Campus protests against law, no place for anti-semitism or hate speech: Biden

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent.” Biden said. “But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society. And order must prevail.”

He further asserted that there is no place on campuses or in America for anti-semitism or hate speech. “Protests need to be done without violence, destruction or hate and within the law,” Biden went on to say. He also said that the National Guard should not intervene in the protests.

In response to a reporter’s question, Biden said that the campus protests had not forced him to reconsider his policies in the Middle East.

Biden’s remarks come on a day when hundreds of helmeted police swarmed the site of a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of California at Los Angeles, firing flash bangs, arresting defiant demonstrators and dismantling their encampment.

Across various campuses in the US, protests over Israel’s war in Gaza have led to student clashes with each other and with law enforcement. Other arrests were made at Yale, Dartmouth, and the New York State universities at Buffalo and Stony Brook. The Associated Press has tallied more than 1,600 arrests at 30 schools.