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| A vandalised Bank of America office is seen after a student protest turned violent at UC Berkeley during a demonstration over right-wing speaker Yiannopoulos, who was forced to cancel his talk, in Berkeley, California |
US President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to cut funding to the University of California at Berkeley after protesters smashed windows and set fires at the liberal-leaning school, forcing the cancellation of an appearance by a far-right Breitbart News editor.
โIf UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view โ NO FEDERAL FUNDS?โ Trump wrote on Twitter at 6:13am EST (1113 GMT). He did not elaborate.
Representatives for the university, which has 38,000 students and a long history of activism, could not immediately be reached for comment outside of the schoolโs business hours.
Like other major US research universities, Berkeley depends on federal agencies for scientific grants and other support. It was not immediately clear, however, what action Trump could take without authorisation from Congress, or without risking legal action.
Trumpโs chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, previously headed Breitbart News.
Hours before Breitbartโs Milo Yiannopoulos was to give a speech at Berkeleyโs student union on Wednesday, hundreds of protesters clashed with police at the campus.
Demonstrators tossed metal barricades and rocks through the buildingโs windows and set a generator on fire near the entrance, footage from news outlets showed. Police ordered the crowds to disperse, and the school was put on lockdown.
โWe shut down the event,โ one protester told CNN. โIt was great. Mission accomplished.โ
In a statement, the university blamed about 150 โmasked agitatorsโ for the violence during the otherwise mostly peaceful demonstration by about 1,500 people.
The school โis proud of its history and legacy as home of the free speech movementโ in the 1960s, the statement said.
Many of the protesters voiced opposition to Trump, CNN reported. The presidentโs executive orders and proposed policies, including his suspension of the US refugee program and temporary ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, have triggered largely peaceful demonstrations by tens of thousands of people across the United States.
Yiannopoulos, whose Twitter account was suspended last year after he was accused of participating in the online harassment of a black actor, told Fox News he was rushed to safety by his security guards and police after protesters began throwing rocks.
โObviously itโs a liberal campus so they hate any libertarians or conservatives who dare to express an opinion on their campuses,โ he said. โThey particularly donโt like me.โ
