen that numerous, university presidents like that of UPenn and Harvard all being forced to resign.

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And while I think there is this demand, I think if we continue to have university presidents resign and having to put a new person in this position, you have to catch them up over everything ...