David N. Myers writes:

UCLA, the top-rated public university in the United States, experienced one of the darkest nights in its 105-year history on Tuesday. 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 counter-demonstrators 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.

The incident marked a total systems failure by the university, the city of Los Angeles and the state of California.

For three hours, the counter-demonstrators 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. [Continue reading…]