New York City Mayor Eric Adams‘s allegations that several pro-Palestinian campus protesters were outside agitators have proven to be not as numerous as claimed.
A review of police records and interviews from the New York Times showed that just nine people out of the dozens of protesters arrested at Columbia University had no ties to the campus and had protested at other universities.
Columbia enlisted the NYPD this week to clear out students who had overtaken and occupied Hamilton Hall. More than 100 people were arrested as NYPD cleared out protesters, with many of those arrested having no previous histories of protesting at other colleges.
They simply arrived at the university in solidarity with those demonstrating on campus.
“I sort of had to laugh because I guess you could think of me as an outside agitator,” Matthew Cavalletto, a 52-year-old computer programmer who lives close to the campus, told the New York Times. “Not that far outside, like six blocks away, but, you know, almost outside.”
The mayor’s office claimed that 29% of those arrested were unaffiliated with Columbia, while 60% of protesters at the City College of New York were unaffiliated with the school.
“The world is watching New York City, and our message to them has been clear: We will not be a city of lawlessness, and we will not allow our youth to be influenced by those who have no goal other than spreading hate and wreaking havoc on our city,” said Adams.
“As the anti-Israel protests began to escalate, it became abundantly clear that individuals unaffiliated with these schools had entered these different campuses and, in some cases, were even training students in unlawful protest tactics, many which we witnessed escalating into violent conduct,” Adams continued.
The mayor specifically pointed out Nahla Al-Arian, the wife of Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian activist, as one of the outside agitators.
In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was charged with supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s and 1990s but was not convicted of the charges. He took a plea deal to get out of jail, and in 2015, he was deported to Turkey.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Nahal Al-Arian said Adams misrepresented her position during the protests and was not at Columbia this week.
“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Al-Arian told the Associated Press. “They are the ones who influenced me. They are the ones who gave me hope that at last the Palestinian people can get some justice.”
Columbia protesters who were arrested also disagreed with Adams’s claims of outside agitators.
“I want to make sure it’s very clear there were not ‘external agitators,’ as far as I can tell, who were inside the building,” Val Ly, a 30-year-old graduate student in Columbia’s architecture program, told the New York Times.
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Ly was among the more than two-thirds of people demonstrating at Columbia who had some form of connection to the institution.
More than 2,000 people have been arrested at college campus protests across the nation, according to figures from the Associated Press.