UCLA professor who said LAPD must protect campus protesters backed defunding police

Just before law enforcement moved to dismantle an anti- Israel encampment Thursday at UCLA, a professor at the California school took to criticizing officers for purportedly failing to protect student activists supporting Gaza.

But in 2020, as left-wing protesters swarmed cities in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, that same taxpayer-backed educator — Ananya Roy — publicly supported defunding the police.

The student demonstrations at UCLA, like others at campuses taking aim against the Jewish state, are under the national spotlight as Israel continues its war against the Hamas terrorist faction. Police in riot gear early Thursday made over 130 arrests at UCLA — which came days after violent clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters.

Roy, founding director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy and an urban planning professor who earned a salary of at least $375,708 in 2022, has emerged as a key voice at UCLA criticizing the school for "campus messaging" that she says penalizes anti-Israel student protesters. Roy, who has recently been quoted in stories about the UCLA protests by the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Newsweek, the Guardian, and other media outlets, supports "divesting from whiteness" and "refusing patriarchy," according to her X profile. She often reposts content on social media accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid for retaliating against Hamas.

On a podcast episode released May 1 with journalist Ian Masters, Roy said she was "proud" of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. However, she raised concerns over "proudly Zionist mobs" for "attacking the encampment."

"The administration has known about this, students and faculty have documented the violence, and last night was an indication of unchecked violence — with campus security, university police, LAPD, all standing by and quite deliberately not protecting students," Roy told Masters, the husband of British actress Christina Pickles.

Roy, who did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner, said she faults UCLA for not arresting pro-Israel "mobs."

However, Roy's lamentation of a lack of police presence to target certain activists on UCLA's campus could place her in a tough spot. The professor co-authored an article in June 2020 in Knock LA, a nonprofit news outlet, titled "Serious About Racial Justice? Then Divest From Policing."

Roy, writing in the outlet alongside Los Angeles community activists Pete White and Hamid Khan, made it clear at the time what she thought the relationship ought to be between universities and law enforcement.

"The time has come for institutions, including universities, to demonstrate that they are serious about racial justice by divesting from policing — ending collaboration with and funding for law enforcement," the trio wrote in the article.

The article further asserted that policing is too expensive, adding, "Defunding the police and redirecting those financial resources is a worthy cause."

"A police-free world, as abolitionist scholars and organizations remind us, is about imagining and creating 'life-affirming institutions,'" Roy and the two other activists wrote in the article. "There is no blueprint for this new world. If there were, it would not be worth building."

And in July 2020, one month after that article was published, Roy expressed jubilance on social media about the idea of stripping resources from police.

"Hell yeah!" Roy said in response to an editorial in UCLA's student-run Daily Bruin that supported defunding police. "The time is now."

But Roy's prior support for defunding the police is a sentiment that has also earned the support of pro-Palestinian organizers at UCLA.

The student activists have asked UCLA to "abolish policing" and "sever ties with the LAPD," according to multiple reports. Bella Brannon, a third-year undergraduate student at UCLA, told the Washington Examiner it's a clear irony.

"Slippery slope," Brannon said. Ilan Berdy, another third-year UCLA student, agreed.

UCLA did not return a request for comment. Sgt. Alejandro Rubio of the California Highway Patrol said Thursday that students who were arrested were booked at a complex near downtown Los Angeles and that UCLA police will decide what charges — if any — are brought.

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President Joe Biden on Thursday pressed for the demonstrations on campuses to be peaceful but said he doesn't support sending in the National Guard.

"Peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues,” Biden said. “But neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society, and order must prevail."