UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY officials allege that outside agitators were among those involved in protests where multiple people were arrested outside of an event for the conservative group Turning Point USA held Monday evening.
Four others were arrested Sunday night for installing an art display expressing dissatisfaction with the event.
“There is no place at UC Berkeley for attempts to use violence or intimidation to prevent lawful expression or chill free speech,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said Tuesday.
Mogulof said the university is conducting an investigation and will assist a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force “to identify the outside agitators responsible for attempting to disrupt last night’s TPUSA event.”
Actor Rob Schneider and speaker and author Frank Turek appeared as featured guests at the event in Zellerbach Hall. It was the final stop of a college speaking tour by Turning Point USA, the conservative advocacy group whose co-founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at a tour stop at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. Turning Point’s UC Berkeley chapter was founded in 2019.
Students Organizing for Liberation at UC Berkeley, one of the groups behind the protest against the event, celebrated in a social media post that the event was delayed by nearly an hour and a half. They did not call for violence in anything advertising the protest visible on their social media.
Right: A protestor flips off the police forming a baricade at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, the site of a Turning Point USA event, in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025 (Andres Jimenez Larios/Bay City News)
Other organizers included the UC Berkeley chapters of Jewish Voices for Peace, Young Democratic Socialists of America, Koreans for Decolonization, Students for Socialism, and Gabriela Berkeley.
A 45-year-old man who intended to be one of the 900 people in attendance at the event was allegedly struck in the head with a glass bottle or jar while on his way to the building, according to Berkeley city police, who did not say whether his attacker was associated with the protests.
Berkeley police also intervened in a fight that broke out between two men during the protest.
Both men were initially arrested on suspicion of fighting in public, but police said they later determined that the altercation was prompted by one of the men allegedly stealing a chain from around the neck of the other man, who then tried to get it back.
The man whose chain was taken was released from custody, while the other man — identified as 25-year-old Oakland resident Jihad Dphrepaulezz — was arrested on suspicion of robbery and battery, police said.
Campus police arrested a 22-year-old man on allegations of resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer and refusing to leave the area when asked to by police. He was cited and released. A 48-year-old man with no association with UC Berkeley was arrested on the same accusations. He was taken to Santa Rita Jail on $12,500 bail, and faces an additional potential penalty because he was unaffiliated with the campus.
Along with the arrests Monday, four students were arrested late Sunday night on allegations of felony vandalism after putting up posters and attempting to hang a paper-mache bug from Sather Gate.
Mogulof was not aware of any permanent damage to the gate as of Tuesday, although felony vandalism arrests in California require that the damage be of $400 or more in value.
The four students arrested on suspicion of vandalism were all women between the ages of 20 and 22, according to Santa Rita Jail records. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has not yet confirmed whether charges will be filed against them.
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