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

Breaking days of silence as police crack down on campus protests over the war in Gaza, US President Joe Biden Thursday said “destroying property and threatening people was not a peaceful protest” and asserted that it was “against the law.”

In his first remarks on the ongoing student protests, Biden said the protests have put to the test the right to speech and the rule of law, adding that both must be upheld. “American people must have the right to be heard, but rule of law must be upheld,” he said in an address at the White House.

“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.

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