The NYT looks into the "outside agitator" rhetoric.

Yesterday, I noted the NYPD report that "More than a quarter of protesters arrested Tuesday at Columbia and 60 percent at the City College of New York had no connections to the schools." I asked: "But who are the outside agitators? If they are not students, who are they? How about some details? Lots of them were arrested. Why isn't there a torrent of detail about what sort of people they are?"

This morning I see the NYT doing something that seems to be answering my question. The headline is "The Mayor Called Them Outside Agitators. Many of Them Beg to Differ. City officials have blamed 'external actors' for escalating demonstrations at Columbia University and elsewhere, but student protesters reject the claim."

This article set off my bullshit detector:

1. I want to know who the non-students actually are, not — as the headline has it — that they "beg to differ" and "reject the claim." Of course, they wouldn't like their antagonists' effective rhetoric.

2. The article has 5 authors.

3. The article begins with 3 paragraphs cherry-picking 3 particularly nice non-students — a saxophonist, and gardener, and a nanny!

But let's look at the substance:

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier.

That man, James Carlson, 40, "was also accused of setting an Israeli flag on fire with a lighter at another protest outside Columbia’s campus last month, court records show." 

But the [NYT] examination also revealed that far more of the unaffiliated protesters had no such histories. Rather, they said, they arrived at Columbia in response to word of mouth or social media posts to join the demonstration out of some combination of solidarity and curiosity.

There was little evidence to suggest they had helped organize or escalate the protests, and many were arrested without having ever set foot on campus....

Little evidence... but have you investigated to the point where, if there is evidence, you would have found it, or are we presuming in favor of the protesters' characterization of themselves? 

Mr. Adams has said that even a small number of outsiders can inflame tensions and cause protests to veer into violence.

That is, maybe the outsiders didn't start the protest but they are responsible for the escalation into violence. (Did you notice that Biden* and others are using the word "violence" to include breaking into buildings? That's also effective in talking about January 6th.)

Back to the NYT article:

[A]s evidence that the campus has been infiltrated, [Adams] has pointed to the presence there at various times of a 63-year-old career activist, Lisa Fithian, and Nahla Al-Arian, the wife of a man who faced terrorism charges in Florida nearly 20 years ago, and whose daughter was a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school.

Ms. Fithian, who has written a book on protest tactics and charged money to run demonstrations and teach techniques for taking over the streets, was captured on video Tuesday apparently urging counterprotesters to step aside so that Hamilton Hall could be barricaded. She has denied playing any larger role in organizing the Columbia protests. Neither woman was present during the police sweeps on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, on the front page of the NYT next to this article, there's "How Counterprotesters at U.C.L.A. Provoked Violence, Unchecked for Hours/The New York Times used videos filmed by journalists, witnesses and protesters to analyze hours of clashes — and a delayed police response — at a pro-Palestinian encampment on Tuesday." 

That article has 8 authors.

A New York Times examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that violence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention. The violence had been instigated by dozens of people who are seen in videos counterprotesting the encampment.

Here, the NYT pinpoints the instigators: It's the counterprotesters. And we see that word "violence" — "violence ebbed and flowed"... "violence had been instigated." But it seems to have been well within the traditional definition of violence:

The videos showed counterprotesters attacking students in the pro-Palestinian encampment for several hours, including beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons.... 

It is not clear how the counterprotest was organized or what allegiances people committing the violence had. The videos show many of the counterprotesters were wearing pro-Israel slogans on their clothing. Some counterprotesters blared music, including Israel’s national anthem, a Hebrew children’s song and “Harbu Darbu,” an Israeli song about the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza.

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* From "Remarks by President Biden on Recent Events on College Campuses":

Peaceful protest in America — violent protest is not protected; peaceful protest is. It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest.