President Joe Biden addressed the nation on Thursday in an impromptu press conference to discuss college campus protests, making it clear that America guarantees “the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”
Unrest continues to flare on college campuses, with hundreds arrested in an overnight sweep to clear encampments from UCLA’s campus on Wednesday night.
“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest,” Biden said. “It is against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest.”
Biden continued: “There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it is antisemitism, islamophobia, discrimination against Arab-Americans or Palestinian-Americans.”
“It is simply wrong,” the President added.
“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” Biden said.
The President noted that the U.S. is not an “authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” but we are a country where “people are heard.”
“In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to controversial issues,” Biden acknowledged. “But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society and order must prevail.”
At the end of Biden’s brief address, a reporter asked him whether the protesting has forced his administration to reconsider its policies on the Middle East, to which Biden replied “No.”
Another reporter asked whether the President thought that the National Guard should intervene in protests on campuses, which Biden also denied.