The Department of Justice said Tuesday that it will investigate the University of California, Berkeley, after protesters confronted attendees of a campus event hosted by Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September.

Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s civil rights division, wrote on social platform X that the division would “investigate what happened here.” Dhillon, a conservative lawyer from California, described the protesters as members of antifa, a label that the Trump administration has applied to broad groups of people protesting against the government.

She wrote, “I see several issues of serious concern regarding campus and local security and Antifa’s ability to operate with impunity in CA.”

Late Monday afternoon, anticipating that the event would draw protesters, police began cordoning off an area outside Zellerbach Hall, on the Berkeley campus’ Sproul Plaza. But when organizers had difficulty scanning tickets, a line began snaking out from the theater and friction grew between attendees and protesters.

Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for the university, said there had been “a single violent incident” involving two people on a sidewalk just off campus property, and that they had been arrested by the city of Berkeley’s police department. He said that two others had been arrested by campus police for minor, nonviolent infractions.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department sent a letter to the university, notifying it of the investigation and requiring that it preserve records related to the protests, including communications among board members and administrators, as well as video and audio recordings of the protests.

The department said this year that it was investigating the University of California system over allegations that it failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, and for its diversity hiring practices. Its examination of Berkeley’s response to the protest on Monday may be folded in to those investigations, or a new one may be started, the department said.

In a statement, the university said that “there is no place at UC Berkeley for attempts to use violence or intimidation to prevent lawful expression or chill free speech.”

The university also said that it was cooperating with the Justice Department and would work with the FBI to “identify the outside agitators responsible for attempting to disrupt” the Turning Point event. “UC Berkeley will take all appropriate steps to safeguard the right of every member of our community to speak and assemble freely,” it said in the statement.

More than 900 people had attended the Turning Point event, Mogulof said, adding that it “went on safely, successfully and without disruption.”

More than 200 demonstrators gathered late Monday afternoon and stayed through the evening to rally against the event, which featured comedian Rob Schneider and Frank Turek, a Christian author. Protesters chanted, “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA,” and “Trump must go now!”

At one point the crowd briefly scattered after hearing loud noises that resembled gunshots. The situation quickly de-escalated when the crowd realized the sounds were fireworks.

Among those attending was Grayson Peters, a sophomore at Berkeley studying applied mathematics, who described himself as a liberal who was interested in hearing opposing points of view.

“I’m a Democrat, and I wanted to hear Turning Point USA at Berkeley, and how they would react, how this would be,” he said. “I’ve never been to one of these rallies before, and I really like hearing the other side’s opinions.”

Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, posted a video on X of attendees inside the hall waving posters of Kirk and chanting his name. “Despite Antifa thugs blocking our campus tour stop with tear gas, fireworks and glass bottles,” he wrote, “we had a PACKED HOUSE in the heart of deep blue UC Berkeley.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tim Arango
c. 2025 The New York Times Company