Historically, when students protest at American universities and colleges—from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter—there has been a common refrain that “outside agitators” are to blame. College administrators and elected officials have often pointed out that community members have joined protests to reject the demands of student demonstrators.
Experts say it is a useful way for officials to delegitimize the motivations of some political movements and justify the help of law enforcement to stop direct actions that are largely nonviolent and engage in constitutionally protected speech.
“This tactic shifts the focus away from real grievances and portrays radical movements as orchestrated by opportunistic outsiders,” said Shanelle Matthews, professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies at the City University of New York and former communications director of the Movement for Black Lives.
In recent weeks, students on campuses across the country have built camps, occupied buildings and led protests calling on colleges and universities to divest their endowments from companies that profited from the war between Israel and Hamas. Several university and city leaders have noted the threat from outsiders in describing the protests — and some have responded by canceling or rescheduling plans for commencement ceremonies.
Here’s what you need to know about the phrase “outside agitators” used during historic student movements.
Protest movements typically consist of local community members and organizers from other parts of the state or country working together toward a common goal. In the 1960s, state and local officials often focused on this feature of community organizing, suggesting that civil rights protests were organized by people outside a particular community.
In 1960, a group of black students took out a full-page advertisement in Atlanta newspapers entitled “An Appeal for Human Rights,” expressing solidarity with students around the world protesting for civil rights. Segregationist politician and then-Governor of Georgia Ernest Vandiver suggested it was created by foreigners, calling it a calculated attempt “to breed discontent, discontent, discord and evil.”
“It didn’t sound like it was prepared at a school or college in Georgia; nor did it even read in this country as it was written,” he told the press.
The idea that outside agitators were involved in civil rights protests became so common that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the label in his letter from Birmingham prison in 1963.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. “We can never again afford to live with the narrow, provincial idea of an ‘outside agitator’. Anyone living in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within the borders of the United States.
Former President Richard Nixon hoped to link the 1970 deaths of Kent State students at the hands of the National Guard to outside agitators, but the FBI was unable to make such a connection. The students were protesting the war in Vietnam.
During the Civil Rights Movement, the label was used as a weapon against community members who spoke out or supported protesters and organizers, said Dylan C. Penningroth, an author and historian who teaches law and history at the University of California, Berkeley.
“It delegitimizes internal disagreements about the status quo. So anyone who speaks out against the status quo, whatever that is, is by definition an outsider,” he said.
It also ignores the fact that local civil rights organizers often take cues from other protest movements, Penningroth said, and building solidarity with others across the country is often an important part of bringing about change.
Nearly half a century later, the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked widespread protests against police brutality.
Here too, external agitators were repeatedly called in and accused of vandalizing, looting and burning buildings.
The same language was used to describe the protests following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which resulted in more than 10,000 arrests nationwide.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz suggested that 80% of those who participated in the unrest that followed in Minneapolis were from out of state. But an Associated Press analysis found that 41 of 52 people cited in protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.
The number of people arrested in connection with protests on colleges and university campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza now reaches 2,800. The Associated Press has counted at least 70 incidents at 54 schools since protests began in Columbia on April 18.
Officials have used external agitator rhetoric in a handful of examples nationwide. After dozens of students were arrested during May 4 demonstrations at the University of Virginia, a senior law enforcement official suggested that outsiders had “bull horns telling protesters how to flank our officers.”
“We are receiving information that outside agitators are becoming involved in these campus protests,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News on May 6.
At anti-war protests on campuses at Emory University in Atlanta, Northeastern University in Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, school officials and law enforcement have made false claims about the presence of non-students.
On April 30, New York City police officers in riot gear entered the Columbia University campus and cleared an encampment, arresting more than 100 people. New York Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly cited the presence of “outside agitators” to justify the use of police force.
“There is a movement to radicalize young people and I’m not going to wait until it’s over and then suddenly acknowledge its existence,” Adams said at a May 1 news conference.
However, the mayor and police officials have pressed for details and have little to say. Adams has said repeatedly that he decided police intervention was necessary at the Columbia demonstrations after learning that the husband of an “agitator” had been “arrested for federal terrorism.”
But the woman the mayor is referring to was not on Columbia’s campus that week, is not among the protesters arrested and has not been charged with any crime.
Nahla Al-Arian told The Associated Press that she visited the city last month and briefly stopped by the campus to see the protest camp. She also said Adams misinterpreted facts about her husband, a former computer engineering professor who was accused 20 years ago of providing illegal support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s and 1990s.
Students involved in the Columbia protests have told the AP that it is true that some people not affiliated with the university have been on campus and played an active role in the demonstrations, but they have vehemently denied that they allies led or ‘radicalized’ the students. .
“While it is true that people with nefarious intentions thwart protests, this is the exception rather than the rule,” Matthews said. “Given that, people should be wary of this story.”
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AP writers RJ Rico in Atlanta, Steve LeBlanc in Boston, David B. Caruso in New York and Jim Vertuno in Austin contributed.