I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?  

The university should have anticipated Tuesday night’s chaos — but security personnel were nowhere to be found

...Over the course of my 33-year career at UCLA, I have never seen anything so terrifying take place.

Around 11 p.m., a group of masked counterdemonstrators made their way to the Royce Quad in the heart of campus and began to attack the encampment set up last week by demonstrators opposing the war in Gaza. They threw a firecracker into the encampment, tore down its outer walls, threw heavy objects at demonstrators and instigated direct physical confrontations. Those in the encampment were left to fend for themselves against a violent band of thugs intent on inflicting damage.

...

For three hours, the counterdemonstrators attacked the encampment with impunity. UCLA has its own trained police force, and the UCLA administrators with whom I spoke told me that the Los Angeles Police Department had been called to campus. But, somehow, there was no police presence whatsoever until the early hours of the morning.

What makes last night all the more inexplicable was that the university had, over the weekend, seen a haunting warning of what could happen.

On Sunday, a number of Jewish and Israeli groups, including the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the Israeli American Council, sponsored a rally on campus to advocate for the protection of Jewish students. The rally featured speeches by local Jewish public figures, along with musical performances.

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Over the course of our hours on the front lines, I estimate that more than 90% of the verbal and physical instigation came from the agitated counterdemonstrators, a fair number of whom spoke Hebrew and appeared to come from outside campus. The anti-war group had yellow-vested personnel who maintained discipline and sought to deescalate when the threat of violence arose.

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I do not know whether there was overlap between the counterdemonstrators on Sunday and those who provoked last night’s violence, who carried Israeli and American flags, as well as at least one Chabad flag celebrating “Mashiach,” or the Messiah. But the behavior of the two groups bore striking similarities...

...on Sunday, I observed a contingent of university police officers standing passively a couple hundred yards from one of the main hot spots. When I went over to ask them why they weren’t helping to keep the peace, one officer told me that they were game-planning their strategy.

And no LAPD officers arrived to help us diffuse the situation over a period of more than two hours — even though we had been told that they were on their way.

...That none appeared for hours Tuesday night, especially after observing the tension on Sunday, was unconscionable. 

Before Tuesday’s melee, I felt as if our university had handled the recent anti-war protests relatively well. There was no heavy-handed police take-down...In the face of immense pressure, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block managed to keep the peace. 

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...The attack last night was pure anarchy in which violent thugs were given free rein, seemingly with the tacit support of law enforcement. It placed scores of anti-war demonstrators in the encampment in direct and serious danger. 

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Our campus leaders must not only condemn the egregious violence of last night but proceed to investigate how the anti-war protesters were left defenseless for hours. At the same time, they must make clear that expressing opposition to the war in Gaza is legitimate, that antisemitism and Islamophobia have no place on campus, and that irresponsible rhetoric about the danger posed by largely peaceful demonstrators contributed to the horror of last night.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Jewish community must not only condemn the unprovoked attacks of last night; they must also call out the malign actors from within who purport to defend Jewish students, but engage in the very heinous acts of which they accuse the other side.

Only then can they lay claim to the mantle of leadership, which they so completely abandoned last night.