President Joe Biden broke his silence on the pro-Palestinian protests that continue to sweep across U.S. college and university campuses, saying protesters have a “right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos.”
Biden directly addressed the campus protests on Thursday, roughly two weeks after an anti-Israel encampment sprang up at Columbia University, sparking a nationwide movement. Columbia’s encampment was established on the same day that the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, testified before Congress on her administration’s response to campus antisemitism.
While respecting the right to protest, Biden emphasized there is a distinction between a peaceful demonstration and the physical destruction of campus property. Before his White House address, he largely let his spokespeople comment on the matter.
“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it’s against the law,” Biden said. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation. None of this is a peaceful protest, threatening people, intimidating people.”
“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can’t finish the semester and college education,” the president continued.
Biden also told reporters that he had not changed his administration’s position on Middle East policies over the widespread campus protests, whose participants call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and advocate for universities to divest their financial and institutional ties to Israel. Since the Gaza conflict began in October, Biden has backed Israel’s war effort while urging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a permanent ceasefire in exchange for Hamas’s remaining 100 hostages.
Pro-Palestinian protests have spread across the nation in recent days, with some being met with a forceful police response like at Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles. Others, including one at George Washington University, have not been cleared out by police. But Republicans are calling for Biden and Democrats to take a tougher stance on the protests and encampments.
Earlier Thursday, Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said he sees a “complete breakdown of law and order” in the ongoing demonstrations that continue to disrupt campus life and threaten Jewish students.
“These people are out there disrupting all of this,” Rubio told Fox News. “It’s a complete breakdown of law and order, and the president is not doing anything about it. The left is caught in this vise now.”
“But the students have to be [held] responsible for this,” Rubio said. “It’s important to point out that even if you said . . . it’s a small percentage of the student body [protesting], they’re disrupting [college] for everybody else.”
Rubio’s comments came hours before Biden’s White House address, in which he denounced antisemitism and said the protests must be done “without violence, without destruction, without hate, and within the law.” Biden had previously condemned antisemitic incidents but supported the rights of pro-Palestinian protesters as well for fear of alienating his voter base, which has been largely critical of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
On Wednesday, former president Donald Trump criticized his opponent for failing to publicly comment on the protests.
“Biden’s nowhere to be found. He hasn’t said anything,” Trump said. “When you have a problem like that you should go out and talk about it and talk to the people. But there’s a big problem, there’s a big fever in our country, and he’s not talking. But if he did, it wouldn’t matter.”