He says he feared the campus could become the scene of violence of the sort that occurred at UCLA
UC San Diego ordered the removal of a large and growing pro-Palestinian encampment on May 6 out of concern that escalating tensions could lead to violence, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla told The San Diego Union-Tribune in his first substantial public remarks about the incident.
Khosla made the remark last Friday, shortly after the Union-Tribune obtained an analysis of the events that his senior staff produced three days after the incident and that was widely distributed to campus leaders. During all of May, Khosla was not available to answer questions from the Union-Tribune.
The chancellor said he particularly wanted to avoid the sort of melee that had occurred nearly a week earlier at UCLA, where a mob arrived late at night and tried to tear down a similar pro-Palestinian encampment. UCLA police were immediately criticized for waiting hours to intervene.
At UCSD five days later, there were tense but peaceful dueling protests outside the encampment by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators. Khosla said that event marked a “turning point” that led to his decision to have police move in the following day.
“The temperature between the two groups, in my mind, rose significantly, based on the reports I was getting,” said Khosla, who spoke to the Union-Tribune on Friday by Zoom while protesters gathered outside his La Jolla home. “So we had to think about how this was going to be dealt with, because at that point I was afraid that one altercation between two random people could lead to what happened at UCLA.”
Khosla also had been advised by campus police that “the risk of the camp growing to be unmanageable and un-securable had reached heightened levels,” UCSD executives said in their six-page summary of the events.
The chancellor also had been told by his advisers that the encampment members would not allow a fire marshal and health inspector into the tent city.
The Union-Tribune asked Khosla if it were fair to compare the situation at UCSD to that at UCLA, where the campus police chief faced immediate criticism for his department’s slow response and later would be reassigned.
“All I knew was there was an altercation at (UCLA). I had no idea on the why it happened,” Khosla responded. “All I knew there was an altercation there that led to significant escalation.”
When asked to elaborate days later, Khosla said through a spokesperson that he did not know all of the details of the incident at UCLA but acted because he wanted to avoid a similar incident in La Jolla.
The UCSD incident peaked shortly after dawn on May 6, when police from three agencies dismantled the illegal encampment and started arresting dozens of people.
Some protesters began to clash with police, and many gathered in front of buses filled with people who had been arrested, trying to prevent them from leaving.
Sixty students were arrested, along with two faculty members and four people who were not affiliated with the university, officials said Tuesday. Officials would not say how many of the students who were arrested, if any, were eligible to receive a degree this weekend.
The tension didn’t end there.
The university is preparing for the possibility that protesters will try to disrupt Saturday’s spring commencement, where former Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to give the keynote address.
Ahead of the ceremony, the UCSD chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine announced plans to hold its own Friday graduation event.
And the school’s Academic Senate is engaged in what some faculty have described as a bitter debate over whether Khosla handled the encampment properly — and whether his decision to authorize the use of outside police forces merits a vote of no confidence and his removal from office.
The situation represents a stark turnaround for Khosla, who was given a $500,000 pay raise last year. He is currently undergoing a routine performance review, scheduled weeks before the encampment controversy.
Confusion and mistrust
The university had seen numerous protests over the war in Gaza since October but struggled with the creation of a protest encampment early last month, its six-page summary of the official response says.
The protesters put up about 20 tents near Library Walk in a 20-minute period May 1, using materials that had been stored in nearby Price Center. Afterward, campus officials quickly showed up and told them the encampment was illegal, their internal summary document says.
A liaison for the protesters asked “what the campus was doing to ensure the encampment’s safety to ensure that the violence that happened at UCLA would not happen to them,” the document says. It adds that a student affairs monitor replied that “Allied Security, police and SAMs would be present in varying shifts.”
Neither a spokesperson for UCSDivest — the coalition that organized the encampment — nor the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine responded to requests to discuss the university’s actions or summary report.
After the camp was erected, campus police shifted to emergency staffing (12-hour shifts, no days off) to provide security, officials said in their executive summary, “diverting resources from other public safety activities and imposing a tremendous burden,” it added.
The university described its communications with the protesters as “increasingly difficult,” its review says. “There was no consistent person to communicate with, no one claimed to have any authority, and shifting representatives deflected responsibility and accountability for communications, actions, or follow-up.”
On Thursday, Khosla canceled Sun God, a popular annual music festival that had been scheduled for Saturday.
“We did not have enough people for security for the rest of campus,” Khosla told the Union-Tribune. “We had a choice to make: Expose everybody to the risk or just cancel Sun God,” he said, referring to his fear that pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters would start fighting.
Dueling protests, fears of violence
Days later, in summarizing the recent events on campus, Khosla’s advisers described having similar concerns after the dueling protests took place May 5.
“Encampment participants left the encampment and occupied Library Walk at the same time as the counterprotestors were marching through the same area. This resulted in hundreds of individuals from the two factions, feet apart from each other, screaming and waving objects in each others faces. Thankfully, this incident did not result in violence, but the encampment’s decision to provoke and confront counterprotestors dramatically increased the risk of violence breaking out as happened at UCLA,” the university said in the document.
“If a fight had broken out, it is likely that the campus’ security resources would have been overwhelmed,” officials added.
UCSD police were present at the demonstration. The university’s executive summary does not say how officers were told to manage the protest and counterprotest.
It was a polarizing moment for activists.
Martha Hoffman, a counterdemonstrator from La Jolla, told the Union-Tribune at the time, “The university should not allow them to chant ‘intifada.’”
Hala Abdulah, a pro-Palestine student protester at the encampment, told the paper that her group would not be leaving.
“We are not going to be relying on UCPD to protect us,” she said. “No cops, no administration, no one’s going to protect us. We will protect ourselves.”
‘Rising concerns’
By Sunday, the UCSD encampment had tripled in size, and the counterprotest was taking shape adjacent to it.
Khosla called Academic Senate Chair John Hildebrand “to relay rising concerns and the likely need to act if the situation continued to escalate,” according a separate, two-page chronology prepared by UCSD staff.
“The Chair disagreed with the use of police to disband the camp and expressed concern that people be given access to their personal belongings in the camp if action was taken.”
Later that day, Hildebrand “texted the Chancellor with thanks for not sending in force to break up the protest-counter protest,” the chronology says.
But by then, Khosla had already decided to order the encampment removed.
“We have a 2,000-acre campus we have to protect,” Khosla told the Union-Tribune. “My job was to keep them safe.”