New York City mayor continues to blame outside agitators for Columbia unrest, but offers little evidence

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD brass on Wednesday continued to insist “outside agitators” were responsible for escalating pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.

But they declined to provide much evidence to support their claim, which has the twin benefits of justifying mass arrests on campus and providing cover to the embattled Columbia president who asked police to stay through graduation.

In an MSNBC interview, a police official showed what appeared to be a bike lock as proof that interlopers had co-opted peaceful student protests for Palestine — the prelude to NYPD entering Columbia’s campus Tuesday night in riot gear, pulling students out of a building they had seized the night before and making nearly 300 arrests between the Ivy League institution and the nearby City College of New York.

Other tactics police brass identified as the handiwork of professionals included protesters donning “black block attire,” breaking windows, blocking out cameras and forming barricades inside Hamilton Hall. Officials also pointed to the presence of a woman with ties to a group on the state department’s list of terrorist organizations.

“This is an ongoing, evolving investigation. The intelligence division must be very sensitive about information they release,” Adams said at a Wednesday morning press briefing, responding to a reporter’s request for details on the outside forces. “Our goal is not to ensure you get a good story. Our goal is to make sure we tell the right story.”

Adams has been hammering this narrative for weeks, since police officers first entered the Columbia encampment on April 18 and arrested more than 100 demonstrators.

Focusing blame on a dangerous but as-yet-undefined group, rather than ordinary college students, makes it easier to justify Tuesday evening’s dramatic showdown.

“The NYPD demonstrated remarkable restraint and professionalism as they cleared universities of outside agitators and lawbreakers,” the New York City Council’s Common Sense Caucus, made up of Republicans and conservative Democrats who support the NYPD, said in a statement. “The right to protest is sacred, but vandalizing and taking over private property is criminal. Period.”

Adams, himself a retired police captain, bristled at any suggestion he was exaggerating.

“I know that there are those who are attempting to say: ‘Well, the majority of people may have been students.’ You don’t have to be the majority to influence and co-opt an operation,” he said at the press briefing, warning of a global movement afoot to radicalize young people. “And so if you want to play the word police, you could do so. I’m going to play the New York City Police.”

Adams’ team on Wednesday promised more details about the outside forces would be forthcoming. And the mayor himself has said the dour assessment of the situation was designed to warn students, parents and the public in the interest of safety.

The posture is also helping Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who emphasized student safety as her reasoning for shutting down the demonstrations and twice calling the NYPD to forcibly remove protesters.

“Students and outside activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our public safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property are acts of destruction, not political speech,” Shafik wrote in a university-wide email on Wednesday. She said the building’s occupation and the presence of non-students among the protesters led her to call in the NYPD.

The NYPD’s rhetorical tactic is not new.

The department often seeks to highlight the role of outside forces in mass movements, such as the racial justice protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. And while department brass might believe that focus buys goodwill with the public, it also opens the city up to criticism that it is trying to discredit the substance of the protests.

Cue the left-leaning New York Working Families Party, which has criticized Adams for escalating tensions at the university with Tuesday night’s arrests.

“When he is doing is a tried-and-true tactic. The narrative of outside agitators has been used throughout history to undermine protesters and movements that are gaining popular support,” Ana María Archila, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, said in an interview.

Thus far, officials have identified only two non-students who were a part of the protests. At an ominous press briefing hours before police breached the campus perimeter, a video circulated by the NYPD pointed out the presence of Lisa Fithian, a 63-year old activist and trainer for left-wing protesters.

City officials also pointed to a social media post from Sami Al-Arian, a former computer science professor in Florida who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State. In the post, Al-Arian indicated his wife had visited the tent encampment, though an NYPD official said Wednesday that visit had occurred last week.

A person familiar with the dynamics at the NYPD said officials were holding off on identifying the non-student elements in the hopes of gathering more information and potentially tying those arrested to others protesting at places like Fordham University in the Bronx, where students formed an encampment Wednesday.

“When we have these moments of national attention, people almost always come from somewhere else,” the person said. “And while 99 out of 100 people might be there to protest peacefully, there are a lot of people who get involved just to cause chaos because they have a different theory of change.”